How do I make a prettier city?

[HumanMirthquake]

Maybe I just don't have much creativity; my cities always end up blocky and created for function, but I see all of these cities with curves and use of elevation and I don't know how people think up this stuff. Any advice?

[The Mandarin Skyrush]

use google map, and copy how cities are laid out. i'm currently using google maps a lot when it comes to zoning and building suburban residential neighborhoods. for example, you can google map Phoenix AZ, and just pick a neighborhood, then just follow the road layout of that neighborhood and lay out a residential community in your game. the road layout doesn't even need to be exactly the same, but once you are done lay out the roads, and buildings starts to pop out, you will see how realistic your community feels.

[MarkJohnson]

There's 3 things to do to make your cities prettier. Practice, practice, practice.

[A Fat, Angry Serval]

First off, I want to note something - there's this misconception that you HAVE to have these long, sweeping curves throughout your city in order for it to look nice. While that does look pleasing to the eye, it's only one factor. A well laid-out grid broken up by major highways, or a larger grid with smaller freeform roads inside it, is going to look nicer than a spaghetti bowl of roads with impossibly sharp turns and elevation changes that makes no sense.

Second, work with the terrain, not against it. The reason why many nice-looking cities have winding main highways is because they conform to the terrain. The only time you ever want to turn a rolling hilly landscape into a flat field is when you're building an airport.

Third, even if you're building a uniform grid city, you can still work on other things. Play around with your zoning, landmarks and other unique buildings and try making a nice skyline along a waterfront.

Fourth... practice. Play around in sandbox mode with money turned off and everything unlocked. See what you can build. And to note, most of these "art" cities were built in sandbox mode and preplanned, not developed naturally.

[Pirazel]

Do not make the city too dense. Use high density zone only in the center and put trees everywhere. Low density suburbs around it. Do large intersections and gree spaces.

[CyberVibes]

Spend a lot of time developing one area at a time until you happy with the aesthetics.

[scpool1986]

Use the freeform roads tool to build tree lined streets in your residential areas and be sure to build parks to bring up land value. I have examples of this in my screen shots if you want to see examples of what I’m talking about.

[Saber Kitsune]

Variation helps. Even heavily gridded areas can look interesting if the grids are on different angles. When the grids meet, smooth out the transition, but don't continue a grid into the other one. Within the grids have a few larger main roads, so not all the roads are the same size.

[zelphiaellerson]

This is a helpful guide that explains some design principles:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=528318290

[mbutton15]

Most of my cities are certainly blocky and, yeah, I guess, pretty discrete at that. But I purchased the Mass Transit DLC a while back and did the scenarios from that. You start with part built cities on a couple of the scenarios and they are far from blocky. I challenged myself to extend those cities maintaining a similar style. Here's one effort: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1412394348
And here's an earlier attempt to break from the grids. I started with the top half, but kind of reverted to my usual with the bottom half (though I do like the look of the botton half):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1111295896

I guess in the end, do whatever makes you happiest !!

[HumanMirthquake]

You guys all rock; thank you!

[NoirMoutton]

Take at least a few minutes to draw a very basic plan and decide on the type of city you want to build. Have a look at some real life examples of different cities- photos and maps. Use loads of common sense!

[vmfstorm1]

A fun experiment I just did was to choose a map with the largest unobstructed plains and make several connected circle cities and then one giant one on a separate play through. Solving problems in something like that and making neighborhoods, even figuring out how to make transit link up is a decent challenge. Plus they're pretty as all hell.

As a guideline for myself I wanted to focus on an extremely "green" city almost like Walt Disney city of the future. Rings of parks with a heavy emphasis on transit and biking and all the highways came to the direct center of the city with a triple traffic circle to distribute trucks into the first few rings which were all industry and commercial squares. Followed by parks to absorb sound and pollution then low density residential neighborhoods followed by high density residential grids and topped off with an office zone buffer and agriculture and forestry industries.

Traffic flow stands at about 70% which is a few jams that clear up when the light changes back and forth.

Anyway that's how I do. It's good to balance beauty and function, a pretty "city" is nice but there's no challenge in growing a city to 50k and making a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of canals imo. Anyway your screens are actually really nice and I think you're on to a nice design with those overlayed 90° squares.