Help with optimizing city layout?

[tikicult]

My wife and I have been slowly building up our Lego city, and we are having problems optimizing the layout to include all the things that we want. Here are some pictures and some of our ideas about what we want to include. Maybe some of you guys can help us re-arrange or come up with a more creative layout.

Picture #1: This area shows the mountain/mine and an incomplete street. In the lower left corner, there is empty, unused space behind the buildings and the train station. I am fairly happy with the mountain as it acts as tunnel for the train, and will eventually support some winter village buildings on top of it. The empty area and the shared grassy lawn around the tower could use some work. We also have two more creator houses to add somewhere (family and hillside) (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/2FRcrD7.jpg)

Picture #2: This shows the same area as #1, but looking from the other direction. Below the mountain is our wilderness/outdoorsy type area. Also, the beach is in the lower left of the pic. Our residential area can be seen in the lower right. I was considering removing the street here and expanding the grassy area to make it feel more open. This also allows for a larger beach. My wife loves the beach and she worked hard on it. I would like her to have some room to add more to it. We're fairly non-creative people, which is why we only have the creator houses and not many MOCs. The road in the bottom right also has a whole strip of unused space on the opposite side of the houses. (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/7GI3y8b.jpg)

Picture #3: Continuing around the table, this shows the airport/spaceport. (Ignore the random Heartlake HS on the runway, I put it there temporarily and forgot to move it for the picture) Again, I am fairly happy with this section. I felt really good after I was able to mod the parking garage to fit into a 32x32 section. This made room for my spaceport. (The safety issues of having a rocket launch next to public parking can be saved for another discussion, haha) (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/eRgMHug.jpg)

Picture #4: This leads us to the section of town that we are most unhappy with and have no idea what to. Originally, this was meant to be a downtown/plaza area. However, the train tracks take up so much space, that its hard to fit things in here. There is also the problem of the wasted space behind the tracks and the train station. We thought maybe the haunted house would look cool being on the "wrong side of the tracks" but it ended up looking silly. We also have a variety of city buildings (seen on the far left) that we can place, but again its hard to fit them in. My wife also thinks that the grassy area around the tower can be better utilized. She really liked the idea of running the tracks through the tower. We also do not have enough baseplates yet, so that doesn't really help things either. (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/SwQoG3m.jpg)

Picture #5: Here is the current layout in plan view. Each square is the size of a 32x32 baseplate. (Table was built exactly to this size)

Some other issues:

Is our layout too small for a train? Is it worth losing space for it, or do we just need to change things up?

How can we add a monorail? I'd love to have it go to the airport, and preferably in a full loop.

Modulars are completely out, we cannot afford them and we will (unfortunately) not be purchasing them. So, no need to plan for those.

Should we make the table bigger? I have space to add another 3 baseplate wide section on one side of the table.

Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide. Like I said earlier, we're not that creative and this is the best we have been able to come up with after many iterations and complete teardowns. I just feel that there is a better way to build it up.

[Hobbythom]

Hi Tikicult!

If I were you I'd arrange the buildings you have left along the edge of the grey baseplates. This automaticly creates a small plaza in front og the buildings. Would it be possible to place the grey baseplate with the small road in such a way that it leads to another (small) track crossing? This could be a route to the haunted house, which I like 'on the wrong side of the tracks'.

Good luck and do share your progress!

[glendo]

the beauty of lego is that you can break it down and start again.... experiment with different options to see what's best for you. Anything goes, jump in and mix it up.

[Xyver]

Looks good so far, it always helps when you have a custom made table, that fits baseplate size exactly.

I agree with Hobbythorn. Switch the empty grey baseplates over so that the road is in the centre and put the spare shops on them creating a mall. Then continue the laneway over the track, then place the Haunted House in the corner of the layout (hopefully it fits) and build a track between it and the laneway.

This should give you a nice row of shops between the airport and the train station, with the HH on the 'wrong' side of the tracks.

Trains do take up a lot of space on any layout, and are very hard to work around, especially for smaller ones. The option I went for is to build a raised platform over my main table and put a subway in. The city centre sits atop the subway, the train then comes out from the tunnel into the suburbs. Probably not necessary for you just yet, but if you do ever manage to afford the modulars, it is a space saver.

[Dat Lego]

I would go and say that you're table is fit for a train. However this means you will not have much space for the monorail. My table is approximately half the size of your table and I can't fit a monorail.

[dignow]

I don't have any specific advice but in a general sense I've got something that might help. We use a little piece of donationware called BlueBrick to plan out our city's layout. It has a library of parts, base plates, even folding tables that can help you plan out the best configuration for the space you've got. Once we've got the general layout done in BlueBrick we take that and throw it into MS Publisher to add in shapes and names. I've tried to add some pictures to show you what you'll get out of BlueBrick and then what we do with it but despite the images being .jpg and .png I can't seem to get them uploaded. Anyways, if you want to see an older layout file and the most recent you can see them here. Hope that's helpful.

[tikicult]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The current layout is probably the 4th or 5th iteration, and I think we're slowly getting to where we want to be. Moving the grey baseplates and road is a good idea, that will give us the plaza area that we want. Also, having the bluebrick software looks like it will help immensely. I was doing all my planning just by doing it physically. Having a program will be much faster. I also think I'm gonna have to give up on he monorail idea too, there is no where that it would look good.

[rockethead26]

tikicult,

I don't have any suggestions for your layout as we are now just starting to build our own. I did want to show you an example of what you can do on BlueBrick. Our layout will be about 5'x8.5'. I'm sure this will be changed a zillion times, but it gives us a starting point. I already have to move my Evil Lair position since I just started building it in LDD and it needs to rotate 90°. Here's a pic of our BlueBrick layout. Have fun. We are planning on having 3 trains on the set, Maersk, the Horizon Express and the new Cargo Train.

Edited July 4, 2014 by rockethead26

[lightningtiger]

Might I suggest that the space port be located far from the city centre.

[Laphroag]

My very personal opinion is that the tower does not fit in with your city. To me it just looks awkward due to it's size compared to the rest of your buildings. But I do understand that you want it there since it's a great (and currently highly valued) building. Have you tried a set-up without it?

[melbs]

Keep the eiffel, but don't let a train run underneath it, likewise keep all buildings free from its immediate base.

If you want to keep it center of your city then move all buildings from a road plate away and start lining them up similar to the real parisian urban plan.

[The Jersey Brick Guy]

Off topic, will blue brick work on a Mac?