Cities: Skylines

#citiesskylines2 I think I figured out how to satisfy low density residential demand in the game. It basically operates on the concept of Induced Demand. Just like adding a lane to a highway incentivizes people to use the highway more, leading to the same congestion problems. If you constantly zone low density residential in an attempt to "chase the demand bar," what you're doing is increasing the supply of houses. Meaning, driving down the COST of housing. Meaning more citizens can afford a house, meaning they buy up that supply, so they demand more... it's a feedback loop, like acquiescing to a child who only ever wants to eat chocolate.

So, counterintuitively, you need to IGNORE their demand. By keeping the supply constant, and with demand increasing, the cost of the housing goes up. This prices out some of your citizens, and so they will begin demanding lower-cost options. Enter, medium density housing. You start with row housing, then medium density, then mixed-use. This doesn't happen fast, let alone instantly, so you kind of have to plan this strategy from the founding of your city. At one point I had a 15k pop with almost exclusive demand for medium density housing.

As your citizens get more educated through college and university levels, they'll be able to afford those suburbs again, and the demand will return. But they'll also be young enough that living "in the big city" will be desirable and they'll start demanding high density apartments close to shops and offices. Beware the Low Rent zoning type! Despite being high density, if your citizens are too well educated and make too much money, they'll abandon these buildings the moment they can afford nicer places. But I guess they're a good stopgap measure between medium density and regular high density.

So Induced Demand is a double edged sword: you want to avoid inducing demand for low density suburbs, and purposely induce demand for higher densities.

#citiesskylines