How to Create Realistic Zoning Districts in Cities Skylines [Tutorial for Beginners]

[Music] have you been struggling to make your cities look more natural do your cities end up looking a little bit more like manhattan than you'd prefer are your cities completely gridlocked even if you followed the rules of roadway hierarchy well all of these problems can likely be attributed to your land use and or zoning decisions and today i'm going to explain how to make your cities look more natural by using the in-game zoning tools more effectively i have a few mods enabled to improve the visuals and ease the tutorial along but none of these mods are essential and information in this video should be applicable to all versions of the game on all platforms but before we get into that i want to explain the difference between land use and zoning land use is the generalized planning categories for what sort of development is planned for a given area general categories can include things such as residential commercial office industrial institutional protected green space for parks etc in the example i'm showing each of the following blocks though very different would be considered residential land uses zoning on the other hand is derived from land use and contains the intensities and specific uses that may or may not be allowed in a given area in the example i'm showing each of the zoning categories for this land use category would be defined individually based on the form or intensity desired in the given area this is important to understand because on a land use map the intensity of the use is not defined so heavy industrial uses such as factories might be indistinguishable from cleaner quieter light industrial uses such as distribution centers on a zoning map these two uses would be well defined and easy to differentiate from one another which is important because the form size trip generation and noxious externalities produced from these uses will be very different as a demonstration of how different these concepts are here's the future land use map of boulder colorado there are 23 districts that define the future land uses for the city compare that to the zoning map which has 38 individual zoning categories without even diving into any of the overlay districts that can have an impact on the form of the buildings within each of these zoning categories so at this point you might be thinking well city skylines only has six zoning classifications i'll never be able to create a realistic city and if you only use the zoning districts without applying policies or specializations you'd be right the six zoning districts provided if used alone are much more akin to land use classifications than zoning districts however if you apply specific planning policies and district specializations the number of zoning districts that you can create is basically endless so let's talk about residential districts obviously you can easily zone both low and high density zoning districts in addition you can create the following zoning districts with a bit of creativity a mid-rise zoning district by adding the high-rise ban policy to a district which ostensibly prevents buildings from reaching level five low and high density high-tech housing zoning districts by applying the high-tech housing policy to either a low or high-density zoning district and a mid-rise high-tech housing district by applying both the high-rise ban and the high-tech housing policy to a district and lastly a high or a low-density self-sufficient housing zoning district by adding the self-sufficient building specialization to a district which is available if you have the green cities dlc mixing these policies and district specializations leaves you with eight possible housing districts of varying intensities as is evident in this time lapse the form and size of these buildings is dramatically different strategically mixing these districts within your city will leave citizens with a variety of housing options the same is true of commercial districts as well with some caveats to be aware of as with residential districts you can zone both high and low density commercial districts and create a mid-rise zoning district by applying the high-rise ban to a district in addition you can use the leisure and tourism specializations which are available with the after dark dlc or the organic and local food specializations to further diversify your commercial zones the latter of which is available with the green cities dlc you may notice that i've checkered in the zoning for both the high density and tourism districts i've done this to ensure the maximum density in the area considering a 4x4 square will maximize density there's no other reason for this besides that be aware that the density and intensity of the district's specializations is fixed the leisure district is always a mixture of low and mid-rise buildings for instance whereas the tourism district is always a mixture of high mid and low rise buildings really with the balance going towards high-rise buildings and the organic and local foods district is always a low-rise district regardless of the underlying base zoning in any of these districts this means that there are a total of six commercial zoning districts that you could create office districts are a bit more limited again there's the base district which by default is a high density zoning district similar to the residential and commercial districts a mid-rise district can be created if the banned high-rises policy is applied to a district with the green cities dlc an it cluster district specialization can be added to create a district of some of the tallest high-rises available in the vanilla game similar to the district specializations in the commercial district the density is fixed for the it cluster specialization so you will not be able to limit the heights of the buildings this means that there are a total of three office districts that you could create [Music] last but not least industrial districts in addition to the general industry zoning can have a variety of district specializations which include forestry farming or and oil district specializations generally these specializations should only be used if the raw material is available in the area in which you wish to apply this district specialization you could also freestyle and create a couple of unique districts imagine creating a district with the industry 4.0 policy applied to it which changes the educational attainment needed to work in the district by reducing the number of workplaces and increasing the educational attainment required to work there or creating a clean industries district so long as you have the green cities dlc by applying the filter industrial waste policy to a district these would create unique districts and leave you with a total of seven unique industrial districts and this is in addition to the factories that are available with the industries dlc by creating a variety of unique zoning districts you can more naturally transition between lower intensity uses to higher intensity uses such as those that you might find in town centers or in downtown cores further you could gradually transition between districts that might otherwise be incompatible the end result of using a greater variety of zoning districts is the creation of cities that are much more visually interesting and true to life even the base version of the game and as a reminder even when your uses are highly segregated make sure that you make key connections between the districts using bike and pedestrian connections this will greatly reduce your traffic volumes on your main roadway network and allow people to have another option to get to where they need to go i hope that you found this video educational and interesting if you have please consider liking the video subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell if you'd like to know when i make new videos thanks for watching i'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: City Planner Plays

Views: 670,951

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Id: gjjvpE5KCKs

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020