A realistic downtown on a single tile

26:54Plays from youtube-nocookie.com after you click · Cedarpoint County - EP 1 - Downtown - Building One Tile at a Time - Cities Skylines 2

What happens in this episode

Cedarpoint County introduced the One Tile at a Time format: pick one tile, build it out completely, and only then move on. The map is one of the standard maps, made usable after the Bridges & Ports update, adjusted to my liking and pre-seeded with a few basic roads. The first tile became a downtown. It took four and a half to five hours of building, cut down to the scenes worth showing.

How it was built

Replacing the highway with a boulevard

The original map runs a two-lane highway through the middle of the starting tile. I removed it and put a custom four-lane road with a grass median in its place, so the tile can be used for a downtown. A second four-lane road adds an alternative route. Then the usual hierarchy: arterials, two-lane roads below them, and alleys here and there to break the pattern and connect the smaller neighbourhoods.

Downtown doesn’t mean only towers

I place most buildings by hand, and the rule is that even a downtown isn’t wall-to-wall skyscrapers. Outside Manhattan, a large part of most city centres is much lower, and in Tokyo the street level feels far less crowded than Manhattan because not every building rises into the sky. Mixing heights gives the skyline variety. The main road through the centre might turn out too narrow later; that’s something for a future episode.

Parking before decoration

In a North American-style city, parking can’t be an afterthought, so the parking lots go in before any decoration, together with footpaths between buildings to keep realistic gaps. Then come the essential services: hospital, police, fire station and schools. This episode runs with unlimited money so the build comes first, with the aim of reaching a sustainable budget later.

I tried to put a radio mast on top of a high-rise, but the mast changes the ground level so much that it doesn’t work there. It’s now tucked away behind the first tower.

Low-rise neighbourhoods and cul-de-sacs

Low-rise areas built from 4×4 houses give more freedom in the road layout and far more room for decoration than towers do. Cities: Skylines II also makes it easy to slip parking lots and small structures under highways, something I love in Japanese cities, and it looks much better than in the first game. A few cul-de-sacs add some North American character, but not too many. Commercial buildings mix in lightly, and the low-rise areas grow until the residential demand starts to drop.

Detailing: nothing is perfectly clean

Decoration is where the city comes alive: bushes, green areas, different grass textures from Sully’s texture packs (the ones I use most), and plenty of dirt patches and road markings. They make the city less polished and less artificial. No real city is spotless, not even Tokyo. One in-town parking area gets food stalls, trucks and grime: the part of town you wouldn’t want to hang around in at night. A final bird’s-eye pass fills the remaining gaps with greenery and paths and straightens a few crooked buildings.

Next up is tile 2: the central train station hub.

Video chapters

1. 00:00The One Tile at a Time idea
2. 02:33Road hierarchy: arterials, two-lane roads, alleys
3. 05:15Parking first, then services
4. 07:56Hiding the radio mast
5. 10:48Low-rise homes and parking under the highway
6. 13:57Cul-de-sacs and filling the tile
7. 17:28Decorating with textures and dirt
8. 21:57A gritty in-town parking area

Clicking a chapter starts the video above at that point.

FAQ