How do parks work?

[DavesBrain]

If I select Prefer Parks, presumably, parks will boost zoning value more than Unique Buildings.
But what kind of parks? Ploppable? Or Zonable or both?

I've got a large HD Res district that is also zoned as Park (and is shot through with park assets), but it seems to be considered not very park-friendly.

How close do Park assets in Park Zoens need to be to boost Res value ?

[WhiteKnight77]

If I am not mistaken, ploppables.

[me22ca]

"Prefer Parks" came in Parklife, so it's almost guaranteed that it works with Parklife Parks.

What do you mean "zoned as Park", though? There's no park [i[zoning[/i], especially not for residential.

[MessengerOfRage]

I think they mean they painted a park area with the district brush.

[wilky]

The "Prefer Parks" policy increases visitors by 10%. It does not increase land value. There is a separate policy for land value ("Parks and Recreation"). The cost for the "Prefer Parks" policy is that it raises your Parkife park area's total upkeep by 10%. I guess this policy could be used to level your park area to L5 quicker. This policy was introduced at Parklife, and does not apply to ploppable parks.

The other policy "Parks and Recreation" policy dates back to vanilla, and increases the LAND VALUE around park buildings with an upkeep cost of 20% extra. The land value effect is very strong, and I usually use this policy on most of my districts (parks are cheap).

However, I just tested this in-game, and the "Parks and Recreation" policy does NOT appear to boost land values around Parklife park areas. However, it DOES INCREASE THE COST of the buildings (+ paths I'm pretty sure) by 10%. So you do NOT want to apply the "Parks and Recreation" policy to a Parklife area if there are no vanilla ploppable parks.


One final note concerning Parklife park areas... it appears that you can increase the area which receives the land value bonus by simply drawing the park district area larger. Here are some screenshots where the only difference is that I re-drew the park borders to be larger / smaller.

(edit: see next post below for better screenshots)

[wilky]

Originally posted by me22ca:

"Prefer Parks" came in Parklife, so it's almost guaranteed that it works with Parklife Parks.

What do you mean "zoned as Park", though? There's no park [i[zoning[/i], especially not for residential.

I think he means using the Parklife district tool (which also allows you to zone residential inside the designated area, as depicted in my screenshots above). The "Campus" district tool is similar; you can zone inside of it.


Here is a better pair of screenshots illustrating the impact of the "district area" tool on the Parklife park areas, btw. I think the difference is quite obvious here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2485800804

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2485801234

[wilky]

More park tests. See below screenshots. I think they are largely self-explanatory with the captions, but I am surprised by a couple things.

For one thing, there is almost zero difference between screenshot #3 and #4, where I have added the five Parklife city plazas to the left and middle islands (which provide 60 entertainment each over a small radius). I don't really see the benefit/effect. Maybe it's because the park district area has been stretched so large?

The other thing that surprises me about screenshots #3 and #4 is how the far right edge of the right island shows moderately poor leisure. The reason why I'm surprised is because in the screenshots below, I actually have three "pier" assets located along this beach strip of commercial avenue. They are hard to see on the screenshots #3/4 on the far right, but they are definitely still there, even though it looks like they are not having an effect on their immediate area.

In conclusion, thinking about all of this, it looks like you can only stretch the district area so far before you start to dilute the park's entertainment/leisure effect.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2485893992

Screenshot #2 - I deleted the ploppable assets from left/middle islands. The parklife district area encompasses the entirety of the rightmost island here, and you can see how the "leisure" bonus does not extend far enough beyond its boundary even to reach that closest island in the middle:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2485895279

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2485896221

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2485897314