Town Zoning

Decide where your towns grow. Paint zones onto a town, and inside each zone the town only builds the type you chose: residential, commercial or industrial. A no-build zone keeps an area free, for example for a future station or rail line.

How to use

1. Open the zoning layer with the zoning button next to the layer buttons in the top left. Zones are only shown while the layer is open. Data layers such as Towns can be opened next to it from the data layers button, so you see the districts while you zone.
2. Choose a type and click Draw zone. Click on the map to place the corners and click the first corner again to finish. Right-click removes the last corner.
3. Click a zone to open its window with its town, area and buildings, where you can change its type and settings or delete it. Closing the window, Esc or a right-click on the map deselects it.
4. Drag a corner to move it, double-click an edge to add a corner, and right-click a corner to delete it.

With a controller

On PS5, or with a controller on PC, the middle of the screen is the cursor: move the camera to aim, a white dot marks the spot. The button bar in the bottom right shows what each button does at that moment.

• ✕: select the zone you aim at. While drawing, place a corner; aim at the first corner to finish. On a corner of the selected zone, pick it up, aim and press ✕ again to put it down.
• □: draw a new zone, or finish the one you are drawing. Hold □ to delete the selected zone.
• △: delete the corner you aim at, or add a corner on the edge you aim at.
• ○: remove the last corner, cancel, deselect, close the layer.
• L1 / R1: change the type. D-pad up: Only here. D-pad down: Keep until rebuilt / Replace now.

Zone settings

• Keep until rebuilt (default): buildings of another type that already stand in the zone stay. Only new buildings have to match the zone.
• Replace now: buildings of another type in the zone are removed right away, and the town rebuilds with the right type.
• Only here: the town builds this type only inside its zones of this type, never on unzoned land, so the whole district moves into them. Useful when you swap districts around. Draw these zones large enough: the town can only have as much of the type as fits into them.

Good to know

• Wrong buildings are removed while they are still construction sites, so they never finish.
• Towns keep their demand when zoning removes buildings, and never lose a building type for good.
• The game decides the type of each new building, mostly by what stands nearby. A zone filters what gets built; it can't place buildings. An empty zone fills once the town needs more of that type and the zone is the nearest place for it. With Only here it is the only place.
• A save made with zones still loads after the mod is removed; the zones are dropped.
• Languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese.

Changelog

Version 5 (26 October 2026)

• Fixed a crash on PS5 when the zoning layer opened.
• Controller support for the zoning layer, on PS5 and with a controller on PC. See "With a controller" above. The mouse controls haven't changed.

Version 4 (26 October 2026)

• Fixed a short pause every few seconds in late games with large zoned towns. The zoning work is now spread over several updates; the longest update on a big 2050 save went from about 630 ms to 60 ms.

Version 3 (17 October 2026)

• Now in 13 languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Simplified and Traditional Chinese were added.
• Data layers such as Towns can be opened next to the zoning layer, and their colours stay visible while you zone.
• The selected zone has its own window next to the zoning window.
• The zoning window no longer sits behind the data layers button, and the game's layer windows moved below the button row, where the zoning button covered their title.
• Better Chinese wording, thanks to community feedback.

Version 2 (14 October 2026)

• Fixed a crash after unpausing when a street in a no-build zone ended at a station or had tracks. Such streets are now left alone, and streets are only changed while no vehicle uses them.

Version 1 (14 October 2026)

• First release.