Ideas for none plopable parks

[tomfu]

I really like building realistic cities with as few mods as possible.
But I have only 1 major point or complaint about parks!

My cities need parks everywhere to feel better. But these parks are only very small, often squared parks which seems not really realistic. I would rather like to build my own custom parks by having a green space completley surrounded by roads and then putting in trees and pathways, etc. that seems more realistic for my parks! But so far they do not give my citizens any happiness.

Simply do I want ideas or suggestions how such parks are possible.

I thought about concepts, where...


...trees (benches, pathways, etc.) generate happiness

trees can not be placed in parks but there are also streets with trees on them, since trees do make the environment look better, it slightly improves the happiness. When benches and pathways count as well, people can use benches as "attractions" so they use the custom designed parks and therefore pathways through the parks. Things can be more complicated then you add manually or automatically pathway routes (connected pathways, which people wanna use) which also count as attractions. In anyway, there can be many ways to implement it on many different levels


...districts generate happiness in a certain radius

Districts can be asigned to a policy which lets district generated happiness in and around the districts boarder. The way of using it would be an own disctrict for every park and then simple assign the policy. This method has the disadvantage that people will not nessecarly walk there and it can also be easily abused and assigned to every single disctrict in the city.


...painted textures on the ground generate happiness

It is similar to the district version with the only difference that a texture generates happiness and it is not bonded to a district. Furthermore I must say that I don't know if textures are also shown beneath other textures (beneath houses or other buildings) if so it is in my eyes better than the district version since only spaces that are blank anyway can be given a texture.


..."crowd place ploper" which generates happiness and let people crowd

My last suggestion is a "crowd place ploper" which are already used for vanilla parks and all other currently used parks. It attracts people to come here and genereates a happiness
radius. It then can be set anywhere on the map. Abusing the item is of course possible but
as I already mentioned, it's about being realistic, cheating in Cities Skylines is easy anyway!


I hope you guys can leave some comments and suggestions below because I think that this is a part, where Cities Skylines still needs a lot more improving!

[Effixel]

I remember a suggestion several months (years?) ago to make parks as a zone type instead of buildings. I liked that idea.

[tomfu]

I thought about it as well but I also figured that it would still not fit the style I would like to build. Making it a zone type would not change much as it would still keep its 4x4 tiles, etc.

[Effixel]

Ah yes I think I know what you mean. In an early city I had made a sort of "forest park" with nice little curved paths etc, but it was totally useless as it was recognised as a simple unexploited piece of land by the game. It would have made a nice nature park though. I think it would have worked with your District idea.

[coyotegreen]

I know you said you don't like mods, but I found this parking lot mod that functions as a park. Build a park free-style, put down walking paths, plop the lot down, and you have a park that people drive to and walk around in, and that helps the area it is in.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=921739068

Edit- The nice thing about this is you can plop lots down along a long blvd, creating a meandering park that runs through your city, but is accessed by lots placed every so often for parking. Great for long biking paths, etc.

[tomfu]

I appreciate your help but I just want some new ideas and a discussion about the park/happiness design. I already downloaded a similar Asset and did similar things as suggested but it didn't quiet satisfy me.

The probleme 1 comment above is exactly what I want to combat or have a discussion about.

[OneJasonBradly]

I to limit myself to few mods.
When it comes to the use of parks I also have rules (it’s an old SimCity 3000 and 4 rule). In searching for an idea on a more practical use of the land between my residential neighbourhoods and industrial districts, I often place residents close to industry to reduce the distance to work. Unfortunately, there is pollution to contend with bordering industrial areas. I came up with an idea of turning this strip of land into a common path that has access to many local residential streets to convince the citizens to walk to work rather than drive. I use the “Large Playground” (vanilla park asset) not as a park but part of the pathway. This playground, I often use as a hub where different walking and bike paths will converge to lead to a bus stop for the industrial area.

The first attempt at this idea:
With a common path I connected 11 different streets (dead ends) from the residential areas to a large playground that’s “connected to the road for the industrial area”. Turning this path into a park network or large park, I added other assets to the dead end streets connected to the path including parking lots. I also made sure that the school was placed close to this path/park, so that it was easy to walk to. The path is connected to shops as well. It’s now a large park but it’s firstly a transportation system for the neighbourhood, that brings happiness and leisure from use as a result.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=786197704
I use this overlay to better show street design for the large park/pathway.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=786195064

Second attempt at this Idea. With mining district as the industry.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=935041955

Third path/park, or extension of path from the second path that leads to another industrial district.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1125748228
I do have assets or park benches that plop (to street) that citizens come to sit at.

This screenshot features a friends workshop asset park, which is a path network with hangout areas and functioning sitting areas. I made a pond in the background to see if they could look as one( testing the asset).
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198702602
I think it worked
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1198705359
May you find this helpful. If so, my profile is public. I find other peoples screenshots are a great source of inspiration for me. Oddly enough the inspiration rarely has anything to do with the topic of the screenshot, lol. Rather sparks of brilliance in the background. Scrutinize!