Shopping Center Unlock Guide (Cities: Skylines)

Shopping Center
DLC	None
Building Type	Unique Building
Level/Category	Landmark
Build Cost	₡190,000
Upkeep Cost	₡3,200/week
Milestone Required	Worthy Village
Entertainment Value	125
Noise Pollution	100
Visitor Capacity	450

The Shopping Center is a Landmark unique building that you can build in Cities: Skylines.

To unlock the Shopping Center, you need to have 30,000 squares of residential zoning built. You’ll also need to reach the Worthy Village milestone (650 – 2,600 population, depending on the map). Once these requirements are fulfilled, you’ll be able to build the Shopping Center from the Landmarks tab of the Unique Buildings menu for ₡190,000.

Until then, you can hover over the Shopping Center’s silhouette in the menu to see your progress.

The Shopping Center in the Unique Buildings menu.

Creating Residential Zones

Residential zones are created by using the residential (green) zoning tools on the squares next to roads. Both low- and high-density residential zones count towards this unlock.

The Residential Zoning tools.

In order to count towards the 30,000 squares, your residential zoning has to be fully built upon (they cannot be empty zones).

This means you’ll need actual demand for residential zoning in your city, since buildings will only grow in zones if there is demand for that particular type.

Demand for each type is indicated by the demand bars towards the bottom of the screen (the green bar represents residential).

The residential demand bar.

How To Encourage Residential Demand

For more people to want to move into your city (in other words, to have demand for residential zoning), you need to make sure your city has enough jobs for them – and that your city is a comfortable place to live.

Here’s how to encourage both of those things and increase residential demand.

Task #1: Creating Enough Workplaces

People will want to move into your city if there are opportunities for work.

You can create workplaces by zoning industry (yellow) and offices (cyan). Be aware that offices will require educated workers, so make sure you have enough educational facilities in your city.

Look at your demand bar:

Oftentimes, zero residential demand will coincide with high demand for industry/office (orange). This means you’ll need to provide jobs for people to want to move in!

Commercial buildings also create jobs; however, like offices, they require educated workers, so ensure that you have enough qualified citizens to staff your commercial zones.

Task #2: Providing Services

You should also make sure that your city is well-covered by services.

People won’t want to move in if your city is beset with problems such as high crime rate, garbage pile ups, and so on.

So make sure you build enough:

Police stations
Fire houses
Garbage facilities
And medical clinics

Educational access also plays a big role in attracting new citizens, so make sure your city is covered at all levels (from elementary, to high school, and finally university when it’s unlocked).

Apart from making your city more attractive to new residents, schools also make sure your offices and commercial zones have the educated workers they need.

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Liz Villegas

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Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

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