SIX WAYS TO MAKE YOUR CITY REALISTIC 

"You wouldnt put a really large avenue in a quiet area" American suburbs: are you sure?

I love how the boats were trolling you as hard as they could with unrealistic behavior the entire video... changing course to collide with other boats, blinking in an out of existence... quality trolls, them boats.

0:10 "a little bit more... realistic" *a car despawns exactly the moment he said it*

video about making a city more realistic 5:32 a cruise liner evaporates spontaneously

It feels like the term you were searching for is "organic" (vs planned). Something that the model railroad community advocates is modeling the history of a location. It could be something as simple as old foundations where a steam-era water tower stood, or a line of decaying ties where an abandoned railroad used to cross still in service trackage. Or it could be as complex as a building with a curved wall where a siding used to curve past to reach another customer. In Cities Skylines town history could be something like that corner where you placed the trees: maybe the original road occupied that space, but a road upgrading project realigned the road and created a wide sidewalk. Or, perhaps, the trees sit where a streetcar track used to turn into the cross street or swing wide to loop back the way it came. Modeled history helps to create the illusion that your Metropolis grew, organically, from a tiny village and didn't just spring forth in a single day.

3:16 in my experience, putting commercial buildings on main roads and busy intersections is a bad idea because of the traffic the buildings attract. If a lorry or a van stops in front of a shop, the other cars won't be able to pass it and this creates a big traffic jam on busy roads. Of course, it looks realistic, I just wanted to point that out.

4:39 - it seems that someone doesn't know how to park hahaha

5:23 it does look more realistic....cars parked on the street with a huge empty parking lot, because the cost of parking there is prohibitive.

T R E E S

At 6:40 theres a fight of wololo's on that cruiser

*talking about his city being alive* *three hearses drive by

I just got into this game a couple of days ago and it’s amazing. I’m a architect (it’s my profession) and I’m learning and enjoying this series so much. Thanks.

Everytime I want to create an organic city I end up with insane traffic congestion. But when I use optimized road layouts for the driver AI it works …… but looks horrible.

Its really hard for me to take myself out of the "grid" mindset.

What is it about parked cars that supposedly adds to the city looking more alive? There is nothing as boring, bothersome and pointless as parked cars. As a soon-to-be city planner myself I enjoy building the cities as I would plan them in reality (if they'd let me): Cars banned practically everywhere. I can build mostly quite small streets and never had any serious traffic issues even in dense 100k+ cities - but lots of people walking to and from bus or metro stops. THAT to me is what makes the city look alive, not cars.

I tend to focus on realistic road & rail networks. The first thing I do in a new map is bulldoze all the pre-made highways and just have two-lane roads running through the map in the beginning. Although, I have found that traffic volumes tend to vary, so this might not work the way you want all the time. But, I try to start with just rural two-lane roads and slowly grow the city from there. When traffic becomes such where I need to build a freeway to take congestion away from the city, I start with a four-lane freeway (2 each direction), and only widen when absolutely needed. Also, when building a freeway (and railroads), avoid sharp turns and steep grades where ever possible!!! If you're trying to carve a freeway through the middle of the city, sharp curves can add some realism, but in reality, hard turns are very dangerous on a freeway. Smooth out your curves! If you need to build an overpass, make the approaches as smooth as you can! Don't do steep inclines. And you do NOT need exit ramps everywhere! In the city I'm working in now, my main freeway has 4 exits TOTAL serving the city. This will change as it grows, but having fewer interchanges at the main roads works much better than ramps breaking off every which way as I've seen from other maps. This helps separate thru-traffic with local traffic.

For the realistic skyline one, use (in order,): Houses, low density commercial, high density commercial, and then high density residential or offices.

Thank you. Alot of times i just lay down roads and not think too much bout it. You did really well explaining all this and im gonna subscribe 😁

Looks pretty good mate. I liked the way you explained, and why you did certain things. Made me learn a lot. Keep up the good work.

Love this game, but it triggers my OCD like nothing else.

love the zoom out at the end. Your city looks so real!

Love this! Never thought of making a road curve around trees. Can't wait to implement some of this tonight 😁 subbing

I bought Cities: Skyline after randomly stumbling on one of your vids early last year. After trying to start a city, I quickly became overwhelmed and haven't touched it since. But I've still been watching your vids. I may try to start this up again

Thank you! That was very helpful.

My cities' transportation usually looks something like this: trains bring people in from the suburbs and outer towns. I use monorail as the "glue" connecting the densest office/commercial areas to the train network, airport, harbor, and high-density residential bus routes. The metro provides local connections to high-density commercial, office, and industrial areas; as well as nearby suburbs. Trams are used in the city as a replacement for overloaded bus lines for residential areas, and as a link to the city for smaller suburbs. Busses bring people from residential areas to other forms of transportation and I/C/O areas. Helicopters are an alternate to monorail, and blimps carry people to and from small suburbs.

I love it bro a lot of guy don't think to do it realistically.! Plz take notes! Awesome job bro i watched a few guys do this i was not impress. You are the first one that i seen so far that have a good understand on how it supported to be laid out i really enjoy that keep them coming!

makes great city with major highway road ending in big custom roundabout, do some details, plants trees, follows landscape and makes esthetically pleasing budding city *earthquake hit your city, seek immediate shelter RRREEEEEEEEEEEEE

Brilliant tips man - thanks!

Love your work, Sam. Keep it up.

Trees forever! Your videos are great. Your entire approach, personality & execution. It's highly informative in a chill way. I enjoy your channel a lot.

*6 main tips mentioned in the video* 0:39 - Follow your landscape 1:42 - Building heights 2:51 - Building clusters 4:03 - Make it come alive 5:30 - Road hierarchy 7:00 - The smaller details *Bonus tip* 8:47 - Don't plan too much

Absolutely love your work and how non-nonchalant you create such realistic cities. Learning a lot from you and wish I would have chosen that city planning career of yours :P ... Genius mate, if you are ever here in Wellington, NZ, give me a shout.

I've been playing city simulation games since I first played Sim City for the SNES when I was a kid, twenty years ago. Since then I played 3K Unlimited and my personal favorite, SC4. I admit with some slight degree of shame that I've become quite a "not-so-easy-to-impress" snob when it comes to seeing what other people have built. I was honestly not expecting this video to repeat pretty much everything that I've learned and followed in my time of playing Sim City and Skylines. I see a lot of people go all out in modifying the graphics rather than focus on the mistake of putting in excessive amounts of overly detailed content and this is one of the extremely rare times that I've seen someone build a city or town that looks anything remotely close to what I build and what I appreciate. I see so many cities just completely over the top dressed and nine out of 10 cities don't really impress me because it just looks 'so' realistic and so well designed that it actually looks fake and after a while a lot of city simulation players just pump excessive amounts of what I refer to as "Botox". They always look so overly modified that I end up not really appreciating anything. I get that a lot of people like that sort of thing, but to me after a while, it just gets boring looking at the same city made by a different person. I really enjoy cities with personality, color, uniqueness, and imperfections.

7:58 On corners where buildings don't fit in. Thought it was going to be about the clipped building, not trees. Great video.

Thanks for the tip! I really want to try to make an old town sort of surrounded by new development. Like a Historic Downtown, but preserved while the world booms around it.

Just found this video. Great content. Would love to see more beginner tutorials, the way you explain everything it makes it so easy to follow and understand. Keep up the good work. Subscribing today.

This vid was posted on my birthday, perfect gift!

I like what you said about using the shape of the terrain, building round forests etc. Another thing I do is, if heavy traffic forces me to rebuild the roads in an area, I try to demolish as little as possible and fit the road in around the buildings. This creates an interesting challenge and mimics what is usually done in real life. It certainly led to some very creatively constructed roads and junctions, which makes the whole city feel more organic.

Hello Sam! I really love your content and your cities and workings are amazing. Please keep it up, I am learning from it too (theoretical) :D So, I have some questions, maybe you could enlighten me a little: Which mods are you using without complications? Which mods can I use, as a fan of art-deco, soviet style, central european style and european style at all? You have always a pretty sharp HD look on your city, also when zoomed out which I dont have, how you do that, mod? I have currently hundreds of single objects from the steam-workshop loaded but rarely see them, any idea? That I have hundreds of single objects loaded, might be the cause why I have to wait (with a good PC) about 20 minutes when loading a map? Is there some more realistic landscape mod available which does not bring problems? City Centers in this game, never looking like grown out over centuries (from medieval times for example). How to create city centers? Could you share your installed mods? Hope Sam is reading it and answering some of the questions or in optimal all of them. Have a nice day guys

I really enjoy all of your videos. I've struggled with so many elements of the game and mods, but I'm gradually getting to grips with them. (I don't want to look at how many hours I've spent playing the game already). My issue now is that my laptop just can't handle too many mods and assets. Will look at upgrading. What I do enjoy about yours, is how you make your cities look natural. I've tried starting a city with a bicycle wheel or spiders web road layout, then gradually developed it. I've found that approach to be much more of an interesting game play and also mirrors older cities that have progressed over time. I think Cities Skylines is the best city builder game of all time so far (I've played a few since Simcity 2000), but it would be great, in the future, to have a simulator that starts almost at the beginning. Say for example European cities going back to the 1500's and you unlock ages and gradually develop them to the present day. It would take massive capacity, but I think it would be awesome. Anyway, thanks for you vids, I subscribed.

The music at the end of this is gorge!!

I could not agree more about trees. I love that they seem to have updated a lot of the building models with more foliage

A good hint is to angle buildings in areas of low density building, when people have the room on large blocks often they have the houses not pointing straight at the road

You are great at explaining.

Great video! Really helpful👍

Great video, as always. keep it up!

Nice thanks for the tips!!!

'Love the video, Mr Bur! I learned so much from you and playing Cities: Skyline has been more enjoyable.

Amazing city and tips.

Thank you!

I love how cars drive on the other size, I will use it from now!

Tree handling is definitely key when making a realistic and enjoyable city. Nice work folk!

This helps me a lot so I'm going to get on the PlayStation 4 and do it

super helpful video! thanks for sharing

I'm literally downloading that map mod right now coz it's just so bloody beautiful

Thanks Sam....always pick up something from your vids.

5:25 Wait a sec. Are there any entrances to those parkings?

Great vid! My (beginner) tip. Download the unlock 81 tiles mod. Then unlock everything at the beginning of the game and remove all the highway and train tracks from the area of the map where you will be building. I usually make temporary roads connecting the city to the outside world untill I figure out how i want to lay out my highway and rail systems. This will give you the freedom to design how you want and you dont have to commit to existing roads nor have to plan way ahead.

I always start with a grid layout first to get the population/ money flowing and then later when I've got the cash flow, I start letting the creativity run wild. Seems that a lot of real world big cities have this same kind of design where the old town is made of grids while the newer parts have more curves and open pockets of either open space or park area. It's interesting that way because the design of the city really reflects the year it was built.

Thank you! this is really helpful! Is this save on the workshop?

All I could hear when you were doing tip 5 was Bob Ross - "Happy little trees..."

Somewhat early on (maybe 1-2k pop) district and set aside some pretty and undeveloped areas as reserves or large parks, and when your city limits reach them add paths, tables, etc to turn it into a recreational space. Your city may even end up enclosing the reserve and it’ll turn into a big apple* style park *the big apple was not preplanned, rather a large predominantly black neighbourhood was demolished to make way for it, leaving many of the previous inhabitants homeless and destitute so that tourists and ytes have somewhere to relax and take photos

This city is amazing.

Thanks for that tip. My cities look very boring. I do not use mods so it is still difficult.

thank you for that

How did you do 4:26?? Great video, and City, by the way! Thanks for the tips.👍

What are your pc specs? (just wondering)

I'm just getting into Cities Skylines. It would be really cool to see you start a few small towns in this realistic style, and then choose one or two and grow it into a small city or larger town and talk through the process.

Nice tips - bonustip is most important (but hardest to do) in my honest opinion :-D

Can you or have you made an video about spacing inbetween schools and police , fire department .. I have always built the way you do here but my biggest issue is when you do small areas everywhere you dont have area coverage of bluelight personel. How do you deal with that? Also good work!

Thank you

Useful guideline, give you a like

question, when you build a realistic looking city do you also consider the functionality of the city? like employment and the economic in general

Dang this is so good

I agree about building height but it is difficult on console with no mods. It’s too bad this game didn’t have a mid level building mode, it basically goes from low density to high. Maybe in the future they will add mid level building for the residential and commercial zones. Enjoy your videos, thx

more beautification and roundabouts!!!!!!

Great tips and greatly explained! When you talk about letting the city grow, that brings me on a tough: Is it possible to make the city grow naturally, you know from a single road with a few shops, the local diner and maybe 6 houses and then add roads to when the city grows? Like a city grows from nothing 30 years ago to the bigger city today?

Seriously, what are your PC specs? It runs so smooth!

Most Cities Skyline videos use the default cartoony colors. Changing to a more muted color scheme (or at least less pastels) helps make things look realistic.

Thanks for sharing. What mod did you use to get the running paths, pedestrian bridge, etc.?

In Brasília they put large avenues in desert lands and put politicians there, the city looks like noobs playing cities for the first time

Hi, I wonder what you think of Pyongyang with regards to street layout and public transportation? The only thing I am against the bike lanes are on the sidewalks and not in the street where they should be.

Sam i need to know wich mods do u use please my game crashed i have juts the basic game no expantions. thank you !!!

I just want to say, thank you so much. I have slowly improved on my skills in this game, but I'm still VERY far from your standpoint. This has been the best tutorial that I've watched (and I've watched many. Believe me.). Any advice on how to make realistic highway transitions to a avenue or road?

5:59 those ships totally collided. =oD

Sam what is the name of the song in the end of the video?

Welcome back to a brand new city

4:39 Black estate car in the parking lot couldn't park anywhere else but on another car eventho the parking lot is 80% free :D

I just look at google maps and build from my house out to the surrounding areas it looks realistic and know I know my way round the city in real life

That ship is warping in and out of existence xD

The most important point is the small details like trees, fences, benches, little pathways and so on. The other stuff is sort of a given.

Nice idol city skyline

How do you get the map and enviroment to look so realistic? Is it a mod? Or is it the type of map you use? The maps in vanilla are just green with a few trees

your channel is epic

"cars parked in car parks" is a nice tongue twister

I downloaded a district style pack and it works well but as soon as the buildings upgrade it changes to the regular buildings how do I fix this without physically going to every building in my city and making it a historical building

My downtown area has massive traffic issues. Seems pretty realistic to me.

Any tips for placing power lines? I struggle with making them fit in...

What path and building mods are you using, if any? Or are you using game defults?

cool city