Do you include an economy in your hood with community public services like a hospital, police station, town hall etc? I'm interested in hearing how others set up their hoods when it comes to jobs held in the community and the buildings they work in. Do you have your sims pay tax? health insurance? Do you have a detailed class schedule for the students who attend the public school.

If you are interested, I thought we could have a discussion going on all the creative ways us players integrated the neighborhood to make it more a community.

I searched for a post with the search term Integrated Neighborhood and couldn't find anything. If you know of a thread already going that has ideas please link.

I'm glad you posted this, as it is a topic I like to talk on, only it's so huge I never know where or how to start.

So I was thinking of just posting what I am currently doing.

A bit of background. My main integrated hood (I have two) started out as a BACC, but a lot of the rules didn't make sense to me so I started changing and adding my own and it kind of evolved into what I have now. Not that it's an old hood, quite new really just that I have a lot of sims, rather too many as I dumped all the sim bin sims into it and married in more townies then I should have done. My first generation of YA are only currently going through uni. It's name Apple valley is ripped off the original I admit. When it was still a BACC and I was looking for more to read I came across the words integrated hood and self sustaining hood and my interest was piqued. From Googling that I found quite a bit on Apple Valley and the Isle of Thyme through the way back machine and devoured it. I knew at once that I wanted something like that. I have changed Apple Valley's name a few times but I always liked that name.
My other integrated hood is called Maple Valley/Drama Acres. Only because two of the first sims decided to make war on each other and with other sims around town and one of ladies also decided without direction to cheat on her husband. I don't have ACR so sims deciding things like that is always a much bigger deal in my game. It's a much smaller hood with basically no townies and lots of drama! But it doesn't have the fullness of Apple valley which remains my favourite. I took inspiration and ideas from the original Apple valley, Isle of Thyme, from some other BACC's, Jessa's let's plays, Seri's let's plays, lauratje86 on here as well as a couple of other people who I have forgotten -sorry I am terrible at names.

At the moment I am trying to finish off summer rotation as I play each house by the season, although I do sometimes jump around different houses. I just check on hood view and see who is still in summer. I don't have a huge rule set or taxes as I'm far to disorganized for that. I'm fairly relaxed and what I do depends a lot on my mood. Sometimes I will roll a random event but I play sims to relax and I like a laugh so I don't roll a die and have anything terrible happen. Maybe they will have to adopt in a pet, throw a holiday party, or go insane and wear a cow suit. I only do that if they are not being very interesting. One couple I need to finish off who own a nice coffee shop are being a bit boring now their boys have gone to uni so I might roll something for them.
yesterday I finished off the cemetery and played it 3 days hoping the ghost I made would show but he hasn't. I used a sim bin sim as the undertaker, Jason Larson. He owns the lot but I set it to be open and free all the time-I don't think you should have to pay to visit a cemetery. The ghost is the Dr's poor husband and only because he was glitched, a married in townie who didn't have a huge role in the town. I gave the Dr and her husband a good date before moving him out and killing him via the sim manipulator by lightening. She had a fear of him dieing poor thing but she was good and platinum when I did it. I would Ike the cemetery to have every colour of ghost rather than just old people so I may kill off some ugly townies and populate it some more. I'm thinking once there are plenty of ghosts it will be a good place for teens to go and try camping out for the night. 'Stay overnight at the cemetery' will be added to my random event list.
Here is a picture

I changed a few things around after taking that.
I will be going back to the hospital and seeing how the Dr family is doing. The twins will soon be old enough for uni and I was thinking on having them be the first to try uni in the main hood, although I'm rather taken on the whole exchange student idea lauratje86 posted on my uni in the main hood thread. Seeing they are one of the wealthiest families I could see them taking that opportunity up.

I try to get a integrated neighborhood established. I have the community lots like the diner, the bar (very popular with the locals, believe me!),the Chess Club, and other venues. Right now I'm trying to get everyone in Merged PV to get to know one another by automatically teleporting them into each other's lots and thus start the whole relationships thing off.

Of course I do have some rather nifty objects to help things along, such as drinkable beer, and a couple of edible mushroom/watermelon plants which encourage the pixels to eat, drink and be merry (or start fights with one another).

The Store is owned by one playable, and there will be other lots which have similar set ups. Because it is set in the desert, there will be a 'plant shop' which has all the desert-type plants in there to buy. The town's bank will be an expensive proposition at about §105,000. Some lucky rich person will get that for a hobby.

Thus everyone will start buying from and selling to each other-establishing the economy.

I forgot to say Jason will open a funeral parlor as well, selling coffins and head stones. The headstones will go to anyone in the family who bought them who dies. I might have a funeral service at the church for long term residents.

Thanks for showing a picture. That is one well thought out cemetery. I've not played much with ghosts because I find them annoying on a residential lot but because of fear of game implosion I stopped deleting graves. So I have a community cemetery in my hood but I don't visit. I do like the idea of it being a place teens sneak out to in the night to spook each other for a dare. I'm thinking of adding the Funeral Home to it but haven't got that far. That is a neat idea of selling grave stones and plots. That is something I like about this kind of hood. There are costs for living and dying. It makes it more realistic and not so easy to stock pile money away. In my hood every one wants a percentage of the salary a sim brings home. Government, Church, Businesses etc. It just keeps going which keeps the game fun.

I just started doing Random Occurrence Scenarios. I have 64 on my list and hope to add more. I get in a rut of playing the same way which in the end is boring so this adds spice in dull times. Like you said.

I agree Fran, mods are a wonderful help. I have plenty in my download folder.

I am keen on this subject too. I like that idea Jo. Self sustaining hood.

I use the stores to sell things that take time to make like; custom clothes, custom car, flower arranging, pottery wheel, homemade meals, garden vegetables & fruits, toy making, robot making, hair salon, custom family art portraits etc. They are owned by playable sims. So pretty much every household either has a business or a job with community services.

What do you do for the jobs for like the hospital and police station? I have specific skills / education required for each job and the sim acquires that as a young adult. Which in my hood the University for academics and College for vocational is in the main hood and on a residential lot so young adult is basically teen for my hood. Then when they are ready to work I have them work a specific job from the newspaper that I think is close to the job in the community. However, I use the teleporter to have meetings if the building is community or if the building is resident I just have the sim live in.

Fran I have 2 restaurants, one is fancy the other is hmm shady? ha ha. It is fun having somewhere to go outside of the home.

I should have also said sell decorative headstone. Never sell real tombs or urns and don't place them on OFB shelves either or you will make duplicates. Yeah, if you deleted tombs you shredded all those sims and they will be floating around your game. I'm hoping the hood checker will keep my hood going as I have no idea how the Dr's husband got glitched, but I couldn't click on his tab to open the FT perks or inventory without my game crashing, so I felt he would be safer as a ghost.

The building is the toilet block and hiding behind there is a uni shower, grill and invisible bench. The first time I tested the lot he made hot dogs and took the plate around to the above ground graves over there on the left and placed it inside! I deleted that after a townie did the same thing lol. There is a chess set on the other side of the grey lady statue.

Nearly every household in my hood owns a business as well.

I do have requirements for certain jobs for those upcoming sims, but I started it off with CAS sims who I set up with a back story, skills and money. Like the Dr was just a CAS sim and I gave her some skills and money and had her work her way up the medical career. They started off with a home business clinic and they now live at a small hospital. Her son also wants to be Dr and I would like him to study overseas. Part of what the sim will end up doing is to do with their motivation level which is something I got off lauratje86. (neatness points, plus active points minus playful points gives me a number I use to determine low achievers, average or gifted sims)The Dr and her son and younger child are all gifted overachievers while the twin sister is the only average sim in the house. Coming from a highly motivated family and being a twin I will send her off with him, but somehow I think her family is going to be disappointed when she doesn't want to be a DR. Families on the far end without much education mostly have NPC jobs like a maid or exterminator. I also have a homeless family and a hippie commune but they don't contribute much to the hood as such, more there for my amusement.

it's a very pleasant cemetery during the day, but it won't be quite so pleasant at night by the time I have numerous ghosts.

@ joeandsarah : How do you do a homeless family ? I was thinking of having a few of them in my Apocalypse hood. BTW, LOVE your cemetery !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm famous! :-D

Sorry, just had to put that - I'll come back and edit this post to talk about how I play my neighbourhoods (which is something I love doing!) when I've finished eating dinner :-)

yes I really need to figure out how to use the hood checker one of these days. I have SimPE on my computer but never use it since I am not the best for learning a new program and I fear of ruining something. I understood that you were speaking of decorative not real graves. Funny how there are so many ways to screw up the game. Good luck with the Dr's husband. I guess that is the safest thing to do is to kill him off.

Ha ha, the plates would have green smoke and flies after awhile. That would be funny to see around a grave tombstone. But yes, not convenient at all.

Hey Laura, yup, you are being talked about. In sims 2 you would be told your reputation is going up. Since you are here can you explain what Jo was talking about how to calculate overachiever?

I have in my hood jobs that need no education / courses / certificate / diploma / associate degree / bachelor degree / masters degree & phd I've thought out which job needs what education and skills but I still need to figure out how I decide what career a sim goes after.

I've had a hippie commune before too. It's really relaxed play. I have played the homeless challenge where the sim lives in a tent in a vacant out of town lot but can only have what he could carry in a backpack. So no putting down roots basically. Always on the move and goes to community lots to eat, wash up, etc.

I nicked and adapted the idea from Katya Stevens (who I expect is one of the people whose name Jo couldn't remember!) - her blog, with a list of the rules, regulations and calculations that she uses in her game, is here, and she explains how she calculates motivation here - there's lots of other interesting stuff on there too that you may like to read :-)

I have written up various bits of the rules, regulations and calculations that I use in various places, including a post with a bunch of links here and a thread about self-sufficient neighbourhoods here. Quite a lot of the threads I've started in the last couple of years are so are relevant to self-sufficient neighbourhoods, looking into certain aspects in more detail.

Jo started a thread about motivation levels here which both I and Katya posted in, so you may find it helpful :-) Lots of the threads that Jo and Katya have started also relate to self-sufficient 'hoods, so they may be worth a read :-)

One last thing: the rules/regulations/calculations that I play my 'hoods by/with are a constant work in progress - I make changes as I see fit, nick people's ideas, adapt them to fit my game and just generally change things whenever I like, if I have reason to! For example, I don't play with "motivation" any more, as I've changed it to "intelligence" and made a few alterations accordingly (changed/removed some of the limits on what sims with different motivation levels can do, for example), though I still calculate it the way Jo mentioned :-)

You are! And yes Katya Stevens was one of the names I was trying to remember. I wouldn't remember the numbers at the end of your user name, only that you have been posting lately.



There are a few homeless challenges around but this is basically my own way of doing it using Callista's homeless career. Some years ago over on Boolprop forums Callista wrote a homeless challenge and made a career to go with it which she called for testers on and I tested it. Everything works I found except for plantsims. After my tester turned into a plantsim he couldn't leave for work. You can find the career here on the new Boolprop forums as her other tester Lorin nicely re-uploaded it along with the challenge. http://boolprop.prophpbb.com/topic1878.html I use the career with my own rules. I have played it to callista's rules and believe me it's tough. Callista is one of those people that did the original Apocalypse challenge on her head so you know...
The way I play is to make a park with a grotty toilet/shower block. My sims can have anything that they could reasonably take home on a bus. Their fridge is an esky (cooler?) behind the amenity block, they sleep in a tent. They have the outdoor chess table to logic, a cracked mirror in the bathroom for charisma and a bongo drum for creativity. The job starts off at $10 per day and they have to work something like 12 hours at a time with a lot of skills and friends needed for promotion. The way I have it set is if they can save up $5,000 they can move onto my down on your luck hostel. (which I have uploaded here) When they moved a spouse in they had to come with only $100 so I took the rest of her money away. They are allowed no services.

Thank you Laura for all the links! I have a bunch of pages to read now since many of the posts had additional links. I downloaded your rules. I am excited to take a look.

Same to you Jo, thanks for the link to the homeless challenge. Neat idea having a career for it.

I'm off to read and read.

Update : Drats I don't have the right program to read your rules on my computer but I'm going to try emailing it to myself and then reading it through google. Hope that works.

Yup it worked...

Awesome and well thought out rules Laura. I like the idea of having a few families with titles. That is interesting. I typed some notes in my to do file since right now I can't even imagine attempting the politician part. Like having different parties and elections. Something I will want to do later. I do have a simple social standing that only comes into play with taxes. Poor pay 15% Middle Class pay 22% and the Rich pay 30% in addition to 1% property tax for residential and commercial, 10% goods and services tax [vehicles, furniture] 8% mortgage interest and 10% personal loan interest and property transfer tax of 1%. Also tons of fines / fees that the government ding us in real life for.

My poor poor sims.. hehe and that is the way I like it.

I have two political parties, the Llama Party and the Freezer Bunny Party. As you can see like all of my play it isn't too serious. I have Malcolm Landgraab (Llama Party) running against Mary-Sue Pleasant (Freezer Bunny party) I set both of them up equally and first to make Mayor/PM (Prime Minister as I'm Australian) will be the party who wins. So right now there is no PM but me. After this I plan to have some kind of voting system probably based on how many friends points the running sims have who are aged YA or older. I try and keep my rules simple so I can remember them.

I'm halfway through an election too. I came up with 5 political values based on what I could actually do in the game (like crime policy, if they elect someone who wants tough crime policy I'll build a prison, if they go for medium I'll make some actions fineable, if they go for no crime policy I'll just do nothing; and insularity, which will impact how often new sims are allowed to move into the town and what goods they can get in from the big wide world), picked out three sims who I thought would want to be mayor and decided where they stand on each political issue, and now I'm going through my sims as I play and working out their viewpoints too. Once I've figured out where everyone stands, I'll DO MATHS to work out who they'll vote for (not really, I'll pick the candidate who's closest to them on the most issues) and see who wins.

Sort-of.

In my canon, the town is close enough to SimCity to explain why there are relatively few services in situ. That said, there are a few small shops and a vibrant political scene; I have two major political parties, the Progress Party (centre-left) and the True Whig (centre-right), with two more up and coming parties: the Rastafari Democratic Front (comparable to a Christian Democrat party) and the People's Party for Liberation and Justice - a leftist party funded by those wicked RedNationals. Cold war tensions exist in my world between SimNation and RedNation and many of my sims are joining the military to serve (i like the idea of mandatory military service, although it's still volunteer right now): few of my sims will go career. There tends to be much career switching, with politics and education popular later choices (although some sims are career bureaucrats/party men).

Only one sim can be Mayor or Education Minister at a time. Other careers are more open, but I like to leave most sims at one level most of their careers, as it's a bit more realistic. I create head canon at least for anyone in certain fields - the specialties of doctors, types of restaurants for celebrity chefs, units and deployments for the military, etc. I find regular journal writing helps keep things fun, even if half of what is in the stories isn't exactly in game real... for instance, former sorority sister Brittany Upsnott, in my game, married an up-and-coming politician (from one of my political families) who is now Mayor (they are elders now). She is a celebrity chef and her backstory is that she's the power behind him, a typical empty suit politician whose primary goal is simply to get re-elected, as well as an Iron Chef on the Yummy channel, a successful restaurateur and like most celebrity chefs, sells ready-to-eat food - in her case, Uzbek fusion food. Because why not? I suppose while I could create her restaurant(s) and make custom food manti and plov, it doesn't seem worth the effort.

I have a tendency to take real things, but twist them in ways that are unreal/silly - be it how a large percentage of my townfolk are Rastafari while Christianity doesn't seem to exist except in passing reference, there is a "Little Bujumbura" (with many Central African restaurants) in SimCity instead of say, a Little Italy or Chinatown, or how SimNation can afford to staff and maintain exceptionally large armed forces, intelligence agencies, space programs, etc. when virtually no-one from my village, at least, works in any blue collar or standard economically useful job, like manufacturing or service industries (although I've tried to address this in canon)

I don't have a tax system simply because I presume, just like in real life, taxes are already taken out of the sims take-home salaries and having tax credits is one of the canonized incentives for sims to move/stay in my village. Most of my settled families have so much money they can buy anything they need/want, so there's little economy struggle - and I have them gift money to friends or relatives should the occasion demand.

Rich sims pay anywhere from 20-40% their family funds in taxes until they drop below 10grand.
Poor sims pay a flat 15% on their family funds unless they drop below 1grand.
Derelict sims pay no tax on their family funds but, if they own their house, they will be foreclosed on and forced to vacate the premises should they fail to provide payment of their bills.

Sims starting from $0 family funds are nearly non-existent to the government, unless said family has children. That's how I plan to manage my economy.

Then, when the baby-boom hits, I'll have my own version of the one-child policy (as is implemented in China) and I won't be as nice as they are. Muahahahahaha!!!

So inspiring all your ideas. Thanks for shairing


Jo I like this idea. A big part of being elected is based on the looks, charisma and networking of the politician so that makes sense to tally the friends points. As long as you give each sim equal opportunity to campaign.



Oooo I like that idea Nysha [also your name, very cool] I can see that through hobbies, interests, and friends [influence] it would be easy to figure out which way a sim would vote. Nabbing it for my plans.


Egswanso, I never thought about adding military to my career list or a base for such a thing. I'm going to now. Over sight on my part. That is interesting the idea of mandatory military. It is not for me since I'm into making a small hometown feel but a few military minded sims would be a good add. I really love your cultural hood. You have two nations? Can you explain that? Are they different species or all human? Did they separate at some point or were they always apart. I would like more info.

I have a bit of religion in my game. I have three categories. Religious, Agnostic & Atheist [lack of religion] I only have one church and it is united since that is the only church that I know of that accepts gay / lesbians and seems to be a bit more relaxed. However, with your post I'm thinking maybe of adding an eastern religion in like buddism. However, I would have to do a bit of research.



woah Sanypsia... Are you saying they pay that from their family funds yearly? Like so they continue to pay on funds they earned the year before and already paid taxes on? Wow, I thought I was tough on my sims lol. Although it is detail intensive the way I do it. It's like I'm a bookkeeper lol. I type down all funds they earn in the season and then have them pay their taxes on the earnings only. Your system is much easier. hmm..

Most of my sims are way too poor for measures like that. Until they drop below 10 grand? Wow I would only have a couple of families in that category, most of my sims stay around $500-$2.000 in pocket. Some of my sims are so poor they are worried about paying their bills. One of my recent sims was busking outside of his apartment as after paying his bill he couldn't even afford to feed his cat. Yeah dirt poor. This is probably why I never started taxing sims- there is hardly anyone to tax! Also I would forget, get things mixed up. I have them pay for things out of what they have and if they can't pay they don't have unless they take out a loan, but you have to own your own house at least to get a loan, not be renting. I'm about to start a second hand shop, so sims who want better things can give there old items to the Good will shop for a small amount and the shop sells things as very cheap.

I haven't been over to Malcolm's or Mary-Sue's house to check as I played them at the beginning of the rotation and I am now near the end of it. I have something like 30 households. I see Mary-Sue around town a lot but very rarely see Malcolm so it will be interesting to see how they have gone over the summer.

Ahhhh... True, I didn't think about the friendship points gained while not being played. Like when they are on community lots when you are playing a different sim.

How are your sims so poor? It's so easy to make heaps of money in game.

Yup! These sims pay taxes on funds they've already been taxed on. Call it cruel but meh, it's sim's world where everyone starts with 20k that can get them a piece of land free and clear with no permits. Why not? However, taxes are taken out at the end of each rotation similarly to the way it works in a BACC. So since my rotations last two weeks per family at the moment, I'm figuring they have a tax system under totalitarian government who requires intense and precautionary measures to keep the population under control. Hence the One-Child Policy I mentioned on my last post. The current "Mayor" (dictator) will be corrupt and desperate to maintain control. This is a crucial aspect of the war my sims will be going through in later generations of the story.. because I need motivation to understand, study and apply politics in my own way. Dun judge. x3 Also, I don't want my rich to stay rich for long because that's boring.

I should say that families with more than 10k are extremely difficult to find when I have a full neighborhood, and not because I tax the crap out of them. Mostly because I just like poor sims better than rich ones. Last time I had three, two of which were government entities and were therefore exempt from bills and the like. So on the rare occasions that it DOES happen, I have measures to control them. Or if I let my kid cousins play. They like motherlode, they like it a lot, and I'm too inclined to use the taxes to my advantage rather than just setting them back and having the money randomly poof.


The 15% that sims pay if they have over 1k on hand is a standard number, governed by the current leader of course, that bases 5% of the tax on family worth, 5% of the tax on family funds and 5% of the tax on familial income. I was thinking of tweaking it so that job levels themselves played a role (like entry level is a 2% tax, then level 2 is a 3% tax, etc) but the familial income works better for me. It's all incomes added together then divided by .05.

Rich sims are worth more. The bases for these guys is essentially doubled. 10% of the tax is based on family worth (or rather, what the family had onhand at the start of the rotation. I'm mean.) 10% of the tax is based on family funds at the end of the rotation and 5%+ of the tax is based on familial income, unless any sim in the family is level 6 in their career or above. In which case their value is doubled as a citizen and 5% doubles.

Currently no one is allowed to leave and mysterious "sources" claim the money is for a good cause.. Muahahaha!

(I sound like a dictator, but this is how I'm forcing myself to take an interest in politics. Again, dun judge. x3)

I guess it's to do with a number of mods + my rule set up. They often move out of home with about $200 to their name (no 20K handout) like David Ottomas did which is enough for a room at my grotty hostel. he then met Dagmar but they accidentally got pregnant... and had twins. They live in one room sharing a double bed while each one only has NPC jobs because neither has an education. if an NPC job isn't available they will be given social security until a job they can take comes up. That's $100 per week for SS. NPC jobs pays out about 50-$100 per day and they need to save $5,000 to move into the very cheapest council houses (uploaded here) Most of them as soon as they can afford it buy a bare piece of land and set up some kind of business which takes every bit of cash they have saved again. Some of those are allowed money perks and they will save enough for a decent house where upon they are usually poor again, but others won't be allowed money perks. My first bunch of uni students are about 3/4 way through, so things should be different for them. I also use halved wages and they are not allowed to dig. Who digs up treasure in their back yard? harder skilling means even painting takes a long time to get decent money from. The first painting is worth zero and the second one about $2.00. Plus harder grades means it's harder to get to uni to start with because it's harder to meet the requirements unless the parents are rich-but most aren't. So if the sim is low or average motivation they don't have a huge lot of hope to ever being wealthy because they probably wont meet uni requirements. Maybe a generation down the road things might be different.

Mod list that makes things harder:
No 20K handout
Halved wages
Slow skilling
Harder grades
There is also higher bills, but I don't use that as they would all be homeless!

Right now, RedNation and its eponymous capital, RedCity, exist as the unseen nemesis (RedCity is actually referenced by a few chance cards in the game) as opposed to a playable hood (although there's no reason it couldn't be added in the future as a sub-hood should I desire). I don't use different species (save a few aliens), so my RedNationals are human and Soviet analogs. If they were to make an appearance, I picture them with Russian names, all being blonde, wearing standard Marxist style clothes (such as PsychoSim's great leader uniforms), have lots of Soviet realist and propaganda pictures in their houses and hate . Others have well-developed stories regarding human-alien conflict, but that's not something I've done, although I considered it - and making segregated living sections, etc. In theory, at least, you could create a very segregated or racist sim society, but you'd have to do it manually (at least until everyone hated each other, than the negative interactions should come in free will) to "teach" them to be hateful.

Personally, at least, I like that any concept of religion is left to the player. This way, you can let one's own biases, etc. play out, so religion in your game could be positive, negative, or have little effect as opposed to having to play in a style that was uncomfortable.

In regards to money - well for me I always have people take out some sort of loan to get housing unless they appeal to the Housing Committee who may allow them not to have pay back any of their loan if they fall into a certain money branch.

For example - in my game the Broke family appealled to the housing committee for them to move once Kenndey Grove (Brandi's man) moved in as their place had been small. Brandi took out a loan despite having big credit history (helloo..last name), but because she fell into a certain money branch, she doesn't have to pay her loan back. Lucky Her!

In my hood, every sim has a loan jar. Every student on top of the money they get if they make the Dean's list and for completing the semesters, they still have to take out some sort of loan because they get bills everyday (I think - its been so long since I've had the mod in that I've forgotten) and they need to pay that and pay tuition as well. Then once they get out into the real world, they have pay back a portion of their loans from their work money as well as bills and everyday life.

For example - Jane Stacks who just recently graduated and is looking for a job is broke after renting an apartment (with another loan); she is currently sitting on 6,000 + interest worth of debt, and has no means of paying it back...at the moment hopefully

I try to set a deadline for when the whole debt must be paid, for the majority I try to get their debts sorted out before their reach elderhood. However, there are some elders that continue to work simply to try and pay off their debts before they die. I also have this rule that debts can get passed around in the family, so should an elder who has debts to pay off die before finishing to pay it off then that debt gets passed down to the children or grandchildren.

Another thing to note also is that depending on the kind of sims within that family depends on who will be responsible for paying off that debt, it could be split between all the children of that elder sim (and depending on the children's salaries - that will play a part in who contributes how much to paying off the debt) or maybe the eldest child may take that responsiability. It varies between each family.

In regards to the actual OP's question, I don't have detailed aspects of an intergrated hood just yet. There are some:

For example - Pleasantview has a state hospital, Don Lothario, Daisy Dreamer and Kaylynn Pleasant (before she decided to quit due to her pending second baby being due) all work at this hospital (I haven't actually made a building or anything like that but it is in my plans for one day). Don's a doctor (the only one at the moment, though that might change of course) and Daisy and Kaylynn are/were midwives.

Another example - The 'Simtastic' Magazine company which also owns the small neighbourhood magazine 'The Pleasantview Review' is where both Darren Dreamer and Kennedy Grove work, although Kennedy is a author his editor who happens to own the company itself has hired him to write part time at the magazine as well. So that's how Kennedy and Darren met (in my head).

The problem for me is that I'm not a good builder! If I could build, I would actually have a hospital and an actual magazine office and I'm thinking about maybe having Pleasantview has its very own 'radio station' - but I don't know whether there is a career on here for one. Then I would build a radio tower...again if only I could build or had the talent.

EDIT: I could use the radio station as way for the folks of pleasantview to get up to date of the latest drama.

I was going to introduce political parties in my hood...but Mary-Sue died and since then no one has really given me that indication that they would run for mayor...hmmm....maybe not right now anyways. Never know what the future generation holds.

Today I played the last two days rotation at my ministers house. His younger two teen sons were due to go to uni, so I decided to try out the uni in the main hood https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=515762 on them. The eldest I changed into a YA who will do one term from home and one term from Takemizu Village.
I then sent the four of them off to a Tuesday church service. The preacher career has him working on a Sunday. He preaches from a pulpit while all the parishioners go up on stage to look at the deco or stand watch him instead of using the pews. It was good to see both political parties turn up. They then played some Myshuno/sim bingo (idea off Jessa's let's play) had a meal and left just in time for the elder son's first uni class. I thought it started at 6.. it ended at 6! Luckily community lot time got them back for about 5.30 and he rushed off. The community college is only a block away. I then set the younger son to an independent teen, moved him out and aged him back to regular teen. He's adopted in and only a year younger. I set the cut scene to play on move in to the community college and it worked perfectly. Only my print screen took a black page and FRAPS won't work on them, so I got no pictures. His mum came and was horrified by the streaker. The amusing thing was he grew up into a kimino, but it's his older brother going overseas. Maybe he wants to as well.

I don't do anything as planned-out as the Build a City Challenge, but I try for realism. People can only have jobs that would be available in their community; there's only one mayor, one police chief, and so on. Most of the population is involved in farming of some kind or another. I have a military which all males must join, at least for one season; in addition to the 'militia', which is infantry, I have the cavalry, for military careerists; aspiring Generals will use the Knighthood career until they hit 40 or so, then switch over to the Military career. I used to have two or three police officers who were answerable to a police chief, but recently I've gotten rid of the bureaucratic feeling of my police department and replaced it with an old-west style sheriff. More swagger, more fun.

There is a 'city government' which exists largely in my head, and its actions -- based on what I think these sims might do in the positions of Master of Education, or General of the Army, or Urban Planner -- alter how I play the game. For instance, once I had a mayor who decided that "unschooling" should be an option, so school was made optional for teenagers. (This mayor was a staunch libertarian, which meant his administration was marked by his not doing anything other than reducing the power of his own office. Improbable in the extreme, but nice to think on.) The top of the Law profession, which the game calls The Law, I think of as 'Chief Justice', and in my head they're responsible for issuing marriage certifications. If the justice doesn't want a couple to be wed, they can't get married. So far that's only applied toward gay marriages -- some chief justices allow them and some don't. I keep track of the people who are in city government, and when one retires another person is appointed. In this area I'm probably influenced by having played SimCity 3000 so much, or games like Pharaoh. I can't just have a mayor, no, no - he has to have advisors.

Because my city is post-industrial, or post-apocalyptic -- it is set a hundred or so years after the world ran out of oil -- the neighborhood has the feeling of a mid-19th century town. Half the population is in agriculture, with mechanics mixed in between them. Everybody grows their own food, and the farmers bring their goods to the "market", which in-game is a grocery/dry goods/general store with a paved plaza in front, with stalls for people to put their wares in. There's a road running behind the store where a truck laden with groceries is parked. In my mind the local farms bring goods to the store early in the mornings.

I use a LOT of custom careers to reflect my attempt at realism (as "real" as you can be, when you have "knights" who wear American Civil War uniforms), so I have a barber and quite a few washer-women.