In February 2008 I started to built a third The Sims 2 urban town, this time by using University Expansion Pack. I downloaded few user-made maps and choose to use StarlingSprings map because is a medium-sized, flat neighborhood, with dense and regulated street network, plus a river that split the map in two asymmetric zones (the map can be downloaded from modthesims.info or gethanesims.prismbaby.com).
By default, The Sims 2 allow you to built up to 5 levels. This means houses like basement + 3 floors + roof or terrace. You can eliminate the basement, or built an underground floor inside basement. There is a TRICK that allow building 6 levels: put a dormer on the highest level, but this will not allow anymore stepped roofs taller than one floor.
University Expansion Pack allows to change the floor limit: press Ctrl+Shift+C when you are in Neighborhood (NOT in a lot), type sethighestallowedlevel 16 (or any number up to 255), then open any lot and you can built more levels. If the height limit was reached, just put a dormer to unlock the limit.
From 2006 got idea to practice my architecture and urban planning talent in The Sims 2, to build a big town from scratch, with high-density apartment-like buildings. The Sims 2 Apartment Life was not launched that times.
I planned several building prototypes, the first ideas was to built functional and nice shaped apartment buildings, only one row at street, and only 1-2 buildings in a lot. But later I choose smaller and more non-functional blocks, simple and cubist blocks without balconies or other decorations, and copy same lots again and again, for time economy.
I built 3 urban-style cities, IslaSegundo (2006), PleasantView (2007), StarlingSprings (2008).
Now, with everything standardized, in November 2006 I started to build my first The Sims 2 urban town. I used IslaSegundo because it is the biggest map available in game, but after one week I abandoned the work because the city became too big, had too many lots and buildings, caused the game to run too slowly and even to crash (I had a crappy computer too, 512 MB RAM).
In April 2007 I decided to start another The Sims 2 urban town, this time I choose Pleasantview because is a small and flat neighborhood with nice street network, also it is the single Maxis-made map with streets enough closer to have no non-buildable tiles.