So much of the Green Cities mechanics function very differently from normal. More than the tooltips imply. I'll list what I have discovered after playing for a while now. Please feel free to add to or correct in replies. You will be credited in the edits.
Residential specialization: As far as I can tell this spec is exactly as it appears in the tooltip. No extra or hidden mechanics. If anybody has found anything please chime in.
Commercial specialization: The 50% goods in the tooltip. This spec sells goods at the same rate as normal light commercial but only needs half as much of the goods delivery. Not sure the exact method it calculates it. Could be it doubles delivery amounts. Could be it only consumes half as many goods per sale. Either way it works.
Edit: Credit to Voeille. The 50% self goods production is sufficient to prevent the commercial from being abandoned due to no goods delivery.
The next big thing about this spec is that unlike normal commercial this spec doesn't only work off final product goods (purple). It also needs agriculture (orange). I figured this out through checking my imports and exports. I was importing a ton of agri (I normally export loads of it). All the orange buildings in the import infoview were my commercial. As far as I can tell agri counts as part of normal goods deliveries for the commercial spec. It uses agriculture more than normal industry does. If you go heavy green and make most of your commercial this spec you don't need normal industry at all. You can get all the goods you need from agri, recycling and possibly IT spec office. (side note: there are a bunch of new agri spec buildings with the DLC)
Edit: Credit to Voeille. The green commercial spec also produces no sound pollution.
Office specialization: The IT. So first thing to note is the tooltip doesn't lie. These buildings don't employ many people. So don't mass zone them thinking you're solving a jobs problem. A big upside is the buildings only have one level. So you can get the benefit of high income offices without having to invest in services.
Next is the goods mechanic. IT spec produces goods that commercial takes. It doesn't send trucks. I don't know if the goods count towards the commercial's stock. The buildings will light up purple in the export infoview. I can confirm if no commercial buys its "goods" it'll become abandoned. I am pretty sure normal and leisure commercial do pull more goods from the IT spec. It is unfortunately hard to work out the exact function of IT goods mechanic since it doesn't spawn trucks.
Edit: It appears IT does produce goods that are used by commercial and counts towards the goods need of the commercial but abandons if forced to export. Still not absolutely confirmed but likely enough at this point I'm confident its the case.
Recycling: In relation to garbage it functions just like an Incinerator but sends out fewer trucks. The fewer trucks matters but not that much. Incinerators you can stay at close to the minimum burn capacity as is needed for your city. The lack of trucks means you need to stay further above processing capacity with Recycling than with Incinerators. Its still far cheaper.
Based on my export infoview Recycling produces every kind of goods. I only have agri specialization but am exporting everything. It produces purple goods but its hard to tell how much. I am exporting a good chunk of purple but its hard to tell how that number is interacting with the IT spec. An interesting aspect is when a recycling truck finishes picking up garbage it gets flagged as carrying goods and changes from a service vehicle to a goods truck (purple to brown in the routing infoview). So the goods are effectively produced before the Recycling plant processes the garbage.
Recycling monument: Completely useless. Money wise its less efficient than just using normal recycling. Additionally as of this edit it doesn't send out enough trucks to actually pick up all the garbage of a city large enough to house a monument.
Residential specialization: As far as I can tell this spec is exactly as it appears in the tooltip. No extra or hidden mechanics. If anybody has found anything please chime in.
Commercial specialization: The 50% goods in the tooltip. This spec sells goods at the same rate as normal light commercial but only needs half as much of the goods delivery. Not sure the exact method it calculates it. Could be it doubles delivery amounts. Could be it only consumes half as many goods per sale. Either way it works.
Edit: Credit to Voeille. The 50% self goods production is sufficient to prevent the commercial from being abandoned due to no goods delivery.
The next big thing about this spec is that unlike normal commercial this spec doesn't only work off final product goods (purple). It also needs agriculture (orange). I figured this out through checking my imports and exports. I was importing a ton of agri (I normally export loads of it). All the orange buildings in the import infoview were my commercial. As far as I can tell agri counts as part of normal goods deliveries for the commercial spec. It uses agriculture more than normal industry does. If you go heavy green and make most of your commercial this spec you don't need normal industry at all. You can get all the goods you need from agri, recycling and possibly IT spec office. (side note: there are a bunch of new agri spec buildings with the DLC)
Edit: Credit to Voeille. The green commercial spec also produces no sound pollution.
Office specialization: The IT. So first thing to note is the tooltip doesn't lie. These buildings don't employ many people. So don't mass zone them thinking you're solving a jobs problem. A big upside is the buildings only have one level. So you can get the benefit of high income offices without having to invest in services.
Next is the goods mechanic. IT spec produces goods that commercial takes. It doesn't send trucks. I don't know if the goods count towards the commercial's stock. The buildings will light up purple in the export infoview. I can confirm if no commercial buys its "goods" it'll become abandoned. I am pretty sure normal and leisure commercial do pull more goods from the IT spec. It is unfortunately hard to work out the exact function of IT goods mechanic since it doesn't spawn trucks.
Edit: It appears IT does produce goods that are used by commercial and counts towards the goods need of the commercial but abandons if forced to export. Still not absolutely confirmed but likely enough at this point I'm confident its the case.
Recycling: In relation to garbage it functions just like an Incinerator but sends out fewer trucks. The fewer trucks matters but not that much. Incinerators you can stay at close to the minimum burn capacity as is needed for your city. The lack of trucks means you need to stay further above processing capacity with Recycling than with Incinerators. Its still far cheaper.
Based on my export infoview Recycling produces every kind of goods. I only have agri specialization but am exporting everything. It produces purple goods but its hard to tell how much. I am exporting a good chunk of purple but its hard to tell how that number is interacting with the IT spec. An interesting aspect is when a recycling truck finishes picking up garbage it gets flagged as carrying goods and changes from a service vehicle to a goods truck (purple to brown in the routing infoview). So the goods are effectively produced before the Recycling plant processes the garbage.
Recycling monument: Completely useless. Money wise its less efficient than just using normal recycling. Additionally as of this edit it doesn't send out enough trucks to actually pick up all the garbage of a city large enough to house a monument.
Last edited: