• Increase your education funding to the maximum allowed.
• Enact as many ordinances as possible. (Excluding perhaps public-access cable and some of the power/water conservation measures.)
• Wait. High tech industry is favored as time passes. The maximum amount of high tech you can have in 1900 is 1% and it increases linearly to the maximum of 100% in 2200. Waiting also allows time for your sims to become educated.

EQ stands for Education Quotient and is the measure of the education level of your Sims. The overall EQ of your city will grow only as young Sims go through an adequate and well-funded education system, which can take many years. If your sims are highly educated, then cleaner high-tech industries will come to your city to take advantage of the educated labor pool.

EQ ranges from 0 to 150. The EQ of a Sim at birth is the average work-force EQ divided by five. In a new city, the average work-force EQ is 58, which corresponds to a high-school level of education. From age 0 to 15, a Sim will automatically acquire the lesser of 4/5 of his parents EQ or 120 points. Schools further increase the EQ of Sims aged 6 through 18, and colleges further increase the EQ of Sims aged 19 to 24. Sims EQ decays naturally after age 25, unless there are libraries and museums. The Pro-reading ordinance also slows EQ decay. The Junior Sports and Youth Curfew ordinances boost EQ of young Sims. When EQ exceeds 105, you will be granted the University, which increases the land value of residential (+5) and commercial buildings (+15), but does not affect EQ itself. After 1999, if your EQ exceeds 135, you will be granted the Science Center, which increases both residential and commercial land value by 10.

Each city has an internal population cap for each of the three zone types. The Simcity simulator will halt your city's growth when the population cap is reached. For a starting city, the residential population cap is about 27,000 Sims. If you do not build any of the above structures listed in the population caps table that increase the residential capacity (R-Cap), your city will not grow beyond 27,000 Sims.

The commercial population cap of a city without commercial cap relief providing structures is about 15,000. The starting industrial cap is a generous 43,000. Once the commercial or industrial cap is reached, the Sims will begin complaining about needing more connections, airport, or seaport. The residential cap is the first one to be hit, because at 27,000 Sims, the simulator stabilizes with an industrial population of 14,000 and commercial population of 2,500. At this point, to continue growing the city, you must build one of the structures that provide residential cap relief. You can view the population of each zone type in the dynamic graph by checking the appropriate boxes.

Interestingly, provided your city has power and water, you do not need to build any other structures (police, fire, hospital, education, etc.) except structures which provide cap relief. In fact, to determine the above numbers, I made a new city and built only roads, pipes, RCI zones, a dump, a power connection, and a water connection. Ordinances and budget were left at default, minimalistic values and all complaints were ignored except those to renew the power and water deals. It would also be interesting to find out if the caps vary depending on the difficulty setting and map size.

Each reward and opportunity has a city-wide effect on land value. The effect varies for each zone type. For example, the Military Base has a negative effect on residential and other zones, and positive effect on industrial and commercial zones. These effects are listed in the population caps table, but I do not know what the units are. Many other buildings also have local land value and aura effects, which apply to a radius around the structure. These proximal effects are not listed in the table.

If you want beautiful, green, low-density residential neighborhoods, resort the population caps table by R-Land, and build only those rewards with the highest R-Land value. Assuming everything else in your city is okay, the residential land value will be maximized and you will see mansions and estates.