Building an Iconic Downtown | Cities Skylines 2 Let's Play

hey everybody how's it going toyer here welcome back to Bixon in City skylines 2 for the past few episodes I've been playing the game in a very macro type fashion you know we got the big Bridge Project over here we got massive train lines running all over in this episode I'm going to zoom all the way in to the ground level of the city and I'd like to work on the nitty-gritty details of downtown I've kind of neglected downtown I find normally in my Central Business districts in City skylines I normally like to focus a bit more on the details because downtown is really what captures the attention right uh big buildings everywhere and and there's just a lot going on this is where I like to focus my attention on um so I'm going to be sort of revitalizing a big part of downtown I'm going to upzone a large portion of this low density residential uh that's built up over here however I know there's a lot of people that are complaining of rent um I've been getting a lot of comments from you guys saying that it's due to the lot sizes so some of these yeah they are pretty Big Lots a lot bigger than what you would typically find in downtown um so that's probably the case for these some of these lots are not so big though like I feel like this is a pretty reasonable size lot for a downtown area I think the most prominent or or or the biggest Factor uh that's going into these rent problems is just that my demand is Skyhigh in well pretty much every type of Zone at this point so really exciting um along with all of this up zoning that's going to go on I just recently unlocked high density offices so I'm going to place a lot of that in the downtown area so anyway without fur further Ado let's jump right into it and one of the first things I want to do is to modify my street layout a little bit so I'm not really happy with whatever is inside of this triangle here I don't feel like the street layout makes any sense you know we have this random Avenue here that's going right through the middle of it so I am going to get get rid of this and rezone a lot of what you see here so I'm going to lay a zone or a rope right down the middle like this and I might I might run a road right through the middle of these uh these Lots here just cuz I find that my block sizes are a bit too big in certain areas so I'd like to address that so let's uh let's see what we can do here here so if I build this here and then continue this road along to here so this makes for a weird intersection but that's that's totally fine honestly this is downtown very historic you know the streets don't always make sense in a lot of older cities and this curve as well i' I've never been a big fan of how I built this so I think I'm just going to straighten it out have a direct road going like that and it kind of matches up a bit more with the uh the shoreline and I think this is a bit better I'm going to continue this road right up to here and I think that should do it yeah all right so I know I've made a bit of a mess here guys uh but I promise I'm going to fix it all up and I think downtown is going to look pretty cool once we're done with this episode so let's uh let's just go block by block here see what we can fix cuz a lot of this doesn't really make any sense so I got this little building here in the back let's check how the zones are organized yeah it's a little bit of a mess this parking lot I'm going to scooch over place it over here and excellent okay so I've basically gained a little row of zage here so let's get some high density offices in here so if I do this you know I'm just going to run the simulation whatever happens happens oh before I go too far I should probably make sure that my bus network still makes sense and it looks like it does yeah I think it's fine okay I was just worried about this green Loop here going around but it it appears to still make sense okay so let's get into it uh so oh for some reason I can't Zone this block now I'll show you guys a little trick I recently learned this from $220 in one of his recent videos um he learned it from someone else but anyway I'm just going to pass that information along to you guys as it may be useful so if you have some zones that are misbehaving here you can simply use a little pedestrian path to potentially fix something of them so if I do this and then delete it uh okay well unfortunately in this case it doesn't really do much but in some cases it may actually work wonders for example um let me just pause the game real quick I'm going to delete these buildings so take this Zone here as you can see it is snapping to this road well let's say I want to snap it to this road over here so what I can simply do is Select my little path tool bring it over here and and boom it snaps to this road instead and if I delete it you can see that I've gained all of these squares now unfortunately I think my roads are just a little bit off center here I may have to redo this one I don't know how well this is going to work maybe if I do this yeah I don't know I think some of these blocks are going to be a little Troublesome guys if you don't get your zones just perfect you're you're in for a lot of trouble yeah you can see here that the zones don't quite line up here maybe snap to zoning cell length let's try to get this as centered as I possibly can get it so that's 90° H yeah one of these roads is not perfect and I'm not ready to destroy all of downtown either so I may just have to to live with some of the imperfections which which is fine maybe if I do this okay so we'll have a whole block here so I think I'll do mix zoning here and then if I lay a path here does that fix it oh my God guys that look at that that is wonderful so yeah that's uh that's a tip that you guys can use in your city I hope you find it useful because it certainly has been so far for me so uh let's uh continue that Trend there so let's hit play see what goes on and what's fun right now I don't really have to worry about uh any lack of demand cuz everything is Skyhigh at the moment so pretty much no matter what zone I place down it's immediately going to build all right so I'm going to block off this delete this little segment of path and look at that we have a nice shaped block over here so let's do mixed zoning actually scrap that let's do an office building here here oh looks like we're going to have a big chunker great um let's have some more mixed zoning and then maybe some more medium density housing over here Perfect Look at that guys that is wonderful these blocks are pretty much all filled up now this block here I've always kind of had a problem with this I don't really want my buildings to line up with the coastal Road I'd rather they line up with the grid so again applying this simple trick I'm just going to remove access to oh what's going on here why I can't there I can do that and honestly this path looks kind of nice and look at that everything is perfectly lined up I think I want to snap it to this road instead oh great it snapped it to both roads perfect so I think this is actually a decent spot for a big office building oh it's not quite as tall okay that's awesome you don't want every skyscraper to be a big chonker so let's Zone some more mixed and because it seems that this area is good for commercial I'm going to do a little bit of low density commercial all right so we got some more buildings going up here maybe I can rezone this is this going to work no because this is acting as like one big Zone all right so let's do some more offices this is the central business district after all so it's got to contain a lot of big businesses so let's up Zone all of this all these row houses are going to go now I don't have anything against Row Housing but I'm going to begin to push it a little farther out of downtown you know like these over here although they do look kind of cool I think this area is better suited for some larger buildings uh so I'm going to destroy this maybe let's have a big office building here um maybe some more mixed Zone stage like this over here as well oh yeah that's right I have my special building over here H what am I going to do with this I think I'm just going to remove it for now or actually no that's going to cost money actually no it isn't cuz I think these buildings are free so yeah I'm just going to get rid of it um I may keep some of them cuz like this these little buildings honestly are pretty cool nestled into uh like some bigger buildings around them yeah I think I'm going to keep some of them there let's oops that is not what I wanted to do there we go all right we are just destroying the city look at that guys all right we got some our some of our first uh Office Buildings here this is actually a really cool building I don't know how well it really fits here in downtown though but it's fine I don't really like how this block is going to be honest I think what can I do to fix this maybe I'll just add a road kind of scared it's going to screw up the whole the whole neighborhood if I do this though oh and I can because of the bus we got some buses that are going through here seems that the bus station's a bit too close um you know what I'm going for it I'm going to move the bus station just scooch it on over a little bit that way and let's drive a road through here awesome it doesn't look like it affected the zones too much so I will destroy this building we'll get a big bigger building in here and hopefully if I Zone this will it build no it won't cuz I think it's probably part of this massive building over here unfortunate that really sucks um maybe is there anything I could place in here maybe like a little small playground or something no okay maybe if I just destroy this building no no matter what I do I don't think it's going to work but hang on let's let's make it work if I do this and then do that and then undo this is it going to fix it nope oh well sometimes you you you just can't win guys so I guess I'll just I'll shove a little playground in here oh I think it's because it's because of the way the roads are shaped I bet they're they're just not 100% perfect yeah I guess I guess that's what it's going to be guys sometimes you can't win all right oh oh wow this is actually a really nice Building look at this super cool guys and we got another little office building over here very nice we got a nice Plaza down below nice Open Spaces that is awesome all right so let's keep going I got this block here so this is another issue that I found with uh my my zoning so far is look at these row houses are in all sorts of different directions um I'm going to have to rezone a lot of the neighborhoods on the outskirts of downtown due to this you know row houses should be in a row so uh I'll have to be mindful of how I Zone from now on there so let's mix it up a bit here let's have all kinds of of zoning mixed together just like this let's get that going there we go we got a full block now unfortunately it looks like yeah we got two separate areas here so maybe can I Zone this one big building it's probably not going to work offices to my surprise don't have huge Footprints like you would think see so this is probably like as big as an office building zone is going to get maybe like one square more but they don't occupy a ton of space and see like these little row houses here I think this is a realistic size maybe even these uh no these ones have nice backyards but like these for example this is quite realistic as to what you would find right smack dab in the middle of a city so I think I might keep those these ones too they're not bad they don't have a massive yard but these ones for sure are going to go um because it's not quite realistic to have a lot of space right in the middle of a city but some of these row houses are still really nice so I got to keep some of them and of course you know what I can't forget to place down some high density commercial as well cuz you know my demand is pretty much off the chart so let's go ahead and reone some of this oh can I get this to be one building h that's fine and then uh let's up Zone this to that uhoh oh that's fine actually I'm going to delete this do all of this one big building there we go that's better oh my God guys we have some urban renewal going on here like crazy this is like 1950s total Destruction of downtown going on craziness but you know what I'm looking for a certain look in Bixon and uh this is this is what's necessary to achieve that look oops there we go we're slowly moving our way to the outskirts of [Music] downtown you know what this would be a cool spot for a big office building right over here now this zone is probably too big it's probably going to create two offices oh no it's not oh look at that guys wonderful and look at that we got an awesome downtown going these two buildings are a little too similar for my taste uh which one do I keep I think I'm going to keep that one I'm going to destroy that one and it looks about the same height so hopefully it's not the same building Maybe all right I think that's better and just to be sure I will Zone this into commercial just so we don't get two identical buildings you know what this Zone here I'm going to try to squeeze an office here will that work yes [Music] actually I'm going to pause this is a perfect spot for a big old skyscraper right in the middle is this going to create one building oh my God guys that is wonderful okay oh my God okay so we're getting a lot of similar buildings we got these two that are identical so it's not a big deal I I kind of expect this anyways um just from seeing all the previews and stuff for City skylines I kind of knew going into it that you're going to get a lot of similar buildings but that's fine you know that's just that's just how it is I don't know I'm going to do with this section over here guys I don't think I'll touch it this episode but I'm not too happy with how the buildings are arranged it's it's unfortunate that the buildings don't really conform to like weird Road shapes like they would in real life even like in America right go to cities like Boston you'll find buildings that conform to the shape of the roads and uh and they're not just like perfectly Square so it would have been cool if there would would have been like some sort of system that uh the game could allow for that but it's not a big deal we'll we'll just have to work around it and I'm sure uh I'm sure we'll figure something out okay so let's move a bit farther out from downtown I'm going to start to upscale a lot of these residential neighborhoods so it's a bit challenging though because a lot of these lots are very weirdly shaped and they're a bit too large so I'm going to pause the game I think I'm just going to remove all of the buildings in these lots and see what we can do to fix the zoning situation oh okay so it looks like looks like in this case it was partially my fault so here's another little trick guys so if you're conscious about how you want your wall to- wall uh Row Housing to be you can simply remove a piece of zoning on one of the ends and then when you hit play automatically all of the houses are going to be in the same direction and then once you have the two end pieces like this you can go ahead and fill that in and then as you can see all of your Row Housing is in the same direction so let's apply that same log IC over here but we're going to have to do a little bit extra cuz these zones don't quite line up and that's fine it's just the block that uh wasn't quite big enough to fit an exact number of buildings so uh what do I do here I'm going to unone this is it's kind of confusing me so I think the solution here is just to remove access to this read it nope that was not the solution but if I do this that was the solution and then we have a little Gap here in the middle which is fine so what I'll do in this case is this will become some apartment buildings and then in the middle here let's have some Row Housing so we got them all equal size and then I can go ahead and put my end pieces there we go that is wonderful so yeah because I made these lot sizes a little too big in my opinion in some areas I'm just going to rezone some of the lopsided row houses just so everything fits neatly and you know okay so this is City Hall actually hang on a second this does not look line up H I got to fix this guys that doesn't line up but thankfully I maybe I can just scooch the building over by a little bit uh oh let's turn it around oh jeez I think I'm going to make a mess here but if I scooch it over just ever so slightly okay there we go now it it lines up perfectly with this road there we are all right guys so what I'm going to do I'm going to skip ahead and go into time lapse mode for a minute and let's uh I'm going to try to get downtown to look the way I want it [Music] [Music] w [Music] [Music] [Music] m wow [Music] wowowow [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] a [Music] yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] all right everybody after quite a bit of work this is what I've come up with for downtown so you can see it's expanded quite a bit uh a little bit disproportionately I would say downtown is like 50% of the footprint of the city uh so before you scream at your monitor know that I'm aware of that um but if we zoom in here look how cool this is guys it looks just like Chicago look at all these this canal here going through with all the big skyscrapers this is awesome and I particularly like this one because these two identical skyscrapers popped up here with this massive one right in the middle and I placed a small Plaza in the middle of this right near the water so this is like this is my favorite block right here and it used to be my worst block because it was an odd shape and whatnot but now it looks really cool uh okay so because I've expanded downtown so much and I've upzoned everything um I made the rent issue worse so the next thing I'm going to do is I'm actually going to start to expand over in the west side of the city uh over here so this is going to be a bit of a challenge to uh get some housing in here due to the rough terrain you can see that pretty much this entire side of this hill Hill is quite steep so I'm going to do my best to create some nice neighborhoods over here which are going to be mostly low density because I really want to get some more low density in here you know with downtown being at a good size right now um I think you know just providing some lowlevel housing is uh is going to be useful for these people so but actually there's one more thing I wanted to do and this again is probably going to make the situation even worse uh but if I go into my parks and recreate menu I have all of these landmarks that I can afford you know I have 6.5 million in the bank and I'm making some decent cash right now so I think I'm going to place down my first Landmark to attract uh some tourist so the one that I'm looking at right here is the Grand Hotel so it cost 1.6 million which is quite a bit but uh you know it's not too too bad provides 75 indoor Recreation cost 160 a month to run uh but I think it's going going to be worth it cuz it's going to draw some people into town and I think it fits perfectly within one of these blocks here and if I zoom out a little bit you can see how it fits nicely into downtown so I'm going to go ahead and plop this oh oh it doesn't fit why does it not fit guys there's something in the way what's oh maybe these path is that why it's not fitting whoa why is it not fitting guys okay well uh let me check my zones oh that's why Balter Pines that's the culprit all right well I guess we're just going to move Balter Pines right across the street right here there we go so now we should be okay to place the uh Grand Hotel so I think here or here right here boom look at that and instantly I can't afford half of these buildings uh but look at this guys we got a nice hotel in the city this looks great very historic looking this is awesome maybe can I fit a parking lot here I feel like a would tell like this should have a parking lot for its guests and no the parking lot is far too big but that's fine that's all right um I'm going to go ahead and leave it like that oh no look at all these people all these homeless people that I've just uh destroyed their home unfortunately uh but you know I made way for a very nice building here and it's generating jobs woo all right guys so that's enough of down toown I really hope you like the way that it turned out it's probably going to grow and expand even more I'd like to work on this area of town over here a bit farther down the line but without further Ado let's go and uh start expanding mountain side a little [Music] bit [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] there for the this neighborhood I imagine it being kind of a posh Place obviously you got the Golden Gate Bridge views you got the water the beautiful scenery you're away from downtown and all the traffic so naturally this is going to be a more luxurious place and as you can see I built all these little back streets here to uh to house them so I'm going to continue along here to build the same kind of buildings and I'm going to stick with these little narrow paths here I just find that they kind of represent these little private streets they're not like these wide public streets that uh that you find in your average suburb so you know this will kind of be like the Hollywood Hills of Bixon and then over here it tends to flatten out a little bit so I think over here we'll see some more heavy development but over in this section I'm going to stick with these little little paths here not not paths but smaller [Music] streets there that is actually pretty cool and then up here yeah it's kind of steep so so I'm going to lay down quite a bit of commercial zoning as well you know with this being the main street there's going to be all kinds of restaurants and touristy spots along this area so I'll just dot this with little businesses and such and you know I'm probably going to have to provide services for this area cuz it's quite a ways outside of the city City there let's do that and I think it's a little too steep for any housing over here so this will be just a little shortcut to go off to the flat area uhoh what's going on over here there all right guys look at this we got a cute little neighborhood that's uh pretty much fully developed over here wow wow this is really cool oh great our low density residential demand is going down so that means we're we're doing good over here so I'm going to expand this road extend it following the coast and you know what I should probably I may build oh actually no I kind of had this all planned out this little bit of land here I think we'll make way for maybe a little trumpet Interchange to connect this road which will eventually feed into this Coastal Road over here I'm going to leave that for another time because I don't want this episode to drag on too long so for now I'm just going to keep developing this neighborhood and uh we'll get a little a little village going a village outside of the big city and I suppose one good thing about building these sort of neighborhoods nestled into the mountains is it forces you to build smaller lot sizes uh which a lot of people are saying has something to do with Ren prices which makes sense right you're going to pay more property tax on a Big Lot versus a a small little lot all right well it appears some of these buildings are not quite enjoying where they're placed they often go into like no Road connection which is weird but anyway um yeah there it goes again strange whatever let's check our services over here let's make sure everything is in check so Healthcare availability not great but you know the city is going to continue on over here and whatever Clinic I build over here is probably going to be able to service this side of mountain side uh okay we're still doing okay for our recycling or Garbage management fire rescue okay well this area leaves some to be desired so I think I'm going to go ahead and place a small Firehouse where it is nice and flat so I think I think right here would be suitable uh what about police oh okay surprisingly we get some decent coverage over here not too too bad and education oh education's pretty poor uh so we may want to get an elementary school or something in here and wow my capacity is struggling for elementary school so I'm going to have to uh get into that now the schools are pretty big so maybe I'll place an elementary school more over in this area where it kind of flattens out yeah I'll do that oh and actually before I go anywhere else I have to provide these folks with internet you know if I want this area to be rich and luxurious we got to provide them some good internet so I think I think what I'll do for this is maybe somehow okay I think I know how I'll do this I want to build a little alley that will go yeah I guess from here under the bridge just because and it will Loop its way around to go up the mountain and on top of this mountain we will plop a tower just like that so this Tower is able to service all of this little Valley here which is great so I guess my next step here before this oh my God we're fall I didn't even notice the city looks so great in Fall look at all the leaves beautiful um so yeah before I go I think the last thing I'm going to do here is create a district in this little town so I'm going to start it from here yeah this District tool is a little tricky sometimes it's great when it works but sometimes you get this overlapping thing oh whatever I'll end it there um I think what I'll do here is do this it's not to 90° not to existing geometry H I'll just get it to as close as I can to the edge of the neighboring zones there so I'm going to make this area its own little burrow which is called Bedford Croft well how about we just call it Bedford Bedford Nova Scotia there we go kind of looks like it too you know in the outskirts of the city look at that guys that's really cool I'm I'm happy that we're finally building something over in this corner of the map it was kind of barren for a long time but now it's got some life to it um so that'll be it for this episode next next episode I'm not too sure what we'll get into to be honest um it would be cool to build a massive Park on on this uh this area here cuz then we can say that we've mostly completed the peninsula and then we can start expanding Westward and I'm going to have to start expanding Eastward too because you know the downtown area looks so disproportionate it's pretty crazy so I'm going to have to start getting some suburbs surrounding the city and I'm going to have to expand Auburn as well which I have yet to uh include in a district so um we'll get into that maybe next episode so guys that'll be it for me for today I really appreciate you guys watching my videos um and I hope you enjoy them so if you did enjoy them let me know by leaving a like drop a comment down below be sure to subscribe to the channel and with all that being said and done I'll see you in the next video guys take care

Channel: Timeister

Views: 52,175

Keywords: cities skylines 2, cities skylines

Id: 6cmwxoiwzyQ

Length: 45min 23sec (2723 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 25 2023