I was thinking something similar to this, though I thought maybe tweaking it from just Desire, to Désirée, the name, so it also gives a little history to the area. That being said, I kind of love the idea of it originally being named after a founder named Désirée, but Desire Heights was the unofficial nickname, because people enjoyed the play on words because of the streetcars, and now, folks just know it as that.
Your blue tram route could really use with a stop in the middle to allow easy transfer on to the red route! Would greatly increase the usefulness of the line.
@@kajmaklover Downtown to Port Liability is too long imo (from the game standpoint). I'd expect a different mode of transport for this in the future (direct train or bus line)
A tip from real-life street railways: Very often tram stops on signalized intersections are placed so that the trams stop immediately before the signal. So on an East-West-road, the east-bound tram stops on the west site of the intersection and the west-bound tram stops on the east-side. That way, if bunching occurs, trams don't block the intersection (very relevant for this game). Trams also don't have to stop twice in short succession when encountering a red light. They just dwell a bit longer if necessary. An example would be the Universitätsstraße tram stop in Cologne.
The slope at 19:10 is a reasonable slope for a *cable car* like they have in San Francisco, but I’m not sure if a tram could handle it. I think the max grade on my local light rail system is something like 5% though, so they can definitely handle decent slopes, but I think 15% might be a stretch 🧐
Huh, I wouldn’t have thought that. But would make sense I guess. The cable cars or old streetcars (like in El Paso or Lisbon) are single car vehicles and modern trams are typically articulated with multiple cars. I’m trying to remember from my trips to Europe if there were any steep trams I’ve been on.
@@SiderealRails oh wow! I took the DLR out to Greenwich Royal Observatory when I was there a few months back. I wonder what part of the line that’s on. I’ve not yet been to Portland, but one of my goals for next year is to get to Cascadia
also cable cars don't have internal engines but attach to moving cables, essentially the same concept as on rollercoaster hill climbs. So they can really handle any slope@@anthonyfrushour537
This is one thing that I’ve been struggling with most while building my cities. My cities never have the same vibe as the old Swiss cities I’m used to IRL. Thank you for making this vid.
As a European I absolutely love trams and I think the difference between the two really does show the difference between North American and central European city design perfectly. Just to throw out a name - Loop de ville, a bit naff but I found it amusing
Hi from another European there! I personally like the trolley-buses more, since those can also avoid obstacles thanks to not being confined to a fixed track. But trams also have their uses, so yeah, to each their own.
This is such a fun way to approach it. My enjoyment of this kind of game is so much higher when I slow down and think carefully about what I'm doing. The moment I start mass gridding and zoning without a thought is the moment I need to take a break
@@witchblade9888 I find that I run into a lot more issues when I hardscope the demand meter. I think of the meter as more of a “if I wanted to start a project what zoning could I use?” If I have low density C&R and a small bit of industry I’ll make a small rural suburb with a couple farms and just a few houses for workers.
Hey, I've really been enjoying the series but I have 1 little suggestion (is it really a suggestion, I don't know ^^). Would it be possible, at the end when you do a city tour, to do a tour at night time also? I think that it would be a cool addition to see how the city lights up at night
There’s an old timey trolley suburb where my grandmother lived called Aldan. Maybe if this town were called something like Aldan Hills because of the pre-development terrain it would be a nice legacy name. No more hills sure but it was named before they were developed
It's really cool to see you lay out a city factoring in historic tramways like this - as someone who lives in a city where they didn't rip them up, it's very realistic.
I would love to have building themes for different decades, and then an optional rescale of the game clock to go through years/decades instead of months, advancing the build theme as it goes. This would naturally make the layers of history for a realistic town, and could be achievable through DLC (or even a nice mod collection!)
really cool would be if you had the option to progress through centuries, so you wouldn't have to deal with electricity at first, but all of your industrial would have to be by the water. Then, you would have to choose to either demolish old buildings, or keep them and have a higher tourist/culture value to your city
A little thing about tram stops. It's best to place them right before the crossing, so that when green lights turn on cars won't stuck behind the tram. And it looks a little bit nicer to have crosswalk between stops. And as for the name of neighborhood I suggest "Tram Crossings" since the core of that district is crossing tramways
We have an area of Preston commonly referred to "The Birdcage". It has a similar grid layout, with all the streets named after birds. Housing in it is primarily terraces (row homes) and there's even an old tram depot. The greater area, called Deepdale, is also home to the city's football club, Preston North End, built within walking distance so its fans could get there on match days.
The "streetcar" system you first mention, that connected a municipal center with a farming community, those weren't, at least in Canada and the USA, streetcar systems, they are known as interurban systems. And they were actually built to connect already existing communities that lacked for one reason or another, a railroad connection. They not only carried fare paying passengers, but mail, and small car loads of frieght. Streetcar suburbs were built by owners of the first urban streetcar transit systems ( yes, most early streetcar transit systems were privately owned),the streetcars brought the "customers" to the new suburbs. In later years, usually the 1920s and 1930s, private SC lines were either both by their municipalities and were the basis of publicly funded mass transit, or abandoned. Great vid.
Given the large numbers of hills I'd propose naming the new suburb Highland after Highland in Denver, another great example of a turn-of-the-century streetcar suburb. It was definitely in my head while you were building, and the area feels like it could have a similar history where a separate city formed across a geographical division, and was later absorbed into the larger main city as it grew.
Is this series over? It was incredibly helpful following along building a city with it and I would love see more game features such as airports, harbors, and passenger trains explained and shown! It would also be neat to see how to tie all of these larger areas together as the city expands. I've started other cities since but I would love to keep following along with this one!
Love the expansion! I really like how you skipped the roundabout to avoid traffic back up. I always put my bus stops/trams just before the intersection so when they’re stopped they don’t block the intersection. I live near an intersection where the bus stop is just after the light and there’s always back up/near miss accidents whenever a bus stops there.
I am so glad to see you an older grid pattern. I grew up in a western railroad town. The grid there is about 115m by 50m with an alley through the middle. It was immensely walkable, especially since the whole town was a mile across in essentially any direction.
minor thing but you don’t have to swap to the one-way tram or bus tool when adding lanes on one-way streets, the game automatically will make it one-way. you can also select the two-way bus lane and it’ll add those in both directions (like on the 4-lane avenues) so you don’t have to go up and down with the one-way
As someone who grew up in Melbourne, Australia, which today has the largest tram network in the world, let me offer two pieces of advice: 1. Tram lines historically were always in the centre of the road, not the gutter. That is a modern trend. 2. Tram stops at intersections were never both on the same side of the traffic lights. They were always diagonally opposite each other. This is because since the tram lines were in the centre of the road, a way had to be found for pedestrians to safely get on and off. The law for all tram stops in Melbourne was (and is) that the tram had to come to a complete stop and other vehicles had to stop behind the tram before pedestrians were allowed to enter or exit. In practice, since trams had to stop at red lights like every other vehicle, putting the tram stop at the lights where the tram had to stop anyway killed two birds with one stone.
For naming the new suburb, I honestly love the generated name! Birdsong peak is beautiful! Though "peak" doesn't fully suit it, so maybe we can do Birdsong Heights!
It might help to view the "bus lanes" as "public transit lanes", at it sounds like that's largely how they function with how you've shown they can dedicate a lane to trams. It's another way to encourage public transit because the traffic is going to be lighter on those lanes, and if some citizen movement prioritizes time to arrival, that could actually work well in game (even if the numbers don't seem to show that right now). Using the bus lanes to separate tram lines also makes sense, as if the trams were in the middle with a divider, more people would have to cross the street to get to the tramp stop (or back across to their destination). The "public transit lanes" means there are fewer things to stop a tram between stops and keeps pedestrians off the road, making traffic potentially faster and safer.
Overtime I learned to keep the trams out of the roundabouts and also to just have them go down their own dedicated tracks next to a street. And it doesn't hurt to grade separate intersecting roads
I've never seen an American streetcar suburb with a road layout quite like this, with the frontage roads and all. What I've seen in most places is long rectangular blocks with the narrow parts of the blocks facing the main road, the one that had the historic trolley line on it. The reason developers oriented the blocks like that was because they wanted to maximize direct access to the trolley, and they made the blocks long leading out from the trolley in order to save money on street construction.
I feel like the most jarring thing about this new area is the height difference between the arterials and surrounding suburbs. While purely zoning-wise, what you did is more accurate; it looks a bit odd from a top down (particularly because CS2 doesn't do 3 story buildings too well), and I'd be worried about noise without a tree buffer of some sorts. I would either zone row housing along the frontage streets, or eliminate the half-blocks between the frontage streets and arterials and replace it with a dense green buffer.
The "trams" in San Francisco are cable cars that pull the vehicle up the hill. A streetcar or light rail has limitations similar to heavy traditional rail.
I think this is my favourite of all the builds you've ever done. That's probably because it looks a lot like my corner of south London which sprang up in the 1920s after the extension of the Northern line tube - a similar time period and story to American streetcar developments. There are examples in South London of neighbourhoods that didn't exist until the tube network was extended, and that consequently were essentially named by the train companies. Colliers Wood near me is one such example, being named for a charcoal-producing woodland that used to stand there. I suggest this place should also be named for one of the rural features it subsumed. Given the trees in proximity to water here, we could call it Willow Grove.
A thought about the blue line, make that one have a stop by the school. So instead of a school bus, you have a school tram if you like. Could make the usage more prevalent or at least acceptable to why it’s not as used as the others
Places like "Birdsong Peak" typically have an official name, and a more gritty local nickname that the residents call it. I don't know what the official name will end up being, but the nickname could be "The Rails"
If I may, I suggest calling one of the lines the Verde Beach Line, and for some fun, say that the route uses old trams from the older tramlines in Verde Beach.
Thanks as always for your content. Quick suggestion, you may want to move the tram stops that are right after an intersection closer to the center of a block so that the trams don't hang into the intersections while stopped.
I think some buildings on the frontage roads should be upzoned to row houses. It makes more sense because they are so close to the stops and amenities yet aren't on the arterial road, making them highly valuable. It will also help increase tram ridership. Also maybe add some pedestrian connection between the frontage roads and the arterial roads, to facilitate movement easily into the downtown.
You can remove traffic lights (or put them on) by clicking and dragging down your arterial through the intersections you want. Same with side walks but less control with that
As a midwesterner, I definitely wish for a renewed focus on walkability and public transit. Modern suburban developments are sprawling areas of low density residental, typically with one park for the entire neighborhood and no shops, and it can be a 10-15 minute walk from one end of the neighborhood to the other. It's great for "privacy", but requires that you own a car. My parents' neighborhood built in the '70s was already like this, and it's only gotten worse with newer developments.
Made me tear up when you said you appreciated our time for watching your video. I just really needed to hear that today for some reason. Thank you for making these videos, I love watching them. Have a fantastic day!
I wish we lived in the timeline where trams were still common. There's still some artifacts in my neighborhood from the tram that ran through over a hundred years ago, carrying people from the farming community my house is currently in all the way downtown and back. There's even a property a couple blocks away in between a soft corner the tram used to take and the hard right the street does now, like a weird triangle lot with a curved-in base. Those vestigial bits are way more appealing than the vestigial bits leftover from when we finally defeated Robert Moses' attempts to add three times as many highways coming out of the waterfronts, which would have utterly destroyed what are now some of the most walkable neighborhoods in all of the US. There's little stubs of elevated highway still hanging around overhead from when the highways were going to be built... Now if we just had the trams still, instead of the light rail that we have now. Don't get me wrong, the light rail is awesome when I need to get to the airport or one specific place downtown, but it's not a great option if you don't live really close to a station.
i wish the game had a story mode or something in which instead of a highway junction you start with a train station and maybe a rural road with 'older' architecture styles and then it changes through time. Its much more realistic to how cities originally started
I agree. The European version would start you with a train station, the north american version would start you with a 1 mile by 1 mile grid of township roads.
I have found good success in using the parallel network tool when using paths to block zoning! You can set it to 0.5 width or so, then just trace the sidewalks of whatever road i'm trying to block zoning
I had a very similar experience with trams, which was one of the reasons I watched the video - to pick up any tips that I missed regarding placement and utilization. Alas, my trams through downtown remain well below peak usage, while my bus lines are bursting at the seams. They cover a similar area, so that may be part of it, but my lines are through the densest part of my city and still have low ridership. Bummer! Great video~!
Looks great! Love the idea of making the city as if it was founded a longer time ago and how it affects the city layout, thats something I've been doing and imagining as well. Also a fan of the smaller, more compact zoning!
In case you didn't realize, a quicker way to get the transportation Overview panel is to click on the button at the bottom, next to the economy button.
Yet another excellent video. Perhaps Tram Hills for the newest district? Can't wait till they come out with some new decorations. Benches, seating, food trucks and perhaps some chess tables for the parks or frisby golf goals. It'll definitely give the parks more life.
The modular house on cinderblocks reminds me of a queenslander put up during the 1950's. Raising houses up was the safest bet for a long time due to costs, most of the state being cyclonic and sub-cyclonic (so a flood resistant house is a big plus) and a myriad of reasons. During the late 40's and early 50's a lot of housing was being made using prefabricated materials from repurposed wartime factories, due to this the timber posts traditionally used transitioned to concrete blocks and the construction got much simpler and more stout.
I'd call it "Engagement Heights" formerly "Hickory Heights" in honor of a battle fought at one point in the distant history of the area. Though local historians mostly agree it stems from a battle fought mid 1700's during the American-Indian war. The cleared hill would have had excellent views of the local area and provided safe artillery positions along with the rivers acting as natural barriers. Naturally a small town developed around what was a small army camp, that fell into neglect when the soldiers had left. However with the advent of the street cars and under smart management, development began to boom in the late 1800's, bringing life back to the small town. :D
I discovered this channel today (12/23). I have watched EXCLUSIVELY this series all day. 6 hours, and I regret nothing! This is the rabbit hole I have been waiting for.
So, Phil, are death-waves no longer a thing in CS2? I watch you zone massive areas with wild abandon (well, to amount, not placement), and am wondering if they fixed that particular messy result of mass zoning in this version?
Since you imagine this neighbourhood was developed around 1900 I looked into the names of neighbourhoods in Holland form around that time. If the name is not based on something geographical it usually refers to something calming. I think it comes from the garden city movement which was popular around that time. So I propose something a combination of 1) calm, peace, hush, tranquill, fresh and 2) hills, grove, quarter, ville, creek. If you can't find a nice combination, every Dutch city has a painter's quarter, almost always from the 19th century, where all the streets are named after famous dutch painters.
Edinburgh's tram network was extended this year to cover Leith, a historic, waterside area of the city (and once a city in its own right!) So how about New Leith?
My brain initially read that as New Leaf - which made me think animal crossing - someone else mentioned this was midway between two other communities - so Leith Crossing?
I live in a former streetcar suburb (West Philadelphia) and I'm convinced that for all but the center of the very biggest cities it's the ideal urban form
In the same vein as the Jane Goodall Institute and the Bob Ross Memorial Interchange, how about Rogers Hill in honor of Mister Fred Rogers and his neighborhood trolley.
I have to agree with the NA homes. I was disappointed to see almost all of the not-large homes were modular or trailers. I can't wait for CC Packs. And I'm jealous to see you can just zone wherever and the single family homes can go anywhere. I always have an issue with the road being red (not ideal place) and nothing will spawn there. I know it's tied to city services, but my "housing developments" are much smaller than what you did here. A new city I just started yesterday, which is less than half the size of what you just added in this video, and wouldn't let me place any single family homes more than 1 neighborhood away from the city services. I had all the schools, fire, police, and clinic fairly centered, made my first neighborhood on one side of the collector, then the 2nd on the other side of the collector and half of the area was red. All city services were on a side road right off the main arterial just after the collector the neighborhoods connected to, and the schools were about a block away from the first, not actually in the neighborhood. I usually zone them as a neighborhood all to themselves so traffic doesn't get out of hand through each area. And in CS2 it's just the elementary (after the first) since no one seems to us the HS, which is odd in itself. In my first city with 45k+ population, I have like 4 Elementary schools which are all full and/or almost full, 2 Colleges, 1 University, and 2 HS. The 2nd HS was just for looks... I do like the way the asset looks. I made a "School Zone" where the University, the second College, a 2nd HS and another Elementary were made into a huge development block. But the HS's only have like
I love learning how you layout a city! I've never been good at this, but thanks to your videos I feel like im slowly starting to think about things before building. Thanks!
For the next Cities: Skylines, it'd be nice to see construction and paving crews come out to physically build these roads and have their activity impact traffic like it does in real life
I love this. I'm building the same city while watching this series. cheers.
10 місяців тому
I like the Birdsong part because it reinforces the fact that it used to be a forest. Maybe 'Birdsong Coupling' meaning it created a junction between the port and the big city. Something related to the fact that it brought those two places together. If it were a train town I would see fit something like "Roadsmeet" ahah, but idk, just brainstorming ideas
Thanks for the history on the layouts with this one. It was super insightful and I love getting the cool historical details in there. As soon as I was done watching it popped open Google maps and started looking at the road layouts around Milwaukee and you can visibility see exactly what you were talking about with the grid sizes. Honestly, I think it would be fun to do some off-kilter bridges like Milwaukee has from when they were literally fighting over which side of the river was the controlling road grid (probably without the canons that were involved in that fight).
In honor of the imminent GTA reveal, may I suggest Malibu? the hottest club in Vice City circa 1986. I'm not particularly fond of Malibu, but its the only appropriate Vice City tie-in I could think of. _____ May I suggest rotating the elementary school so that the school gates are closer to the tram station? Also, maybe increase the density on the frontage roads parallel to the tram collectors? It'll help with the transition between the mixed-use/office/commerical and the single family homes. Excellent work like always, Phil.
This was fun to watch, thanks! 18:33 the game showed you the tracks will be sloping quite a lot even before you built them. I suppose a better idea would've been to elevate the terrain under the depot to the same level of the main street.
11:46 I think this local access bridge for the trams should be the same height as the highway bridge because this is where shipping will come through. I know it would be a tall order, pun only slightly intended, but in the long run, it would be good to not block the shipping traffic?
Name suggestion for "Birdsong Peak": It is a bit Europe centric, but could be cool. In German you can say Tram instead of Street car, so maybe play with that and use something like Tramton
Personally ,when I hear "streetcar suburb", my mind automatically goes to Los Angeles with the Pacific Electric. So maybe a play on Hawthorne, Huntington Park, Rosemead, etc.
I don't know how this guy manages to be so much better at designing realistic cities than I am 😅 Honestly this guy is amazing Great work as usual City Planner Plays!
Hickory Heights for this name. Maybe plant more hickory trees if that’s the decision to make it more appropriate. Thanks for the vid, I need to lower my block sizes on the next town in my city. This makes for a good contrast to the larger building/block areas. Your grid layouts are so beautiful, I’m always trying to take pointers from your videos on this. Cheers!
I think if you were to get that lesser utilized tram line ( 3 I think) to go straight over to the industrial area it would better get those 5000+ people to their jobs in industry. As far as a name for your new Suburb, my submission would be The Midland Downs. Or just go strait Arrested Development and go with Sudden Valley.
30:56 Honestly, you should have made FOUR (or three) districts as opposed to ONE because you are planning to expand both past the highway and down into the peninsula. Making four of these makes sure if when you expand you can expand the districts as well, and you would not need to redo services and which building(s) serve with districts.
"Elysian Estates": Inspired by New Orleans' Elysian Fields, known for its wide, tree-lined streets, birthplace of the city's famed streetcar line. A slow moving, upscale area desirable for it's proximity from downtown and it's small, boutique shops, restaurants, and hotels... A beautiful (and expensive) university on the water may fit nicely with the people that live here. That arterial that terminates at the water could be the perfect spot.
Few things have made me quite as mad as knowing that my city used to have a broad-reaching (for the time, at least) streetcar network that regularly operated at twice its available capacity until it was demo'd to save money during the Great Depression. It's mind blowing how such popular infrastructure was destroyed only to get replaced by endless traffic.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do with Trams/Buses on Cities: Skylines is build a park and ride system bringing people into the city who have travelled by car from off-map or surrounding satellite towns/villages, which should now be easier given there are carpark assets in vanilla, just not sure that the AI would utilise it as intended.
I think the area for Birdsong Peaks is a bit too large compared to the main city. I suggest splitting the district in four, using the main 2 streets as a base line. Maybe you can name each district something like "West Corner", "Northern Corner" "South Corner" and East Corner"
Yerkes' Square, named after the infamous public transport baron Charles Tyson Yerkes, who established public transit - notable streetcars - in Chicago and had trams as part of his unified network in London, which ultimately gave rise to the London Underground system we know today.
Since it's a streetcar suburb, may as well call it Desire Heights. Giving a nod to both the small hills in the area and of course, the famous play.
Yeah, I was thinking of something Heights, too. I just couldn't come up with anything. Great idea.
That's a great suggestion, seconded.
Stella!
I was thinking something similar to this, though I thought maybe tweaking it from just Desire, to Désirée, the name, so it also gives a little history to the area.
That being said, I kind of love the idea of it originally being named after a founder named Désirée, but Desire Heights was the unofficial nickname, because people enjoyed the play on words because of the streetcars, and now, folks just know it as that.
What a fantastic idea!
Your blue tram route could really use with a stop in the middle to allow easy transfer on to the red route! Would greatly increase the usefulness of the line.
@@kajmaklover Downtown to Port Liability is too long imo (from the game standpoint). I'd expect a different mode of transport for this in the future (direct train or bus line)
A tip from real-life street railways:
Very often tram stops on signalized intersections are placed so that the trams stop immediately before the signal. So on an East-West-road, the east-bound tram stops on the west site of the intersection and the west-bound tram stops on the east-side. That way, if bunching occurs, trams don't block the intersection (very relevant for this game). Trams also don't have to stop twice in short succession when encountering a red light. They just dwell a bit longer if necessary.
An example would be the Universitätsstraße tram stop in Cologne.
The slope at 19:10 is a reasonable slope for a *cable car* like they have in San Francisco, but I’m not sure if a tram could handle it. I think the max grade on my local light rail system is something like 5% though, so they can definitely handle decent slopes, but I think 15% might be a stretch 🧐
Huh, I wouldn’t have thought that. But would make sense I guess. The cable cars or old streetcars (like in El Paso or Lisbon) are single car vehicles and modern trams are typically articulated with multiple cars. I’m trying to remember from my trips to Europe if there were any steep trams I’ve been on.
Apparently the DLR in London hits 5.9% at one point. And the MAX light rail in Portland, OR goes up to 7 on a connection to a bridge!
@@SiderealRails oh wow! I took the DLR out to Greenwich Royal Observatory when I was there a few months back. I wonder what part of the line that’s on. I’ve not yet been to Portland, but one of my goals for next year is to get to Cascadia
also cable cars don't have internal engines but attach to moving cables, essentially the same concept as on rollercoaster hill climbs. So they can really handle any slope@@anthonyfrushour537
The J-Church line in San Francisco has a maximum grade of 9% running by Dolores Park, so that’s not outrageous.
This is one thing that I’ve been struggling with most while building my cities. My cities never have the same vibe as the old Swiss cities I’m used to IRL. Thank you for making this vid.
Same over here.
But you have to admit. Our old little towns and cities in switzerland, are special to say the least.
As a European I absolutely love trams and I think the difference between the two really does show the difference between North American and central European city design perfectly.
Just to throw out a name - Loop de ville, a bit naff but I found it amusing
Hi from another European there! I personally like the trolley-buses more, since those can also avoid obstacles thanks to not being confined to a fixed track. But trams also have their uses, so yeah, to each their own.
Where in central europe for you both? Prague here, and trams are great! It's sad to see places in US cities that used to have them...
Saint-Petersburg here, and we had the biggest tram network on Earth, but now it’s being dismantled
@@sksipinsky dumb stuff happens when your country is run by nazis
I‘m from Berlin and i really like Tram‘s. Not only to use them, but also to watch them. Most of them are really beauty. 😅
This is such a fun way to approach it. My enjoyment of this kind of game is so much higher when I slow down and think carefully about what I'm doing. The moment I start mass gridding and zoning without a thought is the moment I need to take a break
This.
I’ve found thinking about a project before I get on, finding inspiration, doing the build, and logging off as the most effective strategy.
It's pretty easy to get lost in the urge to fill your citizens want for more residential / business / industry with mass gridding
@@witchblade9888 I find that I run into a lot more issues when I hardscope the demand meter.
I think of the meter as more of a “if I wanted to start a project what zoning could I use?” If I have low density C&R and a small bit of industry I’ll make a small rural suburb with a couple farms and just a few houses for workers.
41:40 that path taking out an entire row of housing... man, for something that isn't a horror game CS2 sure does have some jumpscares
Hey, I've really been enjoying the series but I have 1 little suggestion (is it really a suggestion, I don't know ^^). Would it be possible, at the end when you do a city tour, to do a tour at night time also? I think that it would be a cool addition to see how the city lights up at night
There’s an old timey trolley suburb where my grandmother lived called Aldan. Maybe if this town were called something like Aldan Hills because of the pre-development terrain it would be a nice legacy name. No more hills sure but it was named before they were developed
It's really cool to see you lay out a city factoring in historic tramways like this - as someone who lives in a city where they didn't rip them up, it's very realistic.
I would love to have building themes for different decades, and then an optional rescale of the game clock to go through years/decades instead of months, advancing the build theme as it goes. This would naturally make the layers of history for a realistic town, and could be achievable through DLC (or even a nice mod collection!)
really cool would be if you had the option to progress through centuries, so you wouldn't have to deal with electricity at first, but all of your industrial would have to be by the water. Then, you would have to choose to either demolish old buildings, or keep them and have a higher tourist/culture value to your city
This is kind of what transport fever 2 does.
sims city 4 has exactly this feature
A little thing about tram stops. It's best to place them right before the crossing, so that when green lights turn on cars won't stuck behind the tram. And it looks a little bit nicer to have crosswalk between stops. And as for the name of neighborhood I suggest "Tram Crossings" since the core of that district is crossing tramways
We have an area of Preston commonly referred to "The Birdcage". It has a similar grid layout, with all the streets named after birds. Housing in it is primarily terraces (row homes) and there's even an old tram depot. The greater area, called Deepdale, is also home to the city's football club, Preston North End, built within walking distance so its fans could get there on match days.
The "streetcar" system you first mention, that connected a municipal center with a farming community, those weren't, at least in Canada and the USA, streetcar systems, they are known as interurban systems. And they were actually built to connect already existing communities that lacked for one reason or another, a railroad connection. They not only carried fare paying passengers, but mail, and small car loads of frieght. Streetcar suburbs were built by owners of the first urban streetcar transit systems ( yes, most early streetcar transit systems were privately owned),the streetcars brought the "customers" to the new suburbs. In later years, usually the 1920s and 1930s, private SC lines were either both by their municipalities and were the basis of publicly funded mass transit, or abandoned. Great vid.
Nothing better than waking up on a Saturday and finding a new video in this series!
Given the large numbers of hills I'd propose naming the new suburb Highland after Highland in Denver, another great example of a turn-of-the-century streetcar suburb. It was definitely in my head while you were building, and the area feels like it could have a similar history where a separate city formed across a geographical division, and was later absorbed into the larger main city as it grew.
Is this series over? It was incredibly helpful following along building a city with it and I would love see more game features such as airports, harbors, and passenger trains explained and shown! It would also be neat to see how to tie all of these larger areas together as the city expands.
I've started other cities since but I would love to keep following along with this one!
I've always loved your focus on the city's story!
Love the expansion! I really like how you skipped the roundabout to avoid traffic back up. I always put my bus stops/trams just before the intersection so when they’re stopped they don’t block the intersection. I live near an intersection where the bus stop is just after the light and there’s always back up/near miss accidents whenever a bus stops there.
I am so glad to see you an older grid pattern. I grew up in a western railroad town. The grid there is about 115m by 50m with an alley through the middle. It was immensely walkable, especially since the whole town was a mile across in essentially any direction.
minor thing but you don’t have to swap to the one-way tram or bus tool when adding lanes on one-way streets, the game automatically will make it one-way. you can also select the two-way bus lane and it’ll add those in both directions (like on the 4-lane avenues) so you don’t have to go up and down with the one-way
As someone who grew up in Melbourne, Australia, which today has the largest tram network in the world, let me offer two pieces of advice:
1. Tram lines historically were always in the centre of the road, not the gutter. That is a modern trend.
2. Tram stops at intersections were never both on the same side of the traffic lights. They were always diagonally opposite each other. This is because since the tram lines were in the centre of the road, a way had to be found for pedestrians to safely get on and off. The law for all tram stops in Melbourne was (and is) that the tram had to come to a complete stop and other vehicles had to stop behind the tram before pedestrians were allowed to enter or exit. In practice, since trams had to stop at red lights like every other vehicle, putting the tram stop at the lights where the tram had to stop anyway killed two birds with one stone.
For naming the new suburb, I honestly love the generated name! Birdsong peak is beautiful! Though "peak" doesn't fully suit it, so maybe we can do Birdsong Heights!
It might help to view the "bus lanes" as "public transit lanes", at it sounds like that's largely how they function with how you've shown they can dedicate a lane to trams. It's another way to encourage public transit because the traffic is going to be lighter on those lanes, and if some citizen movement prioritizes time to arrival, that could actually work well in game (even if the numbers don't seem to show that right now). Using the bus lanes to separate tram lines also makes sense, as if the trams were in the middle with a divider, more people would have to cross the street to get to the tramp stop (or back across to their destination). The "public transit lanes" means there are fewer things to stop a tram between stops and keeps pedestrians off the road, making traffic potentially faster and safer.
Overtime I learned to keep the trams out of the roundabouts and also to just have them go down their own dedicated tracks next to a street.
And it doesn't hurt to grade separate intersecting roads
I've never seen an American streetcar suburb with a road layout quite like this, with the frontage roads and all. What I've seen in most places is long rectangular blocks with the narrow parts of the blocks facing the main road, the one that had the historic trolley line on it. The reason developers oriented the blocks like that was because they wanted to maximize direct access to the trolley, and they made the blocks long leading out from the trolley in order to save money on street construction.
I love the idea of the street car. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn there were a lot of ideas of revitalizing the tracks.
Big fan of mass transit!
I feel like the most jarring thing about this new area is the height difference between the arterials and surrounding suburbs. While purely zoning-wise, what you did is more accurate; it looks a bit odd from a top down (particularly because CS2 doesn't do 3 story buildings too well), and I'd be worried about noise without a tree buffer of some sorts.
I would either zone row housing along the frontage streets, or eliminate the half-blocks between the frontage streets and arterials and replace it with a dense green buffer.
The "trams" in San Francisco are cable cars that pull the vehicle up the hill. A streetcar or light rail has limitations similar to heavy traditional rail.
your cinematic city tour edits are amazing 👏
I think this is my favourite of all the builds you've ever done. That's probably because it looks a lot like my corner of south London which sprang up in the 1920s after the extension of the Northern line tube - a similar time period and story to American streetcar developments.
There are examples in South London of neighbourhoods that didn't exist until the tube network was extended, and that consequently were essentially named by the train companies. Colliers Wood near me is one such example, being named for a charcoal-producing woodland that used to stand there. I suggest this place should also be named for one of the rural features it subsumed. Given the trees in proximity to water here, we could call it Willow Grove.
One of my favourite parts of playing Cities Skylines is road layout, always so satisfying
A thought about the blue line, make that one have a stop by the school. So instead of a school bus, you have a school tram if you like.
Could make the usage more prevalent or at least acceptable to why it’s not as used as the others
Places like "Birdsong Peak" typically have an official name, and a more gritty local nickname that the residents call it. I don't know what the official name will end up being, but the nickname could be "The Rails"
If I may, I suggest calling one of the lines the Verde Beach Line, and for some fun, say that the route uses old trams from the older tramlines in Verde Beach.
Thanks as always for your content. Quick suggestion, you may want to move the tram stops that are right after an intersection closer to the center of a block so that the trams don't hang into the intersections while stopped.
I think some buildings on the frontage roads should be upzoned to row houses. It makes more sense because they are so close to the stops and amenities yet aren't on the arterial road, making them highly valuable. It will also help increase tram ridership. Also maybe add some pedestrian connection between the frontage roads and the arterial roads, to facilitate movement easily into the downtown.
You can remove traffic lights (or put them on) by clicking and dragging down your arterial through the intersections you want. Same with side walks but less control with that
As a midwesterner, I definitely wish for a renewed focus on walkability and public transit. Modern suburban developments are sprawling areas of low density residental, typically with one park for the entire neighborhood and no shops, and it can be a 10-15 minute walk from one end of the neighborhood to the other. It's great for "privacy", but requires that you own a car. My parents' neighborhood built in the '70s was already like this, and it's only gotten worse with newer developments.
the city tour was just "look at all of this beautiful forest we wiped out". I'd argue the city is even more beautiful though. Excellent build!
That song with the bells that came in when he transitioned to trams was powerful
Made me tear up when you said you appreciated our time for watching your video. I just really needed to hear that today for some reason. Thank you for making these videos, I love watching them. Have a fantastic day!
I wish we lived in the timeline where trams were still common. There's still some artifacts in my neighborhood from the tram that ran through over a hundred years ago, carrying people from the farming community my house is currently in all the way downtown and back. There's even a property a couple blocks away in between a soft corner the tram used to take and the hard right the street does now, like a weird triangle lot with a curved-in base.
Those vestigial bits are way more appealing than the vestigial bits leftover from when we finally defeated Robert Moses' attempts to add three times as many highways coming out of the waterfronts, which would have utterly destroyed what are now some of the most walkable neighborhoods in all of the US. There's little stubs of elevated highway still hanging around overhead from when the highways were going to be built...
Now if we just had the trams still, instead of the light rail that we have now. Don't get me wrong, the light rail is awesome when I need to get to the airport or one specific place downtown, but it's not a great option if you don't live really close to a station.
i wish the game had a story mode or something in which instead of a highway junction you start with a train station and maybe a rural road with 'older' architecture styles and then it changes through time. Its much more realistic to how cities originally started
I agree. The European version would start you with a train station, the north american version would start you with a 1 mile by 1 mile grid of township roads.
19:04 “not a reasonable slope for a tram”
Trams in Lisbon: 😎
I have found good success in using the parallel network tool when using paths to block zoning! You can set it to 0.5 width or so, then just trace the sidewalks of whatever road i'm trying to block zoning
39:00 The houses do change over time to MUCH nicer homes, but only when they're like, max level. The trailers are temporary.
I had a very similar experience with trams, which was one of the reasons I watched the video - to pick up any tips that I missed regarding placement and utilization. Alas, my trams through downtown remain well below peak usage, while my bus lines are bursting at the seams. They cover a similar area, so that may be part of it, but my lines are through the densest part of my city and still have low ridership. Bummer!
Great video~!
Looks great! Love the idea of making the city as if it was founded a longer time ago and how it affects the city layout, thats something I've been doing and imagining as well. Also a fan of the smaller, more compact zoning!
In case you didn't realize, a quicker way to get the transportation Overview panel is to click on the button at the bottom, next to the economy button.
Yet another excellent video. Perhaps Tram Hills for the newest district? Can't wait till they come out with some new decorations. Benches, seating, food trucks and perhaps some chess tables for the parks or frisby golf goals. It'll definitely give the parks more life.
The modular house on cinderblocks reminds me of a queenslander put up during the 1950's.
Raising houses up was the safest bet for a long time due to costs, most of the state being cyclonic and sub-cyclonic (so a flood resistant house is a big plus) and a myriad of reasons.
During the late 40's and early 50's a lot of housing was being made using prefabricated materials from repurposed wartime factories, due to this the timber posts traditionally used transitioned to concrete blocks and the construction got much simpler and more stout.
The city tour editing has gotten amazing! Lovely vibes :)
I'd call it "Engagement Heights" formerly "Hickory Heights" in honor of a battle fought at one point in the distant history of the area. Though local historians mostly agree it stems from a battle fought mid 1700's during the American-Indian war. The cleared hill would have had excellent views of the local area and provided safe artillery positions along with the rivers acting as natural barriers. Naturally a small town developed around what was a small army camp, that fell into neglect when the soldiers had left. However with the advent of the street cars and under smart management, development began to boom in the late 1800's, bringing life back to the small town.
:D
Make cities walkable again. The early 20th century wasn't great for a lot, but city planning was so much better
I love these videos. I'm having a lot of fun in my own cities and I constantly pick up gear toys from your builds.
Excellent stuff as always. Appreciate the attention to detail and breakdown.
I discovered this channel today (12/23). I have watched EXCLUSIVELY this series all day. 6 hours, and I regret nothing! This is the rabbit hole I have been waiting for.
So, Phil, are death-waves no longer a thing in CS2? I watch you zone massive areas with wild abandon (well, to amount, not placement), and am wondering if they fixed that particular messy result of mass zoning in this version?
Since you imagine this neighbourhood was developed around 1900 I looked into the names of neighbourhoods in Holland form around that time. If the name is not based on something geographical it usually refers to something calming. I think it comes from the garden city movement which was popular around that time. So I propose something a combination of 1) calm, peace, hush, tranquill, fresh and 2) hills, grove, quarter, ville, creek. If you can't find a nice combination, every Dutch city has a painter's quarter, almost always from the 19th century, where all the streets are named after famous dutch painters.
city tours are my fav part of your videos, they're so SATISFYING to watch 🤩🤩🤩🤩
19:40 to make a direct connection of the tram you could have replaced the station a bit further to create a slope on the side of the hill.
suburbs done right! this neighborhood is an instant classic, it serves any lifestyle you could want
Edinburgh's tram network was extended this year to cover Leith, a historic, waterside area of the city (and once a city in its own right!) So how about New Leith?
My brain initially read that as New Leaf - which made me think animal crossing - someone else mentioned this was midway between two other communities - so Leith Crossing?
I love this new community! Very good inspiration!
Watching you makes me realize how bad I am at Cities Skylines, lol. Great management. Loving your videos man. Cheers
I live in a former streetcar suburb (West Philadelphia) and I'm convinced that for all but the center of the very biggest cities it's the ideal urban form
In the same vein as the Jane Goodall Institute and the Bob Ross Memorial Interchange, how about Rogers Hill in honor of Mister Fred Rogers and his neighborhood trolley.
I have to agree with the NA homes. I was disappointed to see almost all of the not-large homes were modular or trailers. I can't wait for CC Packs.
And I'm jealous to see you can just zone wherever and the single family homes can go anywhere. I always have an issue with the road being red (not ideal place) and nothing will spawn there. I know it's tied to city services, but my "housing developments" are much smaller than what you did here. A new city I just started yesterday, which is less than half the size of what you just added in this video, and wouldn't let me place any single family homes more than 1 neighborhood away from the city services. I had all the schools, fire, police, and clinic fairly centered, made my first neighborhood on one side of the collector, then the 2nd on the other side of the collector and half of the area was red. All city services were on a side road right off the main arterial just after the collector the neighborhoods connected to, and the schools were about a block away from the first, not actually in the neighborhood. I usually zone them as a neighborhood all to themselves so traffic doesn't get out of hand through each area.
And in CS2 it's just the elementary (after the first) since no one seems to us the HS, which is odd in itself. In my first city with 45k+ population, I have like 4 Elementary schools which are all full and/or almost full, 2 Colleges, 1 University, and 2 HS. The 2nd HS was just for looks... I do like the way the asset looks. I made a "School Zone" where the University, the second College, a 2nd HS and another Elementary were made into a huge development block. But the HS's only have like
I love learning how you layout a city! I've never been good at this, but thanks to your videos I feel like im slowly starting to think about things before building. Thanks!
For the next Cities: Skylines, it'd be nice to see construction and paving crews come out to physically build these roads and have their activity impact traffic like it does in real life
love this! Changes how I think about the tram networks for my games.
I love this. I'm building the same city while watching this series. cheers.
I like the Birdsong part because it reinforces the fact that it used to be a forest. Maybe 'Birdsong Coupling' meaning it created a junction between the port and the big city.
Something related to the fact that it brought those two places together. If it were a train town I would see fit something like "Roadsmeet" ahah, but idk, just brainstorming ideas
Thanks for the history on the layouts with this one. It was super insightful and I love getting the cool historical details in there. As soon as I was done watching it popped open Google maps and started looking at the road layouts around Milwaukee and you can visibility see exactly what you were talking about with the grid sizes. Honestly, I think it would be fun to do some off-kilter bridges like Milwaukee has from when they were literally fighting over which side of the river was the controlling road grid (probably without the canons that were involved in that fight).
This is honestly my favorite suburb you’ve built. Def going to try something similar
In honor of the imminent GTA reveal, may I suggest Malibu? the hottest club in Vice City circa 1986.
I'm not particularly fond of Malibu, but its the only appropriate Vice City tie-in I could think of.
_____
May I suggest rotating the elementary school so that the school gates are closer to the tram station?
Also, maybe increase the density on the frontage roads parallel to the tram collectors? It'll help with the transition between the mixed-use/office/commerical and the single family homes.
Excellent work like always, Phil.
This was fun to watch, thanks!
18:33 the game showed you the tracks will be sloping quite a lot even before you built them. I suppose a better idea would've been to elevate the terrain under the depot to the same level of the main street.
Nice looking city. Building grid & tram tracks 1st makes sense. I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't get the mobile homes!
I could watch your city tours all day, they are masterfully edited 🙌
11:46 I think this local access bridge for the trams should be the same height as the highway bridge because this is where shipping will come through. I know it would be a tall order, pun only slightly intended, but in the long run, it would be good to not block the shipping traffic?
Name suggestion for "Birdsong Peak": It is a bit Europe centric, but could be cool. In German you can say Tram instead of Street car, so maybe play with that and use something like Tramton
Personally ,when I hear "streetcar suburb", my mind automatically goes to Los Angeles with the Pacific Electric. So maybe a play on Hawthorne, Huntington Park, Rosemead, etc.
I like the name Interlochen (literally between the lakes) and as a node to the German heritage of the area
I don't know how this guy manages to be so much better at designing realistic cities than I am 😅
Honestly this guy is amazing
Great work as usual City Planner Plays!
Hickory Heights for this name. Maybe plant more hickory trees if that’s the decision to make it more appropriate. Thanks for the vid, I need to lower my block sizes on the next town in my city. This makes for a good contrast to the larger building/block areas. Your grid layouts are so beautiful, I’m always trying to take pointers from your videos on this. Cheers!
I've been loving trams in this game. Really excited to go build a streetcar suburb now!
I think if you were to get that lesser utilized tram line ( 3 I think) to go straight over to the industrial area it would better get those 5000+ people to their jobs in industry.
As far as a name for your new Suburb, my submission would be The Midland Downs. Or just go strait Arrested Development and go with Sudden Valley.
for the purple line you don't have a tram stop by the intersection of the interial roads, which may be a reason why it isn't used that much
You have 9 buses on the Nicolet Bay line with 2 Stops and only 4% usage. Might be efficient to reduce the vehicles there or prolong the line.
30:56 Honestly, you should have made FOUR (or three) districts as opposed to ONE because you are planning to expand both past the highway and down into the peninsula. Making four of these makes sure if when you expand you can expand the districts as well, and you would not need to redo services and which building(s) serve with districts.
"Elysian Estates": Inspired by New Orleans' Elysian Fields, known for its wide, tree-lined streets, birthplace of the city's famed streetcar line. A slow moving, upscale area desirable for it's proximity from downtown and it's small, boutique shops, restaurants, and hotels... A beautiful (and expensive) university on the water may fit nicely with the people that live here. That arterial that terminates at the water could be the perfect spot.
My favourite public transport is Trams. Using it anytime I can.
Few things have made me quite as mad as knowing that my city used to have a broad-reaching (for the time, at least) streetcar network that regularly operated at twice its available capacity until it was demo'd to save money during the Great Depression. It's mind blowing how such popular infrastructure was destroyed only to get replaced by endless traffic.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do with Trams/Buses on Cities: Skylines is build a park and ride system bringing people into the city who have travelled by car from off-map or surrounding satellite towns/villages, which should now be easier given there are carpark assets in vanilla, just not sure that the AI would utilise it as intended.
Really enjoying this series. A tutorial but a highly enjoyable and engaging series. Interested to see how this map continues to develop
@39:00 NA residential-low-small-lot looks like the Invasion of the Tiny Homes, what with the slant roofs. It's such a weird design choice by Paradox.
I think the area for Birdsong Peaks is a bit too large compared to the main city. I suggest splitting the district in four, using the main 2 streets as a base line. Maybe you can name each district something like "West Corner", "Northern Corner" "South Corner" and East Corner"
that seems like more of a local informal thing. like for people who actually live in the neighborhood - rather than the official name
Yerkes' Square, named after the infamous public transport baron Charles Tyson Yerkes, who established public transit - notable streetcars - in Chicago and had trams as part of his unified network in London, which ultimately gave rise to the London Underground system we know today.
Birdsong Peak should be called Brownwater Bay. Name is from the looming incident that will happen soon. :D