Are these Random. Just had one and I had a recent save and let it go. Much Destruction. But the original riot made no sense since I don't have any complaints except for some traffic. (I have a good Mass Transit, jut not 100%) . So am I missing something or is a Riot just random?

Here's a WAG: Check your Aura.

I can't see a problem. Land values medium; good mass transit; and high tech business setting up. I do use the tax code. Once or twice a year, if the district has high demand, I will raise taxes to 22% for a month. It temporarily kills growth, but I get extra $. Maybe my occasional monthly surcharge tripped something.

But the extra $ let's me build w/o borrowing. I'll take the occasional riot to stay out of debt.

Which game are you playing, and what's your population?

SimCity 3000.

Riot took place around 1925 and I had a population around 25000.

Attachment
This isn't the same City but is very similar:

Have you checked whether the rioting areas had adequately funded police coverage? Also, aura is a separate measure from land value. You can have high land value with low aura. But the source of your troubles is probably a lack of money.

I understand that debt can be scary, but learning to use your money well is an important skill. Because it's just a game, you can afford to make mistakes, and the worst that can happen is you have to restart.

You haven't specified what your goals in the game are, but from your screenshot, it looks like you're trying to build a nice-looking city where your sims have all their needs met. The reason I think so is because you're using water towers, which fit in with the aesthetics of the city at the cost of being an inefficient source of water. Your road layout and city plan are pleasing to the eye, and you've built up a neat lakeside neighbourhood. You have many civic services and what looks to be a robust public transit system that includes expensive subways.

The downsides, as you're probably keenly aware, are money problems and slow growth. You have to fiddle with taxes to make the budget work and to afford to expand your city and its services.

I've attached a screenshot of my current city, which hasn't gone as I'd hoped. I've been using this city to experiment with different layouts, which is why the city is an ugly mess. The roads don't make sense, and the zones are all jumbled. I began with flattened terrain and the hard difficulty level, where you start with a $10,000 loan. I kept taking out more loans to build the city and didn't start making a profit until the second or third year, which also coincided with a tax hike to about 10%. It took another couple of years before I could provide every civic service and I could gradually reduce taxes to their current level of 5% on all zones. The year is now 1921, the city has a population 250,000, collects about $120,000 a year in taxes , and has an annual budget surplus of $60,000. Traffic, believe it or not, is mostly under control, with very few tiles actually being congested. You'll notice that I still have three outstanding loans. Two were to expand the city beyond what the annual surplus could afford, and one was to rebuild sections that had been destroyed when an earthquake snaked its way through the city. (Earthquake resistance and retrofitting doesn't help when an earthquake creates a rift.)

So loans are nothing to fear. The fact that you start with a loan on the hard difficulty level is the developer's way of hinting that you can make money faster than you have to repay the loan. I would suggest starting a couple of cities on hard and seeing if you can make it to a healthy surplus without getting kicked out of office.

Once you lose your fear of loans, hopefully you will no longer need to mess with the tax rates to raise funds.

The key to understanding loans is that you must spend the money on something that makes money. If you borrow $10,000, your annual repayment is $1,200 is for ten years. As long as you can spend that $10,000 in such a way that you generate more than $1,200 in income, you will be able to service the loan, and any additional income you make is gravy.

Looking at your city, I see that you build a lot of parks--which is good. Your tax revenue will be hampered by your lack of growth because your land values won't go above medium until your neighbourhood is using significantly more land. It's a catch-22: to make money, you need to expand; to expand, you need to have money. It's a problem that's solved by loans. Your subway and rail network looks nice, but the cost is probably strangling your budget--not just the stations, but the subway tunnels probably cost you more in maintenance than all your roads and rails put together. It takes a rich city to afford a luxury transit system, and the subway is the king of transit systems. It might be the first mass transit option that becomes available, but because of the cost, it should be the last one you build.

I don't think I could sleep at night with that much debt even in Simoleons. LOL.
Thanks for the screenshot through. It gives me an idea of what big City's begin to look like. Also it confirms what I suspected. The true tax base for any City is when the Commercial use expands. I'm going to continue my "Turtle" Pace in building. If it doesn't work out, I'll need to re-visit debt. But it won't be fun.
Also, I'll go back and start at "hard." I've played at $20,000. But if the normal starting gate is at Hard, that's what I'll do.
Thanks again

If you're more comfortable turtling, then that's what you should do.

Not many players would play on the hard difficulty. The reason I suggested it was that it's the fastest way to learn money management in the game and to become comfortable with a budget deficit. But it can be a frustrating experience until you learn the ropes. You should treat it more like a learning exercise separate from your normal city-building--that is, until you begin to enjoy it.

Thanks for the pointers. Certain projects pay big time. I don't know how to guarantee Commercial growth. So until I do, I'll go slow. But with the "Hard" Start, a player is forced to build the projects that pay.
Thanks again.