(I apologize if there is already a thread like this and I simply missed it.)

What themed neighborhoods have you tried? What was your best, weirdest, worst, or most frequent one (and why)? What one(s) do you want to try but haven't yet (and why)?

Tie for Best and Most Frequent: Beach or tropical neighborhoods. There's something about a modern house with a coastal view that is very inviting to me. Bamboo, palm trees, and other lush vegetation everywhere. You can almost feel the warm, salty breeze as it makes a sheer white curtain dance next to an open window on a second-story patio overlooking the sea. I guess because it is my preference, it leads me to put a lot of effort into it.

Worst: Mountain. Worst because it simply didn't live up to its potential. In terms of advanced CC and game features, it just wasn't the right time to attempt it (it was around the time of the first EP). The vast number of trees necessary to make for a thick mountain forest limited the number of lots. The lots I did have looked the part with an woodsy, rustic charm. The hood just never went anywhere. Now, I could probably start over and make it really look like lumberjack territory...I just haven't had the desire to try it again.

Weirdest: Ancient Greek smoothie of WTF. I had a neighborhood that was like the episode of Star Trek "Who Mourns for Adonais?" in which the Greek gods were real (er, actually super-humanoids infused with the power of hacked objects and InSim ) living in a strange mash-up of ancient Greece and a typical residential area with all the conveniences of modern phones, mailboxes, television, etc. There were mythical creatures, murder, scandal and an army of Servos training for battle. It was actually kind of fun in its own goofy, seemingly random way. The more I deviated from a strict adherence to Greek mythology, the more fun and wacky it got. It was a weird idea that I decided to run with and enjoyed until it was lost in computer crash. Seeing a satyr getting his morning paper before rocking out to a MP3 player was totally worth it.

HTYBWT (Haven't Tried Yet But Want To):

• Shipwrecked - I think it would interesting to make my Sims live off the land on a tropical island.
• Post-Apocalyptic - I could combine my love for the coast with the golden glory of yesteryear lost. The peeling palm tree wallpaper and stained, cracked stucco of the buildings still stand as an old radio crackles out a Big Band tune from the golden age of a different era.
• Desert - I only play with the Lush ground type. The appearance of a dusty desert makes me very thirsty (only a psychological effect, I know, but very effective). Even though I don't play Strangetown or La Fiesta Tech, they do seem like they would be interested to play. Warm, sunny days and cool nights with a sky filled with stars...with either Southwestern or modern architecture. There will be plenty of pools to combat the heat.
• City - The vast amount of concrete with the concrete ground type looks odd to me, even for an urban city. This is the least of my list, but some pictures I've seen look really good. My Sims like their privacy, but it may be interesting to have a cityscape to look at through my Sims' windows. Back alleys zig-zag through fleshed-out city blocks leading to seedy places where only Sims with high body skill dare venture...

What about everyone else? I know there are some that people tend to do (like medieval hoods), but I know there are other abnormal themes out there.

There is an earlier thread here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=331283
I'm linking for interest but not merging the threads, since MSD's questions are broader with more detailed examples.

I use all of plasticbox's fabulous neighborhoods in my game, so I can't take credit for the desert (Baskerville) and fishing village (Elsewhere) themes they've added.

For neighborhoods of my own design:
* I have an artsy/craftsy seaside subhood called "Tinker by the Sea," inspired by Monterey/Carmel/Sausalito. The quilting and pottery options from Freetime really made this hood. I just wish Sims could surf.
* My elves live in a more pastoral/medievalish subhood called "Erewhon." They're not allowed to have Maxis careers and they make their money through farming, crafting, or magic (only elves can have money trees). Lots of tudor-style houses and farms.
* My downtown (assembled from plasticbox's Backdoor Lane series) is more like the older, industrial area of a city. I use the EAxis skyscraper deco on a distant part of the terrain, so it ("the financial district") can be seen from some lots, but not as part of the neighborhood overview. Those buildings just seem too oversized to incorporate next to the two-story structures typical in my game.
* And my Uni! I'm really fondest of this because the EAxis neighborhood deco (the dinosaur bones, the pennants, the gates, the red brick alleys that came with AL) melded perfectly with the dorms and community lots I selected to make a cheerful, nicer-than-reality private liberal arts college. Every time I look at this subhood, I wish TS2 had an open neighborhood so I could take my Sims walking across the (purely decorative) quad.

Best: My Harry Potter themed neighborhood. I absolutely love it and I play it all the time. But it's kind of morphed to more of an old-style wizard neighborhood.

Most Frequent: A "normal" style neighborhood. But usually it never turns out right.

Worst: Oh, gosh. The list could go on and on. Okay...
1. I tried a futuristic Uglies-style neighborhood and it failed once I got past the building, since I couldn't figure out how to separate the kids from their parents.
2. A city. I agree, the concrete looks TERRIBLE.
3. A desert neighborhood. I didn't really know what to put in it, or what styles.

Weirdest: When I had first gotten Sims 2, my best friend had written this short story about these superheroes, so I made them in Sims 2, and put them in my neighborhood. Then I eventually made their "headquarters" in another subhood. It was a fun group of people to play, but immensely weird.

HTYBWT: A mountain area - that is, as an actual neighborhood. I've made mountain vacation areas all the time.

I have one main hood - Volcano Falls - with several sub "Downtown" ones. The main neighbourhood itself is virtually empty as I was new to the Sims and downloaded what I thought at the time was the best of the default terrains. But then I went on to discover better custom ones, so made those "downtowns" (even though in theme they are not downtown in the traditional sense).

So I have Lava City Centre, which is a Miami-style beachy modern hood, with lots of clubs on one side of the island and modern residences on the other. The residents are mostly sporty sims as I've moved a lot of my arty/muso sims to my urban downtown, Climax City. Climax city was built on an urban gridded terrain I got here on MTS which worked extremely well. I've really enjoyed decking out that hood with Soho type brownstone housing, dingy nightclubs and apartment blocks, and got a lot of custom towers here which make the panorama much more authentic. I suppose the fact I live in the City in real life has made me probably the most creative with this hood.

My third hood is a typical countryside (with lakes) - again a custom terrain which I really liked. I was thinking more of Costa Rica when building this hood, as it's lush. Many of my sims with kids have moved there and all of my nature hobbyists and farmers live there.

I've recently started a couple of new subhoods - one is like the Fairview one in Desperate Housewives, which is slightly quaint, and the other is a beachy terrain full of windswept beach lots, which is empty of residents at the moment.

I probably spend 40% of my simming time arranging my hoods, another 50% building lots and probably only 10% actual playing my sim families!

I've yet to do dirt or desert terrains as just not interested. Much prefer the lush type. However if I ever do an Egyptian style hood I'll use the desert one.

I guess I'm quite boring, most of my neighbourhoods are themed around various countries/cultures, and obvious ones at that.

My Swedish 'hood is full of Ikea and H&M stuff, very minimalistic and hip, with glassy/boxy homes and some odd stuff like modern treeshouses. I do this one quite often, it's funny really because I live in Sweden and it isn't really anything like that, but before I moved here I had this image of how it would be and I can't seem to shake it off Sims in this hood are usually out going types, I have a roller rink (from fairywitchsims), several hip restaurants/diners, nightclubs, and so on, which I make maximum use of.

I have an Asian-themed 'hood with a lot of secluded beach lots with 1-storey villas, and further inland I have a bunch of pagodas made into apartments. There are a lot of one-storey buildings scattered around too. I tend to make the homes set back from the road, with stone paths leading up to them surrounded by trees, to give them a kind of secluded feel. I really like that in this neighbourhood my homes feel very open, because they are so isolated, like you'd feel comfortable sleeping on a mat outside on the deck in the evening dusk. I've actually been working on some custom meshes of various Torii for this 'hood, particularly the Itsukushima Torii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I...aTorii7396.jpg). In this hood my Sims tend to be more laid back types, I usually focus on painting/crafting and my sims don't really get involved in any drama.

My current favourite 'hood is a desertish themed hood, I really hate the default desert terrain so I created a bunch of empty lots and covered them in sand and a couple palm trees here and there to try and break it up a bit. The homes are usually sandstone or light brick, with large roof terraces. It's always summer in this hood. I had fun dressing my sims, no jeans or coats for them, it's all long flowing dresses and loose shirts. I keep meaning to look and see if anyone has created headscarf-type CC. This 'hood was meant to have a lower population than most of my hoods, instead of having a ton of people like I usually do I opted for a smaller community where everyone knows each other pretty well. I have a couple of small casual cafes and a bazaar type market where I have a bunch of different stalls selling various things, like jewellry, artwork, spices (used CC for this), and so on. To keep with the 'desert' feel I have most the buildings fairly close together on one side of the map, with a long expanse of empty space, and then a couple of lots out there on there own for my hermits. I also recoloured some tents to make them look like they were made from more natural materials than the plastic-y looks of the default textures, for my nomad families to live in. This hood is fun because I allow the men to take multiple 'wives'. Okay so they're not officially wives according to the game, I basically just make them fall in love and then get her pregnant. So each guy ends up with a bunch of different children by different mothers (obviously jealousy is turned off). Usually I let the oldest child inherit the family estate, and then all the other children must shove off. However, sometimes I let one of the younger sons stage a coup, if the younger sim has no points in niceness and is really successful and the older sim is a loser. Then I will just kill the older sim off :D

Worst hood idea: I tried to make a 'realistic' medieval hood, which meant no plumbing and no electricity. So my sims were constantly going around peeing everywhere (I built special shacks that I'd send them to go stand in when they were about to pee) and smelling awful, which made them all dislike each other and spend the entire time complaining. Obviously the slob sims were the ones that thrived D: I wish it had worked out but in the end I got too tired of the sims crying at me ><

Most Frequent
I usually have only one NH, on the lush terrain type. I try to make a normal old city, with old, even medieval areas in the centre, some suburds with traditional style houses, and some area occupied by modern architecture. However, I am never completely satisfied of the result. I combine all these styles in the main hood, vacation subhoods being the only subhoods I add (just don't want to have additional crowds of NPCs and playable sims hang around). So, I have difficulties separating the areas with different architecture styles. I usually use Belladonna Cove template, flattened with the help of ModifyNeighborhoodTerrain Cheat, so I have a lot of place where to build, but just can't make my city perfectly organized.
Worst
I tried to make sth desent out of pleasanview and failed, it is better for me to start from scratch than to give a makeover to already existing 'hoods.
Never tried but want to:
"hoods on concrete and dirt templates (dirt seems to be the least fave template among simmers, but, well, maybe I'll experiment with it once I get bored with the lush 'hood.

Most frequent: Any anime-based themed. I currently have InuYasha, Naruto, and FMA running.

Worst: Ancient Egyptian. Never turned out right.

Want to try: A medieval hood and maybe a late 19th early-20th century Russian village. (Kind of like Anatevka from Fiddler on the Roof.)

Most frequent i would say is modern/urban. I loved plasticboxes middle ground. I never added subhoods to my game because I like everything happening in the main hood, uni/shopping/downtown were all integrated.

Worst:
1. Big hoods. I could never fill them up. After seeing how big hoods never looked right (pleasentview for example), I always chose small hoods, they look nicer and are easier to control.
2. City: just like mangaroo stated, its hard combining the over-sized EA deco with your own smaller buildings. so my cities always kind of failed, even when using smaller templates.

Current: My current hood is a small English village type of hood, called St. Mary Mead. The terrain is mountain, lush and forestry.

I love small English villages and shows about them. The Miss Marple show with Joan Hickson is the best as well as the Midsomer Murders series, the whole gossiping while having tea is the atmosphere that I try to achieve from my town. My current town is still very much in the working as you couldn't properly modify a hood in TS3 before ambition came out and I only have played with ambition for a few days. I also still have not moved all the residents from the old hood (Riverview) into the new one, so most still live in the simbim, waiting to be relocated into the new hood.

Ive always been a one hood at a time person. Never played several hoods at once, I like having all my attention concentrated on one hood at a time. But currently, I do have two hoods. The new one and the old Riverview which currently has only two households. I need to finish up their stories in Riverview before I can move them to the new hood, so that's why they are still pending.

HTYBWT: Medieval, but will most likely never do this for the reason that I like playing and concentrating on one hood only.

HTAWNT (Haven't Tried and will Not try): Desert, Miami type, new Orleans type. I don't like hot and sweaty weather. I like cold, pine trees, rain, snow, mountains and that kind of things. I also don't find the appeal in doing futuristic, or historic hoods (except medieval). I like maxis stuff and don't like the idea of having to download tons and tons of CC just to make the hood look more original to its times. I like CC but in moderation.

To the OP: nice thread, love reading all the comments.

I started at some point a farming hood, where all residents were supposed to grow their own veggies etc. but then I got bored with all 1001 hoods I had at the moment so I deleted it. I do want to do it again at some point. I also have a medieval hood, although I haven't played it in months but at some point I'll go back there. I have alot of medieval cc for the hood. I also started collecting Victorian cc for hood of that era, but haven't started one yet.

I have a medieval hood on "hold" right now, just waiting patiently for my attention-but mostly I'm playing my "derelict and depressed" hoods of Duma Key, Pleasantview Gothic, and Merged Pleasantview. I think I have ADHD, because I can never concentrate on just one hood at a time.
I do a lot of editing of my hoods so that they're small and playable, but it's hard fitting 40+ families into a small space. It's also hard to find terrain that isn't so huge that it overwhelms me.
Someday I will find the absolutely "right" sized terrain to fit my style. Until then I'm going to use small islands.

Best: At the moment? Crystal Springs, a legacy neighborhood of mine.

Worst: The West Lands, a failed farmer neighborhood. Nerzac a failed Kingdom. Island Dream, my first custom neighborhood.

Weirdest: Nerzac, already mentioned. I was attempting to play the Royal Kingdom challenge, and it just didn't work out.

Want to make: A city. A real city with sky scrapers, Parks and cafe's, the whole sha-bang.

Best: I'm modeling my university town as sort of a loving tribute. I'm hoping to set a story there once it's finished.

Most Frequent: Adlerton, a rural community dominated by trailer parks. A motorcycle gang operating from a local bar uses the town as their base of operations, and the gang taxes some lots (specially the Apartment-style trailer parks) to pay for their "protective services". The majority of Adlerton's occupants are "working class", so I limit the careers and promotions they get. Most people listen to country music, and there's no university lot yet.

Worst: My normal hoods always wind up sporting witches, aliens, vampires, and the like.

Weirdest: Strangetown is my catchall for weird variants. I have a cult, a failed commune, aliens-in-hiding, and a houseful of stranded Starfleet officers trying to find their way home.

HTYBWT:
1. A "retro" hood set during America's 50s or 60s.
2. A large-scale cult that runs the entire town instead of a lot or two.
3. A fantasy neighborhood with witches acting as royalty and fighting evil vampires/werewolves.

Best: I have a couple of inner-city style hoods, which I adore. Also, really enjoy making 'traditional' hoods with Georgian through to Edwardian style buildings - a real mixture of classic architecture and modern lifestyles. Ditto Japanese and eastern style hoods. I have so much custom content to make them perfect.

Worst: I tried to do a medieval style kingdom hood, based on a challenge theme to do with a Royal Kingdom or something. I gave up in the end. It just didn't work.

Weirdest: I'm not sure. Some of my hoods end up a real messy mishmash of styles and themes with lots of modern cubist style properties alongside Tudor manors etc. I don't like it when that happens, yet unless I am determined and focused on a theme, it can/will happen in any hood. I tried a mountain themed one before and that didn't really work either - building on the un-level plots was a right pain.

Want to make: Erm. I don't tend to play with the supernatural characters but I think a vampire focused hood would be interesting - very dark...

Best: the "old downtown": basically, it's like the old centre of the main city, which got kinda abandoned after the built of the new one. Buildings and houses are almost destroyed, there's a lot of dirt everywhere, an old station and a hotel for... ehr... "love encounters". However, there's a little part of the city, situated on the other side of the bridge that divides the neighborhood, which is still famous for its nice restaurants and its park.
The majority of the place is still under construction in my game, but I love how it's turning out.

Worst: my "western" neighborhood. It was an epic fail D: I wanted to do one of those towns with saloons, cowboys, indians and so on... but I never liked how it was turning out, actually I abandoned the project after failing at building the first house

Weirdest: meh, probably the "hippie" University. It was supposed to be a multicoloured place, with strange constructions and so on, but I lost everything after a computer crash and never made it again.

Want to make:
-A huge city. I want to buy Apartment Life before working on it, though D:
-A decent western neighborhood.
-A neighborhood fully made by me. I use pre-made lots or downloaded houses and build stuff by myself only when I can't really find anything that fits... I'd love to work on every single building, for once.

There might have been a thread like this a while back, but I don't remember.

What kinds of neighborhoods do you make and why? Are they themed?

I have an InuYasha neighborhood, a Naruto neighborhood, an FMA neighborhood, and one for making videos. (this is one of them if anyone's interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia9GHJJDX2Y )

I've also been thinking of making one with very strict and well thought out rules because my playing very much "You want this? Okay."

Enough of me. What about you guys?

I won't type out a whole new post since I've already commented, but I'm going to make a new neighborhood like a square, but with a smaller square in each corner. And in each square there will be a cluster of supernatural sims. The ones I'm planning on using is Vampires, Plantsims, Witches, and Werewolves. (The easiest to make ) Different styles of architecture for each one, and they will be living like Maxis intended them to. Although I intend on downloading CC skin too.

Also, I have another neighborhood. It's got multicolored sims (literally, multicolored), each like a new species, and each color has a different personality. They're all bald and all aliens. I haven't gotten around to playing them, but it'll be interesting, I think, usually I play fairly normall. I've already made the townies. And a few houses. I've got a sort of modern district, a steampunk district (which has really cool houses, very fun to build) and a city (apartments).

Wow. You guys come up with some interesting themes and gameplay ideas.

The closest I've come to a theme is in Riverblossom Hills with the small country town theme. Not exactly an original idea. I was originally drawn to it when I installed Seasons because I grew up in that kind of town so it feels like home. The neighborhood is building ever so slowly as my legacy family grows so it isn't where I want it at this point but I'm in no hurry.

I've only recently attached a downtown hood to it, the idea being that it is a newly developed city close by. All the residential lots are modern and mostly apartments and I am slowly making over the community lots to give it more of a city feel. I only have 3 lots that I play in downtown at the moment so the makeover is very slow.

Best: I think the third or fourth custom neighbourhood I ever made was based on A series of unfortunate events by Lemony Snicket, because they were my favourite books growing up. I recreated how I'd imagined the houses to be, and made the characters. It was good doing it from a book because I could make it how I'd imagined it, but I found that because I couldn't stick to the storyline of the books I lost interest in actually playing the neighbourhood and I didn't want to play the characters to a different story, but I kept it for ages just to look at until I got a new laptop and reinstalled.

I also had an island neighbourhood called Far Isles with the Moon Islands template. Everyone was detached from the rest of the world and had to run their own businesses and grow food. It was my favourite neighbourhood until the main family got glitched, and I had to delete them. After that I lost interest and deleted it entirely.

Worst: I made a desert neighbourhood with houses like the condos in pleasantview. There was nothing really wrong with it, but I just wasn't that into it.

I've always been tempted to do a supernatural hood full of aliens and vampires, etc, but have just never got round to it.

I've tried too many themes to list...I've got a habit of getting these "brilliant" ideas for hoods, but alot of them never turn out like I picture, so I have to go back and try something else.

Best: I recreated my hometown when my Mom died and made my family. It helped so much during the excruciating grieving period I went through. I still play that neighborhood.

Weirdest: Oddly enough my "filthy rich" neighborhood was by far the weirdest one yet. Every house was a mansion of some kind, but I also had pyramids, Egyptian temples and all of the sims in that neighborhood were flat out neurotic, even for sims. For some reason I wound up with the equivalent of a Zombie apocolypse...never could figure out why. But they were zombies with great taste in clothes...gotta give 'em that.

Worst: my hobo hood was by far my worst idea ever. It "looked good on paper" but it was a logistical failure. I still have a nervous twitch when I think about that neighborhood.

Most frequent: I keep trying different renditions of a "criminal underworld" neighborhood but it never goes like I think it will... I've found it to be most successful as a sub-story in my normal neighborhoods.

Want to try: I've been mulling over making my "manhunk" neighborhood....the gist would be one romance aspiration female and nothing but all of the premade "manhunk" sims I've downloaded living in the rest of the neighborhood. Wild parties everynight and alot of outings. My dilemma is picking only one of the gorgeous premade lady sims in my CAS. Of course there's always the townies, so she won't be the only girl, but I thought it would amuse my warped sense of humor. I always laugh when my sims get all jealous and indignant. I haven't tried it yet because I just finished my vintage horror movie neighborhood and have been working on another one, which I'm about to give up on (another logistical mess).

Best- Makoto
Worst- Nomeika (It lasted 5 minutes)
Weirdest- Oku (It was the oddest neighborhood because it would glitch then it would stop glitching then glitch again...)
HTYBWT- A Touhou themed neighborhood (Im starting tomorrow)

Most of my neighborhoods are either more or less normal or just plain weird, now that I think about it. Currently, the neighborhood I play the most is Emerald Valley, which is more or less a legacy neighborhood inhabited by the Reynolds family and Theodore Wolfe, their werewolf neighbor who has several pet cats.

In the past, my favorite neighborhood was called Mayfair City, which was a huge matrilineal legacy where the heir for each generation was a witch. I got the idea from some of Anne Rice's books and just changed or added stuff to make it work. I can't remember all the specifics, except that the heirs were descended from each other and that the default heir was the firstborn female, unless she was incapable of carrying on the family name. Also, only the heir was required to reproduce; all other offspring had the choice whether or not to.

Currently, I'm working on a pretty weird neighborhood that I've been discussing with a friend of mine. It's called Terre Belle, and it's more or less supposed to be a "darker and edgier" version of Pleasantview. I'm building it from the ground up, complete with my own versions of the residents, so it's a pretty big project. It's interesting, though.

I love agatha christie and midsomer murders Did you create the characters to go in the village aswell?

I'm trying to start a Georgian styled vampire legacy hood on of all things HP megauberhood. It's on hold at the moment because of my spur of the moment "delete the downloads folder and start from scratch". I'm gonna try to incorporate several different types of challenges in it and see how it turns out.

Oooh I love all of these cool themes! I've taken some mental notes for future ideas...especially the Georgian vampire legacy idea. Very cool!