How to go about about designing a town map without being overly symmetrical

I’m trying to create a smallish town, that will have around 16-24 plots for players, however I am having trouble allowing myself to escape the ‘symmetrical’ building style. I know most games do this



for their plots (Adopt Me, Meep City, to name a few) but I want something more natural. Is it just me or does this look odd? Escpecially if I plan on adding a town, would having one side of the map dedicated to plots be unnatural? Ultimarely, I’d like plots to be placed around, in groups of 3-4, but not all in these long grid lines.

This is what I wanna go for. Winding roads, natural looking.
image
However, what I currently have is (called ‘Tract Housing’ in the real world) feels stiff
image
image
Basically everything in line looks ‘bad’ I guess, to my eyes atleast. It doesn’t feel creative, just a ploy to smoosh as much close together as possible. Problem arises tho as my plots are 50x50, so they need all be put on a straight vertice atleast, which means curve can’t be done :////

So do any builders have tips on how to branch out from a symmetrical/straight building design?

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I use references from Google. I used to also have this type of problem when it comes to building. I suggest learning from Google images (like you are doing), but instead search for something low poly.
Get inspiration from these images, but don’t completely copy them.

You could actually do longer roads for larger curves which can fit the 50x50 plots.

I’ll say this I tried to do a town non symmetric one time roads are a pain. There is a plug-in that’s let’s you do curved road I just never used it, so to compensate I made offset buildings, so place a building and then do the roads around them rather then roads first you will then see that the road structure is not a straight line.

If you are going for much more realistic urban design you need to first direct yourself to a region which you’ll use as an inspiration for your design. Western cities are much more gridded, lack roundabouts and are generally what you’ve created while european cities feature more curves because of the uneven terrain in most places and due to how the city expanded in the past with the very loose regulations that were in place. Consider your style and theme, if you’re going for more cartoony and simplistic style you won’t benefit much from curving your roads however a much more realistic city will definetly benefit from it.

Now away from my urban design rambling if you still want to create a realistic curving then try to use archimedes to create curved roads. Here’s an example of what I’ve managed to get done in 30 seconds.

Here’s the link to the plugin:

It can be overwhelming to take on this kind of task. I find using Google Maps helps me get a better understanding of large layouts. If you stick to large cities, you’ll be able to view maps, satellite, street, and 3D view! Small towns usually lack 3D view and high res satellite. You can still use one neighborhood or block from a city in a small town map. Cities and towns have similar zoning (residential, commercial, industrial, etc).

I use Denver because I’m familiar with the city and you can find all kinds of neighborhoods. Closer to downtown there are 1800’s neighborhoods. Farther south (Centennial) mansions and modern tract houses. West (Lakewood) are 1970’s neighborhoods. Most North American cities will work for this.

Here’s an example of a small town street where the houses are pretty nicely spaced I think.

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Depends totally on what you’re looking for,

European cities spread from the center and have a more “circular” design, roads have been built and formed before cars even existed in Europe; so the shape is not necessarily optimized for car traffic but for getting from point A to point B in the most efficient way on foot.

While the opposite thing has to be said for U.S. towns, where most of the building has been done after increased usage of carts & cars and trains.

The difference can be seen below (pay attention to road width size);

Now symmetrically planning out a city isn’t always the best thing as getting from lets say,
a house to a house 5kms away, is the same as going from a house to a hospital 5kms away;
but positioning a main road leading straightly to the hospital instead of having a general grid system gets you faster to the “designated important point”.

Hopefully, I helped you out a 'lil and didn’t make this too confusing.

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