Here's my plan for parks.
1. Redefine what constitutes a park
- Remove existing ploppable trees and parks from the game
- Make trees paintable. Designate the land under them as of type "park".
- Instead of ploppable parks, have ploppable amenities like playgrounds, fountains, etc, and some bigger ones like fairground/circus. These are *also* classed as type "park".
- Pedestrian pathways with type 'park' as well.
2. Effects of different items
- Painted trees act as sound barrier
- Painted trees (very) gradually remove soil pollution
- Painted trees and ploppable park amenities all all have a score for their contribution to the happiness effect, and another score for their contribution to the land value effect.
- Amenities can also have a running cost or generate revenue.
Examples
---> a large, land-consuming circus can boost happiness lots, not add much land value, and generate revenue; good for poor districts.
---> a small public library a bit of happiness and land value, while costing modest revenues and not taking up much land; good for poor and middle class areas
---> public fountains boost land value a lot while taking up very little land, but they are expensive to build and maintain, making them good for making rich neighbourhoods
3. Size of park
The size of the park is determined by all the contiguous squares of type park i.e. adding together all the painted trees, ploppable park amenities and pathways. Essentially this means all park amenities items are modular with each other.
The size of the park determines the area of effect of the happiness and land-value boost.
4. Calculating the total effect of the park.
Tree contribution to strength of happiness boost from park is strictly capped, so large empty woodlands make people happy but not super-happy. If you want super-happy people build a fairground. Nonetheless, a large park without too many amenities is the most cost effective way to boost happiness for the masses.
To calculate the effect on land-value, add all the land-value score boosts together. This score is the main determinant of the strength of the land-value boost effect of the park. If you do something like take the amenities score divided by size of park squared, increasing the size of the park has diminishing returns for effect on land value, but area of effect is bigger (You need a strong divisor because you can fit more amenities in a bigger park!). This way small garden squares made up of expensive fountains is the best way to create rich neighbourhoods. Because you want small garden squares for rich neighbourhoods, those luxury areas aren't easy to make happy (happiness items take up too much space), so you'd better make sure your public services are really good in those areas or they'll get unhappy fast and devolve. Lower class people can be kept happy with circuses, but it will be hard to regenerate those cheaper districts.
With this new plan for parks, not only will we have much more control of what our parks look like and how they perform, we've also got competing incentives for different types of parks: small expensive ones to create luxury areas with a small area of effect, or large ones to keep the masses entertained.
Coupled with another item on my wishlist (set service funding levels by district), this plan could really help boost diversity between rich and poor districts, rather than have cities inevitably tend towards upper-class utopias.
1. Redefine what constitutes a park
- Remove existing ploppable trees and parks from the game
- Make trees paintable. Designate the land under them as of type "park".
- Instead of ploppable parks, have ploppable amenities like playgrounds, fountains, etc, and some bigger ones like fairground/circus. These are *also* classed as type "park".
- Pedestrian pathways with type 'park' as well.
2. Effects of different items
- Painted trees act as sound barrier
- Painted trees (very) gradually remove soil pollution
- Painted trees and ploppable park amenities all all have a score for their contribution to the happiness effect, and another score for their contribution to the land value effect.
- Amenities can also have a running cost or generate revenue.
Examples
---> a large, land-consuming circus can boost happiness lots, not add much land value, and generate revenue; good for poor districts.
---> a small public library a bit of happiness and land value, while costing modest revenues and not taking up much land; good for poor and middle class areas
---> public fountains boost land value a lot while taking up very little land, but they are expensive to build and maintain, making them good for making rich neighbourhoods
3. Size of park
The size of the park is determined by all the contiguous squares of type park i.e. adding together all the painted trees, ploppable park amenities and pathways. Essentially this means all park amenities items are modular with each other.
The size of the park determines the area of effect of the happiness and land-value boost.
4. Calculating the total effect of the park.
Tree contribution to strength of happiness boost from park is strictly capped, so large empty woodlands make people happy but not super-happy. If you want super-happy people build a fairground. Nonetheless, a large park without too many amenities is the most cost effective way to boost happiness for the masses.
To calculate the effect on land-value, add all the land-value score boosts together. This score is the main determinant of the strength of the land-value boost effect of the park. If you do something like take the amenities score divided by size of park squared, increasing the size of the park has diminishing returns for effect on land value, but area of effect is bigger (You need a strong divisor because you can fit more amenities in a bigger park!). This way small garden squares made up of expensive fountains is the best way to create rich neighbourhoods. Because you want small garden squares for rich neighbourhoods, those luxury areas aren't easy to make happy (happiness items take up too much space), so you'd better make sure your public services are really good in those areas or they'll get unhappy fast and devolve. Lower class people can be kept happy with circuses, but it will be hard to regenerate those cheaper districts.
With this new plan for parks, not only will we have much more control of what our parks look like and how they perform, we've also got competing incentives for different types of parks: small expensive ones to create luxury areas with a small area of effect, or large ones to keep the masses entertained.
Coupled with another item on my wishlist (set service funding levels by district), this plan could really help boost diversity between rich and poor districts, rather than have cities inevitably tend towards upper-class utopias.
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