Cities: Skylines

Cities: Skylines

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Realistic Ways to Utilize Trees in Cities:Skylines
By YoongZY
This is a guide about how to make trees in Cities: Skylines to good use realistically into your city.
   
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Introduction
Many players don't care much about planting trees or making a large public space with trees in between blocks, making the whole city looks depressing. This guide is going to help you on how to utilized those trees the game and workshop had brought to us in your very own city, making your citizens life better. Let's jump straight into it!
What's the purpose of planting trees?
Urban forestry is the care and management of single trees and tree populations in urban settings for the purpose of improving the urban environment. it involves both planning and management, including the programming of care and maintenance operations of the urban forest.

As in Cities: Skylines, planting trees only works as natural sound barriers or pure beautification, they're not that necessary at all in this game, that's why it's in the beautification tab.

Urban trees add beauty and greenery to a city while improving personal health, modifying local climate and creating wildlife and plant diversity directly inside a city. It prevents urban heat island and also reduce the risk of heat stroke as it provides shades for anyone under it. Planting trees make a city more livable than before.

I'm keeping this guide as simple as possible.👍
Vanilla Trees
There're quite a lot of vanilla trees available in-game. To name a few:
Vanilla Trees:
  • Alder #2
  • Chinese Windmill Palm
  • Corsican Pine
  • Flowering Tree
  • Flowering Tree #2
  • Flowering Tree #3
  • Flowering Tree #4
  • Giant Redwood
  • Giant Redwood #2
  • Green Tree
  • Oak
  • Small Beech
  • Small Bush
  • Sugar Maple
  • Tree with Leaves
  • Tree with Leaves #2
  • Yew
Boreal and European:
  • Conifer
  • Conifer #2
  • Pine
  • Wild Conifer
Temperate and Tropical:
  • Large Bush
Tropical:
  • Palm Plant
  • Palm Tree
Content Creator Trees:
  • Boreal Pine
  • Blooming Jacaranda
  • California Palms
  • Coconut Tree
  • Eastern Cottonwood
  • Generic Pine Tree
  • Generic Date Palm
  • Horse Chestnut
  • Live Oak
  • Lantana
  • Pacific Rhododendron
  • Tall Grass Cluster
  • Wild Hedge
  • Young Linden
Ways to Utilize Trees
There're various ways to make trees in Cities: Skylines to good use. For instant:
  • Tree Lined Walkway or Road
  • Recreation Parks
  • Empty Corner Land
  • Overgrown Areas
  • Trimmed Natural Beauty
Tree Lined Walkway or Road
This is simple, just a walkway or road with aligned trees providing shades and greenery to the public. Having some small bushes on the curbs along with some regular height trees in the same species blends in well with the city's surroundings, and make sure there're breathing spaces between them. Shoreline walkways or roads are better with taller and wider trees or maybe with the Arecaceae family.



Workshop:
It's always easier to have some road networks with pre-built trees modified. You will need Network Skins (Sunset Harbor Compatible) to change the tree type of certain networks. After changing it just build as usual, don't forget to change it back to default if you're not planning to have the same trees for the whole city. The network will reset to default if you connect another network straight into it from the side. The same thing applies to walkway with pre-built trees. For walkways and roads with no trees, you need to place it all down manually, I'm sorry. Tree Anarchy can make your life easier.

Vanilla:
You need some time to make this succeed. You have to manually place all the trees down beside the walkway or road in good precision in order to save some space for future development. The fastest way is to slightly move your cursor-tip at the edge of the network until the circle indicator turns blue. The same thing applies to any networks.
Recreation Parks
Yeah, parks, we all know about that. But in here, I'm not talking about park assets, I'm talking about custom made parks which I recommend Parklife DLC. This is the category about parks you need to build by yourself in the game with park trials and decorations, also trees you can play with. This is where you can show your creativity in designing your parks that can make your city feels more breathable.



Workshop:
You can build your park trails with nice looking walkways from the workshop to make it look more like a proper park. Decorate your recreation area with trees and bushes in different height, don't forget about some tall trees and flower that can spice up your park further more. If you're playing with Parklife DLC, you can decorate your park with some cute little gazebo or maybe some camping area. You'll find it worth your time when you know you're earning some money with Parklife.

Vanilla:
A normal pedestrian or gravel walkway will do. Connect the walkways from different directions to be like a shortcut just to have some people walking through the park. Decorate your park with different kinds of trees from the game and try not to make it feels like a forest, blending in some park assets can be useful too.
Empty Corner Land
This is the place where you can't fit any decent buildings and is going to be there forever. This kind of places always appear in a city no matter how your road layout is. It usually located at the corner part of an acute angle junction that you don't have a suitable asset to fit in nicely, or sometimes being an empty backyard. Without any trees for decoration, this place can really be such an eyesore.



Workshop:
I think you don't need anything from the workshop for this, except you want to have some nice looking trees to fit in. In some cases when the game says the place had been occupied, you can use Tree Anarchy to forcefully fit it in the small corner or backyard. Just try to cover up the ugly part of your city.

Vanilla:
Just locate an empty corner and find yourself a good looking tree, then just place it randomly on that spot. Having a good control over your cursor can do something even better.
Overgrown Areas
An eerie and sometimes swampy area that's overgrown with lots of plants and vines. This place usually exist under an overpass and sewers with dense trees without a proper care. Small bushes and long grass are the most dominant in this kind of area without a decent amount of sunlight exposure.



Workshop:
The workshop offers many kinds of small bushes and unattended long grasses that fit perfectly in here. Just find an empty space under an intersection or something and prove yourself. Try to make it as dense as possible with different kinds of plants to make it looks more dirty and overgrown.

Vanilla:
Find an overpass and start planting down some small bushes that fit nicely from the game. Don't forget about vegetation, it can provide a swampy looks to that area and try to fit in as many plant as you can.
Trimmed Natural Beauty
This kind of place usually exist on a small hillside or even botanical gardens. It has many types of plants that are separated randomly and naturally, hence it always have many spaces to breathe. The natural form itself makes the city looks way ecological and can be a great decoration piece in a big plot of land.



Workshop:
Find some nice looking trees from the workshop in various sizes and a nice location in your city. You can try to change the landscape of that area just to make it more like a tiny bump of land instead of a big flat piece of land. Randomly place the plants in groups separately and scatter them around the landscape. Try to make it as natural as possible, you can search up for some image to help you.

Vanilla:
Change the landscape a bit to make it looks interesting. Try to fit in different kinds of vanilla plants and scatter them around the landscape naturally, following the terrain. Have some bushes scattering around it can makes the feel better. It's all up to your creativity.
Conclusion
Trees are not just protecting the environment, but it makes a city and yourself feels alive. Having some trees in different kind of places can make your city looks greener and more interesting. So let's plant some trees today! #TeamTrees

How do you usually use your trees in? Feel free to tell me in the comment section below!

Credits to all that provide those pics for this guide

Check out other guides made by me:
Realistic City Layout from all over the World
Realistic Zoning for Realistic Cities in C:S
CHIRP List

Rate this guide if you're liking it.
Have a nice day! 😉👍
4 Comments
YoongZY  [author] 5 Dec, 2023 @ 9:34pm 
@kaciel
If you're keeping vanilla, some big-round tree, more smaller bushes-like trees and occasionally some tall ones will be good for majority temperate climate.
If you're modding, use the same thing too but with slightly higher resolution depending on how high your city's overall resolution is so that it won't stand out too much.
hijinxxd 5 Dec, 2023 @ 11:46am 
i'm using the forest mod, do you have suggestions for which trees i should select as a base for just filling areas?
YoongZY  [author] 18 Jan, 2022 @ 10:59pm 
wlc
心茫然 18 Jan, 2022 @ 10:11pm 
very useful for our beginner, thanks:steamhappy: