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A bustling city is bound to come with some noise. InCities: Skylines 2, you will have to deal with noise complaints, especially in busier areas. While some noise pollution is bound to occur, there are ways to lower it to a manageable level for your citizens.
If noise pollution is plaguing your city, we are here for you. In this guide, we are going to take a look at how to deal with and potentially reduce noise pollution. This will include information about combating noise pollution in already built-up areas of your city, as well as planning to avoid any future noise pollution.
What Is Noise Pollution?
Noise pollution is essentially just loud buildings and traffic that can disturb citizens in their homes.This noise pollution can decrease their well-being and happiness, and potentially cause them to move out of their home.
What Creates Noise Pollution?
Noise pollution is important, but thankfully, buildings and structures that have noise pollution will say this on the building informational panel. When you click on a building, the panel that pops up willshow the level of noise pollution between low, medium, and high.
In addition to this,noise pollution is created by industrial and commercial zones.
Noise Pollution Overlay
From the ‘Info Views’ menu in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, you can check out a variety of overlays. Near the bottom of this menu, you’ll find an icon shaped like a pair of headphones. This will display thenoise pollution in your city, allowing you to check out any extra-loud areas.
Quiet areas will be onblue land,while loud areas will be onred and yellow land, with red being more intense.You can use this overall to see how the noise is distributed around your city. Overall, it’s best toavoid noise pollution around residential zones.
How To Plan For Noise Pollution
When you are planning your city, you can place roads in a way to avoid noise pollution. Rather than creating a grid of streets and then commercial and residential zones within, we highly recommendcreating a dedicated residential zone.
Cities: Skylines 2 encouraged mixed zones, however,it’s also important to not put too many commercial buildings near housing.The noise pollution from one store isn’t much, but several stores in a row can cause enough noise pollution to bother citizens.
Additionally, it’s important toavoid placing residential zones at heavy intersections.The constant traffic can cause noise pollution, which is also unpleasant.
As a rule of thumb,try not to place residential zones directly on six-lane streets.
How To Lower Noise Pollution From Traffic
Traffic is inevitable, but it can cause a lot of noise pollution. Thankfully, there are a few ways to lower this traffic-based noise pollution. These can be implemented in your city after it’s already been built and don’t require any demolition.
District Policies
After creating a district, you canset specific policies for every building and street found within.Below, you can check out the policies that can ease noise pollution caused by traffic.
Description
Speed Bumps
Speed bumps reduce the speed of drivers, lowering noise pollution and the chances of accidents occurring.
Gated Community
Only people who live or work in a district can enter. This also decreases crime and increases well-being.
Heavy Traffic Ban
Trucks/heavy vehicles are prohibited from entering, which also lowers air pollution.
Combustion Engine Ban
“Fuel-burning” vehicles are not allowed in the district, which also lowers air pollution.
Highway Sound Barriers
After unlocking the highway and road services nodes, you will be able toadd sound barriers to the sides of highways. This isn’t beneficial for long stretches of highway that pass through uninhabited land, but it can ease noise pollution in sections that pass through a city.
While thesedon’t completely eliminate sound pollution,they can help decrease how noisy your city is.
Pedestrian Streets
Pedestrian streets are one of the best additions to Cities: Skylines 2! With this road, you may create awalkable network of housing and stores without any of the traffic.City services and transportation can still use these streets, but for the most part, heavy traffic is cut out of the equation.
If you want a peaceful and quiet neighborhood,we recommend turning some streets into this pedestrian version.
Noise Pollution From Raised & Lowered Streets
When streets are lowered underground,noise pollution is essentially canceled out.you may use this to your advantage tocreate highways and large roads that don’t cause a disturbance.
Raised highways, on the other hand, create a fair amount of noise pollution. Additionally,if you have a raised highway, you cannot put sound barriers on it.
Can Trees Lower Noise Pollution?
Lastly, let’s talk about trees. Trees can be added straight to the ground, as well as on the sides of streets. When you first place a tree down, it will be quite tiny, butover time, it will grow into a large tree.
With enough of these large trees, you canreduce the amount of noise pollution present.For example, if you have a residential area that is a few blocks away from a highway, fill this space with trees. This can bevisually appealing as well.
Interestingly, trees will widen the sidewalk andprevent cars from parking on the side of the street as well.
