Cities: Skylines News

I'll always have a soft spot for Cities: Skylines. Seven years after its initial release it still stands as one of the most comprehensive city builders of all time. And while I'm still enamoured with its endless detailing, horky borky intersections, and traffic flow brainbusters, it's about time Colossal Order brought us a Cities: Skylines sequel...
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Welcome back mayors, to the second Plazas and Promenades Dev Diary! Today we explore the details of how to manage pedestrian areas, what progression looks like for them, and what an area focus is. So get comfortable and let’s get started.

The key to a successful pedestrian area is managing the service points and keeping citizens happy and entertained. As mentioned in the previous Dev Diary, service points have a maximum capacity. This is the number of trucks that can visit them per week. It can be seen both on the tooltip of each building as well as when selecting it.

If a service point nears its capacity for either cargo or garbage, it will notify you of high traffic but will continue to function. If it reaches its capacity for one or both types of trucks, it will be unable to service all buildings. This will lead to garbage piling up or goods not being delivered. Make sure your pedestrian area has enough service points and that these are spread out to avoid traffic congestion.

Add more service points when you reach maximum capacity

[h2]Pedestrian Area Panel[/h2]
To see how well your area is doing, select the name of the pedestrian area or use the button on any service point to open the Pedestrian Area Info Panel. The panel displays the average happiness of all buildings in an area, and the entertainment provided by parks and plazas divided by the size of the area. These are combined into a land value bonus, which is applied to the entire area, just like the entertainment is, making pedestrian areas more desirable for citizens and businesses.

The Area Panel also shows a breakdown of the different zone types in an area, as well as the area focus, which is determined by the most prevalent zone type in an area. The focus can be either residential, commercial, workplaces (industry and offices combined), or mixed. Only the zones on pedestrian streets in an area count towards the area focus.

Last but not least, the info tab contains a handy overview of the area’s service points and their capacity for both cargo and garbage, as well as information about the area’s size and maintenance cost.

The Pedestrian Area Info Panel provides an overview of your pedestrian area

[h2]Progression & Focus[/h2]
Pedestrian areas do not have levels like other area types, but instead have different categories of buildings that get unlocked simultaneously. Some of these are universal and can be unlocked by any pedestrian area, while others are tied to a specific zone type. The Unlocking tab on the Pedestrian Area Panel shows you what is required to unlock each building and how close you are to unlocking them.

Additional Service Points can be unlocked by any area as it grows and as service points are visited by more trucks. New service points in turn help you better handle the demands of the area as it grows. Like service points, Plazas can be unlocked by any area. As their unlocking depends on the land value bonus the area provides, make sure to have plenty of services, education, as well as parks and plazas in place.

Unlock more service points, plazas, and unique buildings as your pedestrian area grows

Next up we have the 6 new unique buildings, which come in two categories and can be found in the Unique Buildings menu. Pedestrian Area Landmarks tie into the area focus for an area and require either a number of residents, goods sold, or workplaces in an area to unlock.

Meanwhile, the Tourism Buildings are unlocked by reaching certain levels of weekly tourists visiting a pedestrian area. While these are not tied to a zone focus, you will need to provide attractions for tourists to visit in the form of parks and plazas, unique buildings, or commercial buildings.

Increase the attractiveness of your city using the new plazas and unique buildings

[h2]Area Policies[/h2]
The one tab on the Pedestrian Area Panel we haven’t talked about yet is the Policies tab. On this tab, you can apply four different policies to your area to customize how it works. The policies are free to use, but each has downsides to consider.

Slow Driving affects all roads in the area, forcing a speed limit of 20 everywhere and, as a result, decreasing noise pollution. Sugar Ban deals with the health of your citizens, increasing the lifespan of citizens, but with an increased crime rate as citizens start smuggling illegal candy bars into the area.

You can also allow Street Music, which boosts the happiness of commercial buildings in an area but also increases the noise pollution slightly. And lastly, Deliver Everything routes all cargo and garbage through service points for all buildings in a pedestrian area. So in addition to handling the cargo and garbage needs for buildings on pedestrian streets, the service points need to handle cargo and garbage for buildings on regular roads too. I hope your service points are ready for the extra traffic!

That concludes this Dev Diary. I hope you now have a good idea of how pedestrian areas work and if not, don’t hesitate to ask! In the next Dev Diary coming Friday at 4PM CEST / 7AM PDT, we’ll cover the new plazas & service buildings, which can be used on their own or as a part of pedestrian areas. For now, I will leave you in the hands of Overcharged Egg with this video tutorial:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Greetings mayors, and welcome to another set of Dev Diaries! Are you excited about Cities: Skylines Plazas and Promenades? Over the course of the next two weeks, I will walk you through all the new content from pedestrian areas and streets to new specializations and service buildings - and plazas of course! And without further ado, let’s have a look at the announcement video:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

At the center of Cities: Skylines Plazas and Promenades we have pedestrian areas and streets, which give you the tools to create neighborhoods focused on walkability. These will work to reduce traffic as well as noise pollution. To ensure you are able to create areas suited for your specific city, the pedestrian areas work with all existing zoned buildings!

[h2]Creating Pedestrian Areas[/h2]
Pedestrian areas take advantage of the Area Tool, which you may be familiar with already. It can be found in the Districts and Areas menu and becomes available when you reach Milestone 3 - Tiny Town. Paint over empty land if you want to create a new pedestrian neighborhood, or over an existing part of your city if you wish to turn it into a pedestrian area. Like other areas and districts, it can be adjusted later as needed.

Paint a pedestrian area to unlock service points

Once you are satisfied with the area, it’s time to place a Service Point, which can be found in the Pedestrian Areas menu under Parks & Plazas. Service points are essential to pedestrian areas as most vehicles, including garbage and delivery trucks, are not allowed on pedestrian streets. Instead, garbage is automatically collected from buildings on pedestrian streets to be picked up at the service point. Similarly, resources, goods, and mail are all routed through the service point, so make sure it’s placed on a road that can handle increased truck traffic!

Service points come in two different sizes and three different types: The general Service Points, which cover all the listed needs, Garbage Service Points, which focus on waste management, and Cargo Service Points, which handle resources, goods, and mail.

Service points are vital for your pedestrian areas

The different service points are important as they each have a capacity and if the area exceeds this, some buildings on pedestrian streets will not have their needs taken care of. Large pedestrian areas will need more service points to provide for the buildings on pedestrian streets, and depending on the mix of buildings in an area, you may need a higher capacity for garbage collection or cargo delivery.

[h2]Pedestrian Streets[/h2]
With the pedestrian area created and a service point placed, it’s time to place pedestrian streets! These paved roads can only be used by walking or biking citizens and, when necessary, emergency vehicles like ambulances, hearses, police cars, and fire trucks. As citizens are the main users of the pedestrian streets, vehicles have to obey slow speed limits unless responding to an emergency.

We have included a lot of variation in the pedestrian streets so that you can customize the look and feel of your areas. There are 3 styles: Sandstone, Bluestone, and Cobblestone, which come in two different widths. Each street also comes with 5 different variations with things like added grass, trees, and bus-only lanes. That’s a total of 30 different pedestrian streets for you to choose from!

Bluestone on the left, Sandstone in the middle, and Cobblestone on the right

As you’re building your pedestrian streets, you may go outside the pedestrian area you defined earlier. If that happens, the streets will automatically extend the area to follow them. This option can be enabled or disabled when placing the streets. Pedestrian streets can also be placed outside pedestrian areas, but keep in mind that any buildings placed on these streets will need a pedestrian area and a service point to function.

Lastly, pedestrian streets come with a cool new little feature: Bollards automatically appear at the entrance to pedestrian streets to discourage vehicles from entering. When a vehicle needs to enter or exit the pedestrian street, they will stop and wait for the bollards to retract into the street before driving past. Isn’t that cool?

Bollards retracting for a waiting police car

That’s all we have for you this time! In the next Dev Diary, we’ll cover the management and progression of pedestrian areas, so stay tuned for more information on Monday at 4PM CEST / 7AM PDT! And don’t forget to check out the video tutorial by Overcharged Egg below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

More than any other citybuilder, Cities: Skylines requires deep engagement with its traffic simulation. You can spend an endless number of (very satisfied) hours tweaking your road network to try to fix traffic jams. The next Cities: Skylines expansion might offer an alternative, however. The Plazas & Promenades DLC, announced today, will allow you to create pedestrian streets and zones where cars dare not tread. Find the first trailer below.

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You know what's cool? When you can walk around a city and don't have to use a car. That's cool, and the developers of Cities: Skylines agree, as the upcoming Plazas & Promenades DLC will add pedestrian-only zones, specialized districts, and services that cater to a playstyle I've seen people clamor for since Cities launched in 2015...
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