Zoning in Cities Skylines allows you to decide what kind of houses, shops, and factories you want to build on a specific piece of land and also adjust the location of these areas. This is an essential part of Cities Skylines as it allows one to give structure to your city.
Similar to Sim City, Zoning in Cities Skylines is done by designating specific parts of land for constructing housing and other buildings.
Whenever you assign an empty region a specific zone type, it will gradually start spawning buildings that go according to the type of zone. These buildings will be of varying sizes and will have a type of structure and function unique to each zone.
How Zoning Works in Cities Skylines
Zoning works hand-in-hand with building roads, so make sure you are aware of both zoning and road design when you manage empty spaces in your city.
Empty plots available for zoning are visible as white squares between local roads within a city. These blocks are then assigned different zone types, after which the respective buildings are made on them.
In order to start zoning, you’ll need to create a road structure that can support it. Once you have created the road, you will need to use the Zoning tool to fill in the areas available for zoning.
There are three sub-tools to do this:
- Fill – The fill tool allows you to assign zones to complete vacant regions in Cities Skylines.
- Marquee – This tool gives you extra control of your zoning – you can draw a square-shaped area, and all zone cells within that area will be assigned to the selected zone type.
- Brush – Brush tools allow zoning by “coloring” the empty cell. This zoning tool comes in two sizes.
Zoning Types Explained
You can create various types of zones in Cities Skylines. The categories they are divided into are based on the types of buildings they will spawn. These include:
- Residential – Residential zones provide housing for citizens.
- Commercial – Commercial zones will have shops and other services selling the goods produced in the industrial zones.
- Industrial – Industrial zones offer jobs for people and products for the commercial zones.
- Office – Office zones provide pollution-free jobs for higher tech-level citizens, but they produce only a tiny amount of goods.
Residential
Residential buildings should be away from noise and industrial pollution and will generally make up the core of your city. It’s not that such buildings will act very differently from City Service buildings, but there are certain factors you will have to consider. The first and most important is leveling.
After specific requirements are met, Residential Buildings in your residential zones will level up. Higher-level residential buildings will provide better living conditions for your citizens and will also be able to tolerate higher taxes.
When a building levels up, you’ll hear a sound, and it will start showing reconstruction. However, residence leveling is closely tied to education level in Cities Skylines.
Buildings can have a level from 1 to 5. In order to achieve level 4 or above, you will need to have a university. Also, increasing the land value of a zone will play a role in leveling your building.
In order to increase the land value of a residential area, you will need to invest in improving the leisure rating. Leisure is enhanced by adding parks and other recreational sites near residential buildings.
Lastly, there are two types of densities of residential zones: low-density and high-density zones.
- Low-density residential zones will have 2-5 households, will be upgraded into nice villas, and are usually occupied by families. High-density residential zones will have 9-24 households, will be upgraded into tall buildings, and are usually occupied by adults.
- High-density Residential zones will be unlocked once the population exceeds 7,500. There are numerous benefits of using high-density zones, but there are also massive downsides as well.
Generally, high-density zones allow you to cram more citizens in less space, and the aesthetics that come with tall buildings are also lovely. However, they have several massive downsides. The biggest of all is that they tend to over-crowd the roads that run next to them.
For this reason, you should start with only a handful of high-density residential zones and a good bit of low-density residential ones. However, be wary of de-zoning well-established low-density zones, as it can have a lot of negative effects.
Commercial
The Commercial zone comes next after the Residential area and will contain shops, markets etc., and other services. These services will include selling those products that were taken in as raw materials in the industries and came out as consumable goods to be sold in the Commercial zones in Cities Skylines.
Moreover, this particular zone will also be available at the beginning of the game. The commercial zones are further specialized into three things, namely, tourism, leisure, and organic and local produce in cities’ skylines.
As the commercial zones are linked with the industries, these zones contribute equally in terms of pollution. Moreover, the traffic in these zones is often congested in those cases where the consumable goods have to be exported from neighboring cities.
There are two types of Commercial Areas in Cities Skylines:
- Low-Density Commercial Zones
- High-Density Commercial Zones
The only difference between both of these zone types is that the Low-Density Commercial zone requires less educated civilians and comprises a shorter zone. On the other hand, the High-Density Commercial Zones are comprised of a large commercial zone and need skilled and educated people to operate in these areas.
This way, the job rate produced at high-density commercial zones is much higher than the one in low-density commercial zones in cities’ skylines.
Industrial
Industrial zones comprise specialized industries that can be set in specific areas to process raw materials in cities’ skylines. However, these zones must be placed in those areas that are abundant in raw materials.
Once the raw materials are extracted, they are then sent to the generic industries, which process these materials and turn them into goods for import and export.
Moreover, Industrial buildings should be connected with roads so that the processed goods can be transported using trucks. These goods are then taken to the commercial zones, where they are sold to the residents in Cities Skylines. There is no DLC required to set up any of the 4 Industrial Specialization which include:
- Farming
- Forestry
- Oil
- Ore
The Industrial Zones also require those workers who have an average level of education. Keep in mind that Industry Zones tend to produce a lot of pollution as the Industries contribute their share of Air and Ground pollution in Cities’ Skylines.
Office
The office Zones can be set up anywhere and require educated citizens to operate these places. Unlike the Industry zones, the office zones do not need raw materials and can function in any area that you select in your city.
Office Zones do not produce pollution as the office buildings are used by civilians and level up much faster compared to Industrial areas in Cities Skylines.
Moreover, Office Zones cater to the needs of those citizens who have higher education levels. This way, their requirement for educated workers is much greater than in the industrial zone in Cities Skylines. However, the Office Zones specialization includes
- Financial Offices
- IT Clusters
- Office Wall to Wall Buildings
In order to operate these in Cities Skylines, you will need to have subscribed to the mini-expansion DLC and the expansion DLC as well.
For these buildings, you should keep an eye on the Capacity/Efficiency, vehicles in service, and upkeep costs. Generally, it is a good idea to build offices near industrial zones for improved efficiency.
Municipal
These are government buildings in Cities Skylines, which include the likes of Police Stations, Court House, etc. This zone is essential in keeping checks over the law and order in your city. Moreover, the Municipal Zones are manually placed and also offer services such as Fire House to deal with Fires caused in different parts of your City in CS.
De-zoning in Cities Skylines
You can de-zone already-created zones if you like and utilize the empty zone for other types of buildings. However, while de-zoning, you need to take a lot of things into consider. The first and foremost is the level and general value of the buildings.
If you are planning to de-zone a residential area with high-level buildings, you will lose a lot of educated citizens, which can have a detrimental impact on your city.
It is usually advisable to consider de-zoning only after your city has been developed well enough and when you are running out of space.
