When players reach the Big Town milestone in Cities: Skylines, they get access to new construction zones that can make a big change to the size and shape of a city. These include high-density residential, high-density commercial, and offices; but what exactly are offices, and what happened to high-density industry?
The short answer is that offices are the high-density industrial zone. However, the nature of office zones is so different compared to regular industrial zones that Cities: Skylines uses the color cyan for them instead of dark yellow. If players want to make good use of office zones, they should pay close attention to what these differences are.
Office Versus Industry
- Industrial zones can be placed in districts and specialized to grow or extract raw materials like trees, oil, and ore, but only if the district includes these resources. Generic industrial districts then process raw materials into goods that are either exported or sent to commercial buildings.
- Office zones can also specialize, but only if players buy the right expansions. Either way, office buildings don't process raw materials and can go anywhere.
- Industry buildings need a regular stream of trucks to bring in supplies and take out finished goods. This is on top of the commuters who drive to and from work. Office buildings only generate commuters.
- Both industry and office buildings fulfill the city's demand for industrial buildings (the yellow bar at the bottom)
- Industry buildings generate a lot of noise pollution, and most types of industry generate ground pollution. Office buildings don't generate either kind of pollution, and in fact, they upgrade faster in areas without much noise or ground pollution.
- Office jobs have high education demands, especially compared to industry jobs. However, industry jobs with the Industry 4.0 policy active are about equal in their education demands.
Why Build Offices?
- Much like the other high-density zones, offices generate a lot more tax income compared to regular industrial zones.
- Industrial and commercial zones generate a lot of cargo traffic, but offices only generate commuter traffic. This means office zones don't put a big strain on the city's traffic flow.
- Offices and residences both prefer low noise pollution and high land values. This means players can mix the two zones together without creating problems for either one. By doing this, players can create areas with few traffic problems since citizens can walk to their workplaces without needing public transportation.
- Players can meet the demand for industrial jobs by building office zones exclusively. This cuts down on industry traffic, though it does mean that every commercial zone has to import its goods from off-map.
Cities: Skylines is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.