European cities have predictable layouts due to historical facts as well as geographical limitations. We can use the Cities Skylines 2 district tool to create a rough layout for a city before we start developing it. This will make the city and region much more realistic.
Chapters:
00:00 Middle Ages
01:37 Renaissance
02:54 Baroque
05:27 Enlightenment
06:54 Industrialization
11:07 Prewar
12:23 Postwar
14:36 Today
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37 Comments
Great video, I learnt a lot new things through it!
I'd still like to add my 2 cents though:
1:50 Yes, they did, but due to terrain not necessarily in all directions. Rivers, mountains and marshes may lead to your city center being more at the edge of the city. But since the build in the video actually follows that quite strictly, let me tell you that these geographic features don't have to stop you entirely. Look at Bremen, Stuttgart and dutch cities for example.
You don't have to build out every epoch mentioned, or you can go much larger or much smaller in an epoch. Think about the final size of your city and it's history. Rostock for example didn't grow beyond its old town until the industrialization, therefore the city wall and the bastion & its green belt are at the same place (this is actually very common for smaller cities). But even more interestingly, the majority of the cities' growth happened after WW1, so most of Rostock's footprint are "commie blocks" (and some suburbs).
Most will be aware of this, but when not bound by geography, city wall and bastions will form a near circular or oval shape.
8:34 I wouldn't go crazy with razing blocks to make way for a railway, but this can definitely be done for some of the railway tracks, others can run along the current edge of the city.
I'd also like to mention that train tracks near small cities hardly disrupted the existing city footprint at all as these cities weren't the ones building the tracks, but the ones hoping to get a train station as close as possible to their city center.
At this point I should probably also mention that I recommend to build other villages and small towns on the map already in the middle age (I think this was done in the build but not talked about). That way you can curve your railways so that they skirt the villages but not run straight through them (of course you can then development the village around the new train stop).
Similarly, you can have all medieval roads lead to different villages on the map, and upgrade these roads to these wide avenues once industrialization rolls around. That way, they won't all be perfectly straight.
Also, other towns and villages close to your city may be swallowed up by its expansion.
Lastly, alongside geographic conditions, try to place your localities and industrial plants based on natural resources (including groundwater).
Its funny you show this market place at 2:21 given the context of those facades.
The facades on the right were most recently bombed in WW2 and kind of rebuilt using scraps from a diverse set of architectural eras in 1956-1958. For more detail, you can check the Wikipedia page of the Bremer Marktplatz under Bebauung and then Nordwestseite.
I think you could even play off of such a story, given many cities were bombed in WW2, and build a mix of different assets on the main square in the final city, or jut in general mix in areas which contain more modern houses into the city center due to it having been bombed.
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Nice
Nice views for the Cities Skyline. I always thought that our cities in games are far from reality. That's because we ignored our past and history about the cities progression. I really appreciate your efforts about this.
0:08 reasearched with what? Looking at fake AI imagery?
Wahnsinnig gutes Video 😊 Danke❤
Cool video, don't really like the game because you can only create american cities, but this is definetly the coolest thing i have seen on it.
But most european cities did not have raised highways that destroyed the cities, that was an american thing.
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not the dirty mud road in the city center as a representation for medival cities 😭😭😭
Nice video, but you mixed historical and cultural periods. First one is defined by events, other by art (roughly). This is a bit of a problem, because they overlap. Renaissance started during the middle ages as early as the 14th century and ended somewhere during early modern times.
as an urban planning student, this was a very interesting watch! i do wish you unpaused the game and let the city expand between epochs to show the city evolve instead of building it out all at once 🙂
you basically made the town i live in
Ein Geograph aus dem Rundbau also. Ich sitze gerade in der Geologie nebenan! Grüße gehen raus!
This video is supreme. Thank you!
I should build my cities like this. Would ideally require first setting up a region of villages though. That's a lot of work and I'd also have to start with all tiles unlocked which completely disables a big part of the game play. I wish Cities Skylines was more suited to historic progression.
I just subbed to your channel, you know, just in case you decide to do a full build on this plan… Awesome video!
Seems like a modded map, what is it called?
What's that move it button you use?
i had to sub for this . getting back into it since the launch im glad it's still on game pass . i need to figure out traffic as ofcourse my city grows my road layout just turns into a disaster xD
thank you. this is exactly the video i've been looking for. i'm taking notes as i watch. i hope u make one for north american and asia as well. the biggest trouble i have with building my city is it always looks like a random mess. i see it is very important to know the history of the city so the growth is more natural that way. its hard to know, from looking at a map, why certain roads are that shap and what purpose they serve
Richtig gutes Video 🫡
Really beautiful! 😍
Awesome video, well researched and explained. Thank you! Hope to see much more like this here soon.
Fantastic video, this was basically exactly what I was looking for, thanks a ton
Richtig strammes video bruder
Super interesting video. I always struggle with the first steps of city planning in Cities Skylines because I tend to think of historical markers and how the town would have come together overtime. This gave me alot of insight into how expansion happens over time and the differing land uses attributed to such epochs
I think the modern style looks better
Great vid!
What do you prefer nowadays for realistic european cities, CSL1 or 2? (assuming lots of mods ofc)
Superb video, the info will come in handy as I attempt to build a realistic European city. What map did you use for this?
CS2. For me; counter strike 😂😆
I love the video but would prefer it if you used European ie English terminology rather than American
Great video my man!
Super informativ and well researched. There were like a few point you did not mention or got a bit wrong, but i saw that people allready commented about it and you saw it.
One point i didnt see, its about the rails.. So, back in the industrialization era, trains werent all that powerful, so curves didnt had to be all that flat. Thats more a thing for modern high speed rail. Also elevation climbs had to be very easy as to the same reason.
For modern trains, you can have an elevation increase of about 4%, for cargo only about 1-1.5%.
Great, now i have to start my city over 😅
Tbh. this must be the single most usefull CS2 video ever
This video was very interesting and I learned a lot from it! I personally think that the size of the grid was maybe too big, but that is totally personal preference ofcourse. Very much enjoyed your video anyway, thank you!