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Plazas & Promenades Dev Diary #3: New Plazas & Service Buildings

Alright mayors, it’s time for another Dev Diary as we count down to the release of Plazas and Promenades. Today is all about the new plazas & high capacity service buildings coming in this expansion, so let’s get to it.

Plazas and Promenades adds 10 new plazas, which can be found in the Pedestrian Areas menu under Parks & Plazas. Some of these are available as soon as you create your first pedestrian area, while others require you to reach certain goals before unlocking. They provide your citizens and tourists with entertainment, whether used inside a pedestrian area or anywhere else in the city.

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Plazas and Promenades offer lots of variation to beautify your city

As the plazas were designed with pedestrian streets in mind, several of them are placed across the road, providing decoration on both sides. These can be used with small or large roads, and are placeable on both pedestrian streets and regular roads.

But plazas aren’t the only way to decorate an area! We’ve also included 23 new props and 20 new decals. These can be found in the Pedestrian Area Plazas tab. They provide a colorful modern look to your city and allow you to put a personal touch on your pedestrian areas.

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The new props can be used to decorate corners of your city

New Service Buildings
Besides decorative buildings, we have a selection of new service buildings in the form of 6 new service buildings and 5 new public transportation buildings. All of these have a modern style and high capacity, offering both practical and stylish new options.

The High-Capacity Elementary School is quite a bit larger than the other schools we have, and it’s able to accommodate up to 800 students, making it ideal for neighborhoods with many families. In a similar fashion, the High-Capacity High School can educate more than twice as many students as the existing ones, with a capacity of 2400. And last, in the education menu, you will find the High-Capacity University, which can accept up to 10,000 students at a time.

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Educate even more citizens using the new high-capacity options

Moving on to health and safety, we have the High-Capacity Hospital, able to handle a substantial number of patients, and the High-Capacity Police Headquarters and High-Capacity Fire Station, both of which have a significant number of vehicles available to allow them to respond to more emergencies at once.

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New high-capacity services to keep your citizens healthy and safe

There are also new buildings in the Public Transportation menu. The new Compact Bus Station only takes up a little space but has 4 bus stops, which makes it easy for passengers to transfer between multiple lines. The new Elevated Train Station moves tracks off the ground to allow for zoning between the building and the street.

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Modern and compact new options for buses and trains

In the Metro department, we have 3 new options to choose from. For the elevated metro system, there is the new Elevated Metro Station with Shops in a style similar to the new train station. For the underground metro, we have the Parallel Underground Metro Station, which has 4 parallel tracks for areas where one line isn’t enough, and the Large Underground Metro Station, which features two sets of tracks crossing at different heights.

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Take your metro system to the next level with these new options

And with that, we’ve come to the end of this Dev Diary. I hope you enjoyed this look at all the new service buildings and parks in Plazas and Promenades. Do you have any favorites already? The next Dev Diary is on Wednesday at 4PM CEST / 7AM PDT and looks at the new specializations and maps! Hope to see you then!


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I have a little concern since the last stream about the new university building. Isn't 10,000 a bit of overkill? Wouldn't it conflict with the Campus DLC, in the sense that why would I even construct a Campus Area when I have a building that can provide all my population with higher education?
Apart from that, great job with the new service buildings, specially the new metro stations - I'm looking forward to using them. :)
 
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I've been wanting the multi-platform underground metro for a long time. Looking forward to that.
 
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The new large service buildings are a nice addition, but I was thinking a tiny police station with foot patrol and bicycle cops would be ideal for the pedestrian areas.
 
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Looks good though makes a lot of existing assets redundant with their capacity (Campus buildings notably) as I assume I can put one of these high capacity schools anywhere?
 
I have a little concern since the last stream about the new university building. Isn't 10,000 a bit of overkill? Wouldn't it conflict with the Campus DLC, in the sense that why would I even construct a Campus Area when I have a building that can provide all my population with higher education?
Apart from that, great job with the new service buildings, specially the new metro stations - I'm looking forward to using them. :)
yeah... cram them all in one building ;)
that's probably including tourists... and those who drive from one end of the map to another, never even stopping in the city :D:D
 
I have a little concern since the last stream about the new university building. Isn't 10,000 a bit of overkill? Wouldn't it conflict with the Campus DLC, in the sense that why would I even construct a Campus Area when I have a building that can provide all my population with higher education?
Apart from that, great job with the new service buildings, specially the new metro stations - I'm looking forward to using them. :)

Looks good though makes a lot of existing assets redundant with their capacity (Campus buildings notably) as I assume I can put one of these high capacity schools anywhere?

Campus buildings offer much more than just a place to educate young adults, the buildings provide bonuses to land value, tourism, tax income, and services, while reducing pollution, garbage accumulation, sewage outlet, and water and power consumption. Plus of course the option of tuition and exchange students. Depending on the number of students in your city you may want to just focus on your campus(es) or have a mix of campuses and university buildings.

As for the other service buildings, it's always a matter of cost/upkeep and how high the need in that specific part of your city is. The high-capacity high school is probably a bit too big for a low density suburb for example.
 
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Campus buildings offer much more than just a place to educate young adults, the buildings provide bonuses to land value, tourism, tax income, and services, while reducing pollution, garbage accumulation, sewage outlet, and water and power consumption. Plus of course the option of tuition and exchange students. Depending on the number of students in your city you may want to just focus on your campus(es) or have a mix of campuses and university buildings.

As for the other service buildings, it's always a matter of cost/upkeep and how high the need in that specific part of your city is. The high-capacity high school is probably a bit too big for a low density suburb for example.

That's a good answer, I just wish the numbers of students on campus fit with those ploppables. 2k can be a struggle on a megalopolis.
 
The new schools look like they fit in better in the high-density center of a city, than the stand-alone suburb-like schools in the base game.

But I dont feel like high capacity hospitals, police stations or fire stations are necessary because the current ones in game never even come close to using up their capacity, even in center city.
 
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But I dont feel like high capacity hospitals, police stations or fire stations are necessary because the current ones in game never even come close to using up their capacity, even in center city.
It's the same benefit as with schools. No need to plop as many samey buildings when you can get away with a few larger ones, and get the service coverage bonus.
 
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The elevated metro station is what I liked the most in these new buildings, along with the underground metro station and elevated train station.
 
I have a little concern since the last stream about the new university building. Isn't 10,000 a bit of overkill? Wouldn't it conflict with the Campus DLC, in the sense that why would I even construct a Campus Area when I have a building that can provide all my population with higher education?
Apart from that, great job with the new service buildings, specially the new metro stations - I'm looking forward to using them. :)
Yeah, weirdly the terrible Simcity 2013 was better than CS when it came to how scalable services were. This is a good DLC though. I should try CS again but after I played with industries I got bored with everything else, and the public transit I built was never being used.
 
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although i thought there could be a different way of designing plazas and squares... like kind of painting any shape :D:D
we desperately need an autofill feature