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Plazas & Promenades Dev Diary #1: Pedestrian Areas

Greetings mayors, and welcome to another set of Dev Diaries! Are you excited about Cities: Skylines Plazas and Promenades? Over the course of the next two weeks, I will walk you through all the new content from pedestrian areas and streets to new specializations and service buildings - and plazas of course! And without further ado, let’s have a look at the announcement video:


At the center of Cities: Skylines Plazas and Promenades we have pedestrian areas and streets, which give you the tools to create neighborhoods focused on walkability. These will work to reduce traffic as well as noise pollution. To ensure you are able to create areas suited for your specific city, the pedestrian areas work with all existing zoned buildings!

Creating Pedestrian Areas
Pedestrian areas take advantage of the Area Tool, which you may be familiar with already. It can be found in the Districts and Areas menu and becomes available when you reach Milestone 3 - Tiny Town. Paint over empty land if you want to create a new pedestrian neighborhood, or over an existing part of your city if you wish to turn it into a pedestrian area. Like other areas and districts, it can be adjusted later as needed.

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Paint a pedestrian area to unlock service points

Once you are satisfied with the area, it’s time to place a Service Point, which can be found in the Pedestrian Areas menu under Parks & Plazas. Service points are essential to pedestrian areas as most vehicles, including garbage and delivery trucks, are not allowed on pedestrian streets. Instead, garbage is automatically collected from buildings on pedestrian streets to be picked up at the service point. Similarly, resources, goods, and mail are all routed through the service point, so make sure it’s placed on a road that can handle increased truck traffic!

Service points come in two different sizes and three different types: The general Service Points, which cover all the listed needs, Garbage Service Points, which focus on waste management, and Cargo Service Points, which handle resources, goods, and mail.

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Service points are vital for your pedestrian areas

The different service points are important as they each have a capacity and if the area exceeds this, some buildings on pedestrian streets will not have their needs taken care of. Large pedestrian areas will need more service points to provide for the buildings on pedestrian streets, and depending on the mix of buildings in an area, you may need a higher capacity for garbage collection or cargo delivery.

Pedestrian Streets
With the pedestrian area created and a service point placed, it’s time to place pedestrian streets! These paved roads can only be used by walking or biking citizens and, when necessary, emergency vehicles like ambulances, hearses, police cars, and fire trucks. As citizens are the main users of the pedestrian streets, vehicles have to obey slow speed limits unless responding to an emergency.

We have included a lot of variation in the pedestrian streets so that you can customize the look and feel of your areas. There are 3 styles: Sandstone, Bluestone, and Cobblestone, which come in two different widths. Each street also comes with 5 different variations with things like added grass, trees, and bus-only lanes. That’s a total of 30 different pedestrian streets for you to choose from!

1-3 Pedestrian streets.png

Bluestone on the left, Sandstone in the middle, and Cobblestone on the right

As you’re building your pedestrian streets, you may go outside the pedestrian area you defined earlier. If that happens, the streets will automatically extend the area to follow them. This option can be enabled or disabled when placing the streets. Pedestrian streets can also be placed outside pedestrian areas, but keep in mind that any buildings placed on these streets will need a pedestrian area and a service point to function.

Lastly, pedestrian streets come with a cool new little feature: Bollards automatically appear at the entrance to pedestrian streets to discourage vehicles from entering. When a vehicle needs to enter or exit the pedestrian street, they will stop and wait for the bollards to retract into the street before driving past. Isn’t that cool?

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Bollards retracting for a waiting police car

That’s all we have for you this time! In the next Dev Diary, we’ll cover the management and progression of pedestrian areas, so stay tuned for more information on Monday at 4PM CEST / 7AM PDT! And don’t forget to check out the video tutorial by Overcharged Egg below:


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I wanted to add my voice to the general consensus that the “paint a district” feature is being overused. I think it has some merit in general, but I think that the developers should take a step back and consider how it can be improved on a general level, instead of just doing a 'new dlc = new district' model. I'd say being able to mix and match the district functionalities more should be an option, as well allowing them to develop more organically. The city planner is not really the one who is also planning out the university and park layouts.
 
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No, just like Campus and Park Areas can't overlap, Pedestrian Areas can't overlap with other areas.



Pedestrian streets can be used anywhere, but if buildings are zoned/placed on them, you will need a service point to take care of them.
How does it work with campus buildings that don't need a road connections (most of them)? Will we be able to place them along along pedestrian streets without problems, or will this create problems? Same for parks.
 
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Here's a thought.

As the ped zones are utilising the Parklife mechanics, coupled with the acheivement, does this mean that each zone can only be resi, commercial or office, or are you able to mix them?
Yeah, unfortunately.
Or at least that's what it seems they said. I asked same question but... its the weekend now.
I'm sure there will be more details in the next 2 weeks.
 
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I'm not completely convinced

Yeah, unfortunately.
Or at least that's what it seems they said. I asked same question but... its the weekend now.
I'm sure there will be more details in the next 2 weeks.

Appreciate not everyone has perfect eyesight but it is clearly shown in the video that you can. Go to 1:26.
 
Appreciate not everyone has perfect eyesight but it is clearly shown in the video that you can. Go to 1:26.
I just don't know why I still had "I'm not completely convinced" there when I deleted it ;) i started writing it few hours earlier about something else and then deleted it.

As far as I remember they have written about 3 different specialisation zones (it is actually in the oncoming DLC description: "we added 3 new district specializations: offices, high-density residential areas, and high-density commercial areas"), they haven't showned that yet in any video, and it seems that pedestrian zone is a 4th zone or a painting area. Unless this pedestrian zone changes everything, including the types of buildings popping up there.
Which is gonna be a nightmare to start creating all those old building assets again for them to be allowed to grow in that area.
If someone wanted an old town and they already have created one, having all those modern buildings growing around old town square is going to be ... disappointing to say the least.
Not sure now if that new DLC is such a good idea.
 
I believe those new specialisations are district specialisations like the green cities and base game industrial ones so they work independently of the pedestrian zones. This would make the most sense to me.

Im looking forward to finding out more about these specialisations because the description mentions them having the wall to wall buildings and having gameplay effects.
 
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After how poor the last few DLCs were, I was not expecting something this good. I’m interested in how this pans out. I wish more of the DLCs had been about these kinds of fundamental changes to cities.
 
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After how poor the last few DLCs were, I was not expecting something this good. I’m interested in how this pans out. I wish more of the DLCs had been about these kinds of fundamental changes to cities.
Airports wasn't too bad, but yeah Sunset Harbour was a bit of a mess even though it did provide some extremely useful features and Campus was fine for the stadiums.
 
Airports wasn't too bad, but yeah Sunset Harbour was a bit of a mess even though it did provide some extremely useful features and Campus was fine for the stadiums.
Well... I consider them completely the other way around - with Sunset Harbour being most interesting, various and useful, Airports coming second place because of being useful only in one area of the city, and Campus... oh well... I may find a use for it at some point... maybe after few drinks (as any student does anyway).
 
Airports wasn't too bad, but yeah Sunset Harbour was a bit of a mess even though it did provide some extremely useful features and Campus was fine for the stadiums.
They were all incredibly cosmetic, and if you watch the LGR reviews he goes into how many no brainer features were missing. They're all just the Parks DLC over and over again.

For me the best DLCs were industries and the disasters one. Cities Skylines often feels like it's not a paradox published game with how much of the gameplay is just making a city that looks the way you want, not an actual simulation with interesting choices.
 
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So many great questions! Some will be answered in more detail as the dev diaries come out, but if not just ask again. :D

Are we able to place mass transit stations like train and metro stations and stops for blimps/helicopters within the pedestrian areas?
Yes! Personally, I keep adding metro stations to my Pedestrian Areas.


A little bit dissapointed to see the bus only roads being classed as pedestrian streets. Its good that we can use them out of pedestrian areas though but unfortunately this can only happen if we don't zone any buildings on them.
A non-pedestrian bus-only road would end up in the same situation: Cargo and garbage wouldn't be able to access the buildings on those roads, so you would run into the same issue as a pedestrian road without a Pedestrian Area.


Are there any plans for service points that utilize rail or if not is there anything preventing such to be modded?
We haven't included any, but off the top of my head, there shouldn't be anything preventing modders from making service points with built-in cargo rail (or even harbors or airports).


Do you intend to provide 1-square-wide pedestrian streets in this DLC?
If not, then consider this a feature suggestion.
No 1-square wide roads or pedestrian streets in this DLC I'm afraid, I'll add them to the community wishlist :)


Do Park/Industrial Areas count towards the district limit? Are they included in it?
If so, can we have the limit increased four-fold? at least ;) 128 is too few
Areas and Districts have separate limits, so 128 Districts and (if I remember right) 128 Areas. Hopefully, that should be enough!


Not too fond of how the service points are implemented. Looks like something that is highly exploitable. What's stopping the player from making the entire city a pedestrian district, thus removing the need for cargo and garbage trucks to enter the city at all? Also, if you were to build particularly small pedestrian zones, having to build one in each district would take up valuable space.
Traffic to the service points is the limiting factor. I'm sure we'll see some crazy setup with rows of service points, incinerators, and cargo stations/industry that will be able to handle it, but the larger your pedestrian area, the more service points you will need and the traffic needs to be spread out between them. It's probably doable, but it does take more than just painting a pedestrian area over the entire city.

As for small pedestrian areas, the smallest service point is 2x8 tiles, so pretty compact. But you can also do islands of the same pedestrian area if there isn't much traffic for the service point to handle. :)


Will different style roads like cobblestone be available also for regular roads or only for pedestrian?
BTW get rid of current police car please, most cars look okay but you can see on that video that police car has attrocious proportions and doesn't look like an actual car. Something Ford Crown Vic inspired would be much better.
I'm afraid cobblestone, sandstone, and bluestone only apply to the new pedestrian streets.


As the ped zones are utilising the Parklife mechanics, coupled with the acheivement, does this mean that each zone can only be resi, commercial or office, or are you able to mix them?
Each Pedestrian Area can have a focus (more on that in today's dev diary), but you can have a mix of zone types in an area and still maintain the zone focus you want. So you aren't locked to only having for example offices in a pedestrian zone.


How does it work with campus buildings that don't need a road connections (most of them)? Will we be able to place them along along pedestrian streets without problems, or will this create problems? Same for parks.
Pedestrian streets are roads and a Campus/Parklife Area will treat them like roads, which means garbage will not be collected through the main building. As Campus buildings require a Campus Area they can't be integrated into a Pedestrian Area, but Parklife buildings can be used as regular parks/plazas in a Pedestrian Area.


I believe those new specialisations are district specialisations like the green cities and base game industrial ones so they work independently of the pedestrian zones. This would make the most sense to me.

Im looking forward to finding out more about these specialisations because the description mentions them having the wall to wall buildings and having gameplay effects.
This is correct. The new district specializations are similar to the ones you know from the base game and expansions like Green Cities and After Dark. They can be used with pedestrian areas or on their own, and we'll cover how they work Wednesday the 7th of September.
 
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Pedestrian streets are roads and a Campus/Parklife Area will treat them like roads, which means garbage will not be collected through the main building. As Campus buildings require a Campus Area they can't be integrated into a Pedestrian Area, but Parklife buildings can be used as regular parks/plazas in a Pedestrian Area.

That's rather disappointing.
 
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This feature of being able to change trees should work on all streets with trees. Also future streets.. would be weird if they would exclude those new ones..
I think so.
But a pity it doesn't work with trees of rocks.