I would like to introduce new usage of Parklife DLC (probably not so new to some of you).

First of all - I wasn't very impressed with Parklife at all. I didn't buy it initially as it wasn't worth money to me. Creating theme parks, natural reserves somewhere on a side of my city (or multiple towns as I like them built on one map) was not my thing and not very appealing.

I gave it a try eventually, and it wasn't until just 2 months ago when i first started thinking of getting more out of it.

Now I have private schools, parks, whole districts and towns, that if one wants to get in, they need to pay for entrance. And citizens in this game seems perfectly happy with that - because they have to go to schools, shops, work or even back home (yes, I charge them on their way back home too).

All is needed is a way to make sure they cannot go in any other way than through the gates but to allow services (police, hearses, ambulances and so on) to service the area (unless you want to spend money on seperate services).

There 2 ways now available both in game and in the workshop, use motorway/highway links or this road asset. Using the mod Traffic Manager President Edition make sure cars cannot pass either way (in and out although that's up to you).

Let's see an example:


This is my first test area I have made in my latest city - I would call it a private university - you pay your town to get educated. The road from the town gets here from the right side, there's a car park (no one uses it really so no need for that), bus stop on one side only as this the end of any bus route here. And the park gates (more specifically Park Area gate).

What type of park you want, it's completely up to you - since everyone can mix and match zoo, amusement parks, city parks, all in one to make it more attractive - you can make it a zoo (students are always weird and behaves like those trapped in cages ;-)).

Next to the gate, but not too close, at least 1 tile away, can be anywhere further obviously, is an entry road - motorway. Any closer location could result in joining park path (any of your choice, doesn't need to be from the Parks menu) with that road (which since it's a motorway where there's no pavement, shouldn't create any walk around way of getting into the Uni without paying for that.

The link itself needs to have vehicle restrictions - I choose cars to be banned only.

And that's the most important way of getting it work as a seperate entity. The Park Area doesn't need to cover the whole University grounds, especially if you have parks in it. This is something I haven't worked out yet, I would have to start a new map to see the cost cleraly - as in the picture below, the cost is just 48, this is the gate cost only as n othing else in the area counts toward park cost.

Adding parks and plazas adds the cost to the Park Area itself, depending on the item maintenance cost - The thing I don't know is if that doubles the cost and the same park is counted twice. I suppose not but the budget window is not clear about that.
I have my doubts only because I use CSL More Graphs a lot and these 2 cost figures are seperate there (parks and plazas and Park areas).

And what just came to my mind is - parks and plazas obviously have their cost , obviously they have visitors count (which can be changed and ramped up id you want thousands of tourist on a tiny little park - just use Customize It mod, with values - Entertainment and Attractiveness Accumulation (either both or one of them) influencing tourist influx; and possibly low/medium/high wealth tourists allowing how many of them are allowed in at the same time. You can also change maintenance cost of these attractions, especially park gates.
Unique buildings - they don't count towards Park Area cost as the intention was for not to be a part of these areas; since they are not part of it, you need regular roads to have them placed inside such an area - again use a motorway/highway to make sure citizens and tourists don't go around the gates without paying for access - placing unique buildings inside these areas will bring even more tourists there getting through the park gates... leaving you more and more money.

So people get through the gates only, in and out, and they are happy to work and study there.

Following this little success, I went back to my previous idea of parks that are dotting my city to be paid attractions that I get money from. See picture below:


Black Circles are the gates to local parks (parks, plazas, tennis courts, sport grounds), all of them included in one area. You can have roads and zonable areas going through it, as long as you don't create any point of entry (a path connected to a road) without a gate. Top right corner is the same park area but cut off from the rest of it.



Notice also, extending such a Park Area (especially well developed) into any zone (at least into Residential zones) without building any new parks, not even in that area where you are xtending the zone to, will bring high Leisure value there, and possibly will increase the land value (cannot check it right now as for some reason I have high leisure value all over my city, and there were areas intentionally left to have low value). So this would be a cheap way to have a high land value.


So far so good... Let's let in some residents there!
I just discovered a youtube video made by Sam Bur, right after I had started experimenting with city-park... or park-city idea. Looks like he got that idea right after Parklife has come out last year in 2018. Here is his "Can people live inside a theme park" video. He explored the idea a bit and with caution... I just went fully fledged with it... kind of.
I have decided to have a new town on the same map, a private town - all residents getting in have to pay for the comfort of their beds... each night, after shopping, after school, after work. Every time they get out of their homes I knew they would have to come back, so why not charge them for that! It turned out to be one of the game mechanics that doesn't work very well - regardless how high the price is, they will come back to their beds...
If only I could seperate toilets to an area outside the city walls ( or ring road) ;)

Here it is:

Danzig Corporation - the idea comes from the industrial era of my home city - Lodz, and possibly many other cities too, where some rich ... I mean absolutely rich people (these were the times when labour was as cheap as slaves, so they could afford all of it, all beautiful buildings - unlike nowadays so-called modern offices and warehouses that look sam as any toilet). Some of them built houses and schools and hospitals for their workers, a kind of cities within cities. I obviously never eard of any charges introduced for going in and out of your home, even those days, but as we live in or rather are approaching very fast, trumpian-like capitalism, were all things are for free for those who have lots of money, why not twisting the reality... in game at least ;)

So all around this town there's a ring road, to provide service access from outside as quick as possible to all sides (I used some roads with speed restriction in this town, so to go around it, there's this ring road), bus lines/routes finishing there with bus stops where the park gates are, and short highway links to join the town with rest of the world.

No buses inside there, not as yet. It's only residential area.

So that was Danzig town, a bunny test before making it nicer.

Here comes Lukkus Landing - at the time of taking the screenshots for Danzig the income wasn't very high (usually it goes well above 15.000).

Here is the Park revenue screen for Lukkus Landing, an old town.

I am experimenting with seperate park area next to it but, as the example with shopping center will show, it's not necessary to have them seperately.

Here are my entry points to the town. First picture shows the original entry way:
Citizens from other towns and outside the map come down this avenue from the right. Initially there was no leg branching out as you can see in the top right corner. All they were to do is to come, stop in the car park (it's removed now, it was where that loop road (Hunter Street) is, get off their cars, to the path and through the park main gate - middle bottom of the screen - to go to the town. Highway link (Meadow Drive) between the park gate and the entry avenue has car restriction, so no cars and no pedestrians go there.

Second entry done later is where the train station was placed - initially there were no buses in the town but as road restriction is not for buses, i could get them from some bus depots situated in other towns.

So that crowd in Graham Street has never gathered there before until I decided to uses buses in this town. What is in here:
1. the train station (both local and outside connections on seperate platforms - don't mix up local and regional passenger trains, please; the same for cargo trains, I have seperate tracks for local and outside connections).
2. service road for the train station - it's the one branching out from the avenue in the previous picture - for garbage collection, police and cars from the other towns only (I have few seperate towns on one map)
3. highway link again for the services only to connect train station with this town - Lukkus - it's to the left from the train station
4. pedestrian crossing and the path to the town through the park gate.

Voila!
(... and something doesn't work, which was harder to see in a larger city. I started a new map with one single town for more testing - placing park gates right at the begining, where you have only road connection, doesn't allow too many people to arrive. They definately hasn't arrived anymore after adding new districts. Not by road, but by train, yes. I had huge influx of new arrivals/citizens by trains - which you can really afford with an income of 15.000 and population of just 3.000.)

The paths on either sides of the train station leading further up in the picture, lead to the second seperate park area, it's got its own gates.... but....

This is the way to make more money from the same park area:


This, quite a lonely and empty as yet, shopping center (possibly because there are shops throught the town anyway), has got 3 park gates (black circles) and clearly marked highway links (dark red squares). The 4 lane road in the middle allows citizens from Lukkus, or those who already passed Lukkus gates (pictures above before this part) and miracously got their cars unfolded out of their pockets to drive further up, to get here by car or by bus. There is a car park, no one uses it (I guess Ikea lost its clout) with bus stops. Park gates leading to the secondary road system - linked to the city with car restrictions via highway - and we are in shops.

There is also a pathway to the town - left-ish bottom side - it is more expensive to walk - not only you pay to get to the shops, but also on the way back as there's a gate right down there at Todd Evans Street.

Entry prices are set to the maximum - for both Danzig and Lukkus - it doesn't affect citizen demand.


A short note on making city pretty using Procedural Objects mod - when it comes to residential, commercial or other buildings, it makes them lose their purpose - they are just pretty objects in town, on a map, not even props as it's not that easy to delete them.
I fell in love with the idea in this video made by Titan: Vedastein #19 - The Half-Timbered Side - it's the very first few minutes of the video with the final result between 30:10 - 30:40 - unfortunately these buildings lost their functionality.
It's very beautiful and they built such sites all around the world - in London (UK) as well - as long as your town existed in medieval times it could have had such a bridge housing/shops structure (it seems only medieval times were good at it). Here is my example from Lukkus - not as pretty as Titan's:

No added value at all - just a plopabble thing on your map that makes your eyes shine but the game doesn't see it anymore - it's only the road thrown over that bridge that carries people over. There's nothing to click on to get any building values or settings, which is a shame really but at least i am more experienced in using procedural objects mod.

That's all about Parklife - it's not only for charging people at the transport interchanges - where they change from one metro line to the other, going through an amusement park or just an empty lot that is a park area. Have a good time getting as much money as possible now!

Now... this is without pictures as yet, need a smaller city to start with and take new screenshots.
But the experience so far is that rising ticket prices do affect income, but not the way we would like it :)

Again, to observe more details, I use CSL More Graphs mod made by ibotaro - very good stuff, especially that one can get all that info downloaded into spreadsheet format and after reformatting and adjusting to your own needs, can view your city data the way you like it. I'm missing only few things in there and would love the game creators to include all that stuff in the in-game statistics.

Anyway, what I have noticed is:

1. Ticket prices do not affect how many people uses the public transport (trains are my favourite expensive transport mode)

2. Ticket prices do affect residential (and only residential) income value - I had a large... kinda large - around 100.000 citizens town - all of the sudden i realised, checking my budget screen, i had almost no residential income - it was a disappointing 2.000 game money or something around it.

The conclusion was - one can live on transport fares only, each bus ticket costing a passenger thounds of thounds of money... easy way to live with.
It didn't matter what mods was used for changing these prices - whether Ticket Price Customizer or Transport Lines Manager - both had the same effect - removing them or putting the prices back to original value, started the process of restoring the residential income.

3. Although the public transport income rises immediately , the drop in residential tax income is slow and steady, takes years to go to zero i suppose. The reverse action is slow as well, and I'm not sure if it gets fully restored.

I will test it for you and support with images in few days.

There's also a downside to creating Park Areas. Not sure if it's intended by game creators or not.

Similarly to rising ticket prices for public transport, it reduces residential tax income. Not only residential though, it also negatively affects commercial tax income. But only to a specific level and then it stops going down.

Right, so here we have some more examples - screenshots taken from my new map where I have placed few separate towns. As it was ages ago, the charge a toll for entering - as tollbooths are not anough, they miss pedestrians, one can combine both - that's the last screenshot with Butler's Gate.


Entry to a blimp stop is chargable (black circle), on the way out from that port and into the city there is no gate.
Motorway to stop pedestrians from going around but to allow services to get to the blimp port. and to place any public transport buildings (mixing roads with park paths will prevent services getting where they are needed).



Entry to a castle (black circle - amusement park gate) which is on the other shore with no space on land, so I charge them before they get on a ferry - this ferry line is (or rather used to be as i just realised) 2 stop only - simple transfer to the other side of the river, nowhere else.
The ferry service is chargable as well (yellow circle - city park gate).
On the way out from that port and into the city there is no gate.
Motorway (red circle) to stop pedestrians from going around but to allow services to get to the ferry port. and to place any public transport buildings (mixing roads with park paths, even inside a park area, will prevent services getting where they are needed, that's my understanding at least).




Example of charging both ways
- when leaving a town to a (blimp) port (additional charge for using this transport mode, on top of a ticket price)
- and when entering the town back from your trip
- there is also (to the left - green circle) example of additional "tuition fee" for using unversity area (including latest Campus DLC)
- both areas are seperated from direct pedestrian access by using motorways to allow services in and out - using a mix of roads and paths inside a park area would most likely prevent garbage, police and other services from getting to the buildings that have to be placed on roads and not paths. It's only one way - I wasn't too gready to charge them on their way back to bed. Currently i earn just above 7400 $ so that covers my expenses on that new campus from the Campus DLC ;)

- there are gates for the blimp stop (blue circle) and back to the city (yellow circle) - they are invisible park gates, cheaper (although using Customize It mod could be implemented here) and takes less space, plus they work, some other gates on workshop let people bypass the gates somehow.
- I also have parks, churches (parks again), cafes (parks again), leisure center and some commercial zonable buildings there, gates on few paths in (only one delivery path in this case; 2way chargable system takes a bit of space to construct as you need to be careful not to connect a path to a road if it needs to go to a gate only).



Similar example as before with 3 entries for the train station (you can collect your travellers by bus from outside the gates - or place another park zone to get to a different transport system (say a blimp, ship, ferry - maybe not buses or trams as they have too many stops)

Straight after leaving the train station and crossing the road (use pedestrian crossing mod to place more pedestrian crossings) they go through the city gate - and then they can go in 3 directions, where on the way back from the city they need to pay for entering the train station.

That's done this way just for fun as they could have been just 1 train station gate (on the way back) and then just regular roads and paths leading in all directions (make sure they don't connect to the path inside the park zone, otherwise your citizens will happily skip the gates if they find it quicker or shorter. If the way through the gates is shorter though, they will most likely use it, not all of them but you won't lose lots of money I suppose).



And the final nail in my citizens happy coffin - road toll system - no escape from paying, although relatively cheap - together with park gates, both on the way in and out from the city.



Obviously one can create them even more complicated - the issue is with drawing the zones - if no main gate is used that would keep the zone intact, drawing one zone next to another (especially a small one) causes lots of issues and requires a bit patience ;)