How To Create a City Park Area in Cities: Skylines

The City Park is the first type of custom park area you can build in Cities: Skylines’ Parklife DLC.

You can build this starting at the Tiny Town population milestone which, depending on the map, can happen anywhere from 360 to 1,500 citizens.

Here’s the exact steps required for creating a custom park area:

Painting a park area
Placing a gate
Adding paths and attractions
Leveling up between levels 1-5

We’ll take you through the basics of setting up your park area, and some tips for making it more profitable.

Step 1: Paint a Park Area

Start by deciding on a location for your park. It’s always a good idea to put a city park near your residential zones, as this will help those residences level up.

Once you’ve picked a place, go to the Districts and Areas menu, and select Paint Park Area.

Draw over the area that you want your park to occupy. Make sure there is at least one road that is leading into, or along the perimeter of, your park.

The Paint Park Area tool from the Districts and Areas menu.

Step 2: Place a Main Gate

Next, go to the City Park tab of the Parks and Plazas menu.

Select a main gate—the Park Main Gate or Small Main Gate will both do the same job—and place it within your park area (it will need road access).

Placing down this main gate will automatically designate it as a Level 1 City Park area.

Go to Parks & Plazas (1), and click on the City Park tab (2) to build a main gate.

Step 3: Add Attractions

From this point on, you’re free to build your park however you like. Under the City Park tab, you’ll find paths that you can place for people to walk around in your park.

Creating paths to connect your different park attractions.

Then start placing the city park attractions that you’ve unlocked, making sure they’re all connected by paths.

These buildings and decorations come with different costs and entertainment values.

Place various attractions from the city park tab along your paths. You can add multiple instances of an attraction or building to accumulate more entertainment points.

If you want to add other entrances at different parts of your park, you can do so by placing side gates there, and building paths to them.

Step 4: Level Up Your Park

All park areas can go from level 1 to 5, with each level unlocking more features for that area type.

Leveling up your park requires hitting milestones in the number of visitors, and the entertainment points.

Clicking the name of your park on the map will bring up info such as the visitor count, attractiveness, and profits.

Reaching the number of visitors will generally just be a matter of time, as long as your park isn’t completely bare or located completely out of the way for your citizens.

On the other hand, hitting the required attractiveness points will mean adding more city park buildings and decorations.

Tip: Create a Park That Will Serve as a Pedestrian Shortcut

To make your park profitable, you want to get as many citizens visiting it as possible.

A great way to do this is to build your park in such a way that they can pass through it as a shortcut to get to their destinations (e.g, industrial or office zones where they work).

Your citizens will be happy to pay the park fee if it would allow them to take a quick walk instead of having to drive.

This popular park area has a footbridge that spans a large road, allowing people easy pedestrian access to an office district.

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Liz Villegas

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Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

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