I Played Cities Skylines for 2500 Hours and Here’s What I Learned About City Planning

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Cities Skylines is one the few games that has continued to maintain my attention and has continued to delight me over the past couple years. When SimCity was ended and Maxis shut down, I decided to go take a look at the other city building game that everyone was talking about. Like a refugee fleeing a war zone, I packed up my knowledge of city planning and scooted over to the Cities Skylines universe. I discovered that creating a city in City Skylines was very different but allowed for much more realistic cities than SimCity.

I’ve written about and posted videos about how we could revitalize and remake American urban environments and playing this game has taught me a great deal about city planning. This is especially true because Cities Skylines is an agent based game. The goal of the game is to make it easy for citizens and vehicles to move around the map. I’ve built around 40 cities and only just now have I begun to make cities that are really great. I’ve even started going back to older cities and trying to fix them up and make them both more functional and more beautiful. Players in this game will get fanatical about detailing their cities and they will go all out on placing things to make cities as wonderful as possible.

I’ve learned quite a few things about urban planning while playing this game. The game dynamics aren’t quite the same as the real world (why won’t traffic use all the lanes?!?!) but it is an education in how to deal with all the dynamics of a built space and how people interact in it.

Getting Around

One of the biggest problems any mayor will face in this game is getting citizens moving around easily. Cities Skylines is an agent based game. The real play is making so each agent can spawn, complete its route and return in a timely manner before they simply de-spawn. Dealing with traffic is probably the biggest challenge of the game.

The primary ways of getting around the city for the citizens is walking and mass transit. For mass transit to work well, Transit needs to be convenient and widespread. I found that a mix of transit options is helpful as well. The metro is perfect for local travel, trains for medium distance and air planes for far travel. I also like bus routes to dig into certain districts and neighborhoods. Making it easy to get to the shops, work and leisure is my goal. I like to build neighborhoods with a sense of community, not that the game really rewards that but I like to have leisure areas that are near residential so that people can easily get to and from them using transit or walking.

Dealing with traffic beyond cars is also difficult especially as commercial zones generate little vans that need to pick up and drop off goods for them to sell. Also, with the Industries DLC (more on that late) it generates quite a bit of traffic that has to be managed. Getting industry traffic between where industry is placed, ports, and shops can create plenty of traffic problems all on its own.

Urban Highways

Running an effective city without highways is hard but can be done. I’ve tried both setups in the game. The biggest trouble with running a city without a network of highways is dealing with heavy traffic, especially industrial traffic. In the game, you can setup industrial areas for different kinds of industry and they generate plentiful amounts of traffic. Highways can really relieve this traffic but large roads can also do the trick but that might require additional roundabouts to keep trucks moving at intersections. Highways are also great for dealing with cars but a decent mass transit system can really cut down on car traffic, although not completely.

There is a movement, at present, that is against urban highways. I appreciate this idea but I do think that sometimes an urban highway is a necessary solution for high-traffic corridors. Obviously, alternative transit options are great and certain can move more people more quickly but I’m not completely sold on getting rid of urban highways in their entirety.

Wishing for transit

I wish the US had transit as nice as any of my cities in cities skylines. I try to make it easy for my cims to go car-free. Although the cims don’t go truly car-free, in life, these transit systems would keep any city moving. I make sure that any part of the city can be reached by some form of transit. Every time I’m driving in Seattle I wish I could just recreate any of my transit systems in my own city. Not that we needed it said, but I will say it again, good transit is worth its expense. In the game, keeping it close by, convenient, and running regularly, is very important. Clearing up traffic jams and making sure that transit runs smooth will earn you high transit numbers. In game, it is good to see between 8-10K cims using transit each week across all transit types.

Noise

Citizens in the game are very sensitive to noise pollution. Although you can provide healthcare to them to help, it’s far better to just reduce the noise in the basic design. One of the complaints about the game is that placing commercial areas near residential areas can cause noise. I find that you can buffer that with trees, parks, or offices that generate no noise, provide jobs, and effectively block commercial noise. My biggest trouble is that I like my transit options to be really close to where people are but transit is not quiet. I often have extra noise pollution simply because I’ve put my transit nearby the people. I’ve tested putting it straight through neighborhoods and on the edge. Putting it on the edge is better but that also means you have to have a way for folks to get to the transit depending on the journey.

Neighborhoods matter

One of the biggest complaints about the game mechanics is that good neighborhoods are hard to build due to noise. However, you can overcome this by layering workplaces in between residential and bars/nightclubs. However, having shopping nearby, especially for essentials is also vital. Ask anyone who has lived within 2 miles of their grocery store and they will tell you how great it is. Now imagine being able to walk out of an apartment or house, walk to the grocery store and then maybe hop the train to have drinks with friends later? Now also imagine that your doctor is close by right along with the gym.

In each neighborhood area I took care to make sure that cims could access all city services in a short walk or transit trip. That’s the reality in Europe and in parts of the US. That flexibility and convenience is what makes for a great neighborhood. Although this can cause noise issues (see applicable section) it is much easier to keep those shops busy with plenty of customers if the city is planned in this manner.

Cities have cycles

One of the things the game gets right and I’ve somewhat muted with a mod, is how cities have cycles. People grow up, they get jobs, have children, retire and then die. Cohorts of people do this together because they are the same age. At any given moment, you have groups of people doing this altogether in a city both in the game and in real life. This means that cities go through cycles of growth and expansion and then contraction. Sometimes, it is good to revitalize a city and make necessary updates and repairs. Even in a game where things don’t “wear out” as such, when playing the game long-term, it is important to continuous look for traffic routes that are clogged due to a new development or to create new neighborhoods. Sometimes, especially if you have abandon buildings on (I don’t) you need to bulldoze and let an area redevelop. It is always interesting to watch a new cohort of cims go through school and break out into society taking on various jobs around the map.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

Cities Skylines has an interesting mechanic where the only thing that attracts growth to your city is jobs. This makes sense as it is also true in life. Tacoma, WA would be a great city if it had a major employer. Unfortunately, it is cursed by being between two great cities: Seattle and Portland. In Cities Skylines, managing employment is a constant struggle. You can have too many job openings and you can also have not enough jobs. This gets especially difficult as the education of your workers increases over time. I use a mod to moderate some of the effects of the game. However, for jobs that don’t require much education, it is always good to have a district with poor education services. You can also use city policies to encourage people to go to work instead of stay in school. However, much like in life, everything in the city is powered by jobs, jobs, jobs. No matter how good your education system or how good your universities, you have to make sure that there are jobs available for your cims.

The arts

The arts will not save your city but it’s nice to look at. I always like to plop as much stuff in any given city as I can. I like to build these art districts where there are museums, aquariums, opera houses, libraries etc. in a central area so that it can attract tourism and look pretty at the same time. However, it is still important to have industry and other things happening in your city (like universities). Much like Tacoma, WA the arts won’t save your city but they are nice to have in any city. If the arts generate more high-paying jobs and revenue then it would be a different story. Seeing as they don’t generate as many good jobs as say, a steel plant, it is important to not rely on the arts to keep a city going. The vast majority of folks need somewhere else to work.

First responders matter

Unlike the real world, all your first responders are managed by the city. There’s no pesky special districts and boards to worry about. When they are well placed and well funded they work well, if they are under funded and don’t work well that’s when cascading problems start including sickness, crime, and fires. One of the big complaints about the game is that you can put in a fire station and all the trucks can be anywhere else in the city and not able to respond to a fire right in, what should be their zone/district. I find this convenient because I can plop far fewer fire stations, police stations, and hospitals then normal because the first responders are going to go to wherever the emergency is happening. Getting this balance right is vital to a functioning city, without a robust ambulance/police/fire service things will quickly spin out of control.

Final Thoughts

I still miss SimCity4. I miss the SimCity series. City building was definitely easier. However, I have come to appreciate the realism of Cities: Skylines. I enjoy watching the traffic. I have yet to get traffic much above 75% but that is because I run an increase traffic mod. I have twice the number of max vehicles allowed running and that will snarl the best traffic system. However, I have enjoyed modding cities, using custom buildings, and making giant beautiful cities. I have learned to really enjoy and value this game and I know that I will keep playing for years to come.

I have also come to see the short-falls of different cities across the country, especially when I travel. I can tell a good interstate on-ramp from a bad one. I can often tell why an interchange causes traffic rather than alleviates it. In truth, anyone who is in charge of transportation and planning should have to put in hours in this game and watch what happens with different changes and different scenarios. This is particularly true for politicians. I think this kind of education is invaluable when planning out cities and approving transportation projects. I think understanding how a city works from the inside out should required learning all city council people. Understanding the systems of a city and how a city works would be invaluable knowledge to have at the city and regional level.