Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall Unlock Guide for Cities: Skylines

Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall
DLC	Plazas and Promenades
Building Type	Unique Building
Level/Category	Pedestrian Area Landmarks
Build Cost	₡210,000
Upkeep Cost	₡3,360/week
Milestone Required	Tiny Town
Entertainment Value	125
Noise Pollution	52
Visitor Capacity	400

The Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall is a landmark unique building available with the Cities: Skylines Plazas and Promenades DLC.

To unlock it, you’ll need to have a pedestrian area visited by 500 tourists per week. You’ll also need to reach the Tiny Town milestone (360-1,500 population, depending on the map).

Once you’ve done both things, you’ll be able to build the Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall from the Pedestrian Area Landmarks tab of the Unique Buildings menu for ₡210,000.

Until then, hovering over its silhouette in the menu will show you how many tourists you have in your pedestrian area for the week.

The Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall’s silhouette in the menu.

The Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall follows the same progression path as two other unique buildings from Plazas and Promenades: the Museum of Post-Modern Art and the Pedestrian Street Market Hall.

This means you’ll have unlocked those two before you unlock the Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall.

How To Create Your Pedestrian Area

Step #1: Paint the Pedestrian Area

Go to the Districts and Areas menu and select the Paint Pedestrian Area tool. Mark the part of the map you want to make a pedestrian area out of.

Paint a pedestrian area.

Step #2: Place a Service Point

Each pedestrian area requires a service point to function. You can build one from the Pedestrian Areas tab of the Parks and Plazas menu.

The service point needs to be within your pedestrian area, and connected to the rest of your city’s road network.

Service points allow the buildings in your pedestrian area to get cargo deliveries and garbage collection despite not having vehicle road access.

Building a small pedestrian area service point.

Step #3: Build Pedestrian Streets

With your service point operational, you can go on to build pedestrian streets.

The Plazas and Promenades DLC provides a variety of car-free streets in different sizes.

You’ll find these in the Pedestrian Areas tab of the Parks and Plazas menu, as well as the Roads menu.

You’ll find several pedestrian street types in the Pedestrian Areas tab.

Step #4: Build the Pedestrian Area As Desired

Now that you have a working pedestrian area, you can place and zone buildings according to your needs.

For the purpose of this unlock, you may want to turn it into a mostly tourist district, with plenty of leisure establishments and commercial buildings.

However, you can also zone residential and office buildings in your pedestrian areas.

Tips for Getting 500 Tourists

Compared to the Museum of Post-Modern Art and the Pedestrian Street Market Hall, the Sunken Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall requires a much larger number of weekly tourists, making it more challenging.

Generally, attracting tourists comes down to:

Raising land value by building unique buildings
And building parks and plazas

Apart from the usual parks and plaza assets from the base game, you also have a selection of pedestrian plazas from the Plazas and Promenades DLC.

But if you’re having trouble hitting 500, here are a few tips that can help.

Tip #1: Build Your Pedestrian Area Near Intercity Transport

Intercity transport allows tourists to come into your city in large numbers at a time.

If you have access to an external rail connection and can afford a train station, you can arrange it so that passing through the pedestrian area is a convenient (and therefore frequently used) path from the train station to the rest of your city.

You can use this same strategy with passenger harbors and airports.

Tip #2: Build a Football Stadium (Matchday DLC)

If you have the free Match Day DLC and ₡200,000 to spare, you can build a Football Stadium.

This unique building draws a massive crowd – especially around and during match days, which take place every 48 weeks.

You’ll find it in the Football tab of the Unique Buildings menu.

The Matchday DLC Football Stadium.

Tip #3: Expand Bigger

If you’re still struggling to hit the 500 tourist mark, it may simply be a matter of not having enough places to go.

Try expanding your pedestrian area and placing down more parks, plazas, and unique buildings.

Eventually you’ll hit the magic number.

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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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