In the last video, I built this road layout, which will be the foundation
of this city’s downtown hub. I’m really excited to start developing
and detailing this area of the city and see how it will turn out in the end. But
first, there’s something we need to do. You see, I want high-rise offices to
be a fundamental zoned building type for this layout, just like in any
other downtown metropolis, right? The thing is, we don’t have any office demand. And I think that’s because we don’t have
proper education in the city to provide the certifications that students
need to work at these offices. After all, the city only has a
couple of elementary schools so far. So I thought in this video, we could focus on creating a couple of
detailed layouts dedicated to education. I start with the layout for the high school. I chose this location
between downtown and midtown, next to the highway because there
was plenty of space to build here. The high school has this football and track field
extendable asset, which takes a lot of space, and I definitely wanted to include it in my high
school, so this area will be perfect for it. The campus is complemented with a soccer
field and a couple of tennis courts, as well as a custom-made park structured with a
set of pathways that provide ample walking access. In fact, I extend the pathway over the railroads and connect it directly to the
downtown area on the other side. Doesn’t make a lot of difference now, but
when the area is developed, citizens will be able to easily walk between midtown and
downtown and contribute to less traffic. I complement the area with some small shops, zoned right next to the avenue, as
well as some additional parking lots. For detailing, I add some trees to the
front of the school to try and make the entrance more eye-catching. I also
outline the entire area between the front of the high school and the road with bushes. I extended the custom-made park to the other
side of the highway entrance with pathways that tunnel under the road and eventually connect
to the midtown, which is already developed. Again, this will promote walkability in the city. By this point, I had a lot of residential demand,
especially high-density, so I decided to start the development of the downtown and give the
city its first skyscraper, as well as some commercial buildings to complement it and an
initial pathway network to connect everything. This was all I could do here with the
current residential and office demand, but I came back to this area later in this
video and made some cool developments, so you might want to stick around for that. The high school is conveniently located right
in the middle of both downtown and midtown, making it easy for students to travel
here, no matter where they live. I chose to build the school on
a local road rather than on the avenue itself. I believe this decision
will assist with traffic management. This choice allows me to situate
a bus stop directly in front of the school entrance without
disrupting the traffic flow on the avenue whenever a bus needs to
stop to pick up or drop off passengers. As it currently stands, the
game is coded in a peculiar way. Students take very little
time to graduate from high school compared to other educational facilities. Because of that, there's never a
high number of eligible students. So, I assume that this single high school will
suffice to serve both midtown and downtown. However, if necessary, I can further
expand it with an extension wing. The entire campus is encircled by a pathway
network that connects it to both midtown, crossing the highway entrance, and
downtown, traversing the railroads. I've also arranged the infrastructure to
link it to the other side of the highway, which remains undeveloped at this point. The road layout in front of
the high school will serve as a transition area between midtown and downtown. It will not only accommodate residential
structures but also essential service buildings such as post offices, taxi
depots, and a public transport hub. Oh, but what’s that in the back? Another campus? Seems like this one is a college,
so let’s see how it was built. The college was built in the opposite
direction of the high school, in the area between the road
layout and the rail system. The entrance of the college was connected to both
existing avenues, but with a diagonal orientation. I also had to terraform and level the terrain
a little bit, so it doesn’t look terrible. After placing the college building, I started
by building a sports complex at its left side, composed of a football field, a soccer field, a
community pool, and a couple of basketball courts. I think this is pretty standard
for a realistic college campus. I then built around the college
and made some half circles. I think these will look cool
to make the area more imposing. I then moved on to build an area
dedicated to student housing, on the right side of the college, but I first
needed to adjust the terrain for the tram rail. Also, notice how close the tram is to the campus. This will make traveling to college
very easy from anywhere in the city. For the housing, I used the 4-block
long medium-density residential, which is the same type of
residential I used in midtown. These buildings all look the same, so I think they’re adequate for
a housing complex for students. The student housing is complemented
with a parking lot and some small shops, so students have everything they need
to survive without leaving the campus. At least in theory. The central part of the campus, in front of
the university, is going to be a big welcome park. I add some trees on the sides of the
roads and also add some dedicated bus lanes. I made the bus route go behind the commercial
and residential, with a dedicated bus road. I lost a bit of symmetry with this design, but
I think it makes it look a bit more interesting. Now for the welcome park, I did this very
cool design, built with the curved road tool. I do love the road building tools of Cities
Skylines 2, when compared to the previous game. It’s certainly easier to make
these interesting shapes. I then detailed the pathways with
bushes and trees to make it pretty. I won’t include the entire detailing process in
the time-lapse because it’s mostly tree planting, which is a repetitive and time-consuming
process and perhaps even boring to watch, but I’ll include the important parts. The layout is extended for the library,
which is placed behind the main building, and I then create this big semi-circle in the
back, which will be dedicated to luxury houses. All roads are converted to pedestrian roads here,
to make it a walkable and traffic-free area. The park encapsulates the entire
college so I continue building it on the sides of the building, using the
same techniques that I used on the front, and try to create some interesting
patterns for people to walk in. I noticed that the gray area on the floor at the
side entrances of the library extends towards the roads when you build next to them, so I’m assuming
people can get into the building from here? So I built some access roads and also a pathway
in the back connecting directly to the park. After the layout for the park was
done, I could then do the housing. This could be housing for wealthier students, who can afford to not live in an
apartment but in a large house instead. The area is close to the railroad, so
realistically, I’m not sure if it would have a high land value and if people would
be willing to pay large amounts to live here, so I might turn this circular street
into a commercial street instead. But anyway, for the time being, I used these bushes to give each house its
own private outdoor area, creating parcels. These bushes were all hand-placed for all
houses, which took a huge amount of time. Finally, I used the same thought
process as the high school and surrounded everything with a pathway network
in a man-made park for walkability purposes. Overall, I like the design of the college campus. However, I’m a bit sad that these
man-made big parks with pathways don’t actually work as parks and contribute
to increasing the leisure effect in the area. I also wish the game had a bigger variety
of trees and bushes to make it more diverse, but I think that’s something
that will come with time. Anyhow, I tried to create patterns
by planting trees in some areas and leaving others empty to make the
park more visually interesting. I also used this technique to distinguish the
housing land from the college park in the back. Although public transport is not active
yet, the area is very well-covered with bus access and a tram rail, which
will make the college very accessible. As I predicted at the beginning of the video, developing the education system of
the city contributed to office demand. So, we can finally start
zoning those purple offices. For the downtown area, I want to
mix different types of buildings. I aim to incorporate residential,
office, commercial, and mixed zoning, creating diversity. I think
that will look really cool. I also want to avoid turning this area
into a messy collection of buildings. Even though it’s meant to be dense and populated, I want to add some open areas here and
there, in the form of plazas and small parks. Parking lots contribute to a certain openness,
but, of course, they don’t look as nice. Because this isn’t a rectangular grid, there
will be a lot of empty spaces between zoning. I'd gladly turn these into small open green
areas for citizens to enjoy some fresh air. Pathways will help to
accentuate the walking areas. I spent a lot of time outlining buildings
and pathways with trees and bushes. When in doubt, just plant some trees;
they make everything look better. So, I managed to develop and detail
an entire section of the downtown. Overall, the final result was a nice
surprise as I really liked how it turned out. Not all areas will be zoned like this, as I
want to dedicate some areas for hospitals, police stations, and other services. In fact, I had to place a temporary medical clinic because ambulances were
taking a long time to get here. I’m considering disabling parking on the
sidewalks of roads where it makes sense, like the arterials and key access points, but
overall I like to see cars parked on roads, as it gives me an idea of which areas
require more dedicated parking spaces. If I were to disable parking
everywhere, I could not tell this. Unfortunately, saplings take a long time to grow, so we’ll have to wait to see how this
area will look when trees are fully grown. But hey, that’s another reason for you
to come back for future videos, right? In the next one, I’ll finally start
developing the public transport, I promise.
