Districts are great way to distinguish parts of your city. Some districts have specialization which determines what you could do / build inside. They could have own polices so it is possible to make different settings for every districts based on location or your needs. But let’s take a look at how to set up your new neighborhood.
How to create districts areas?
For the first you must open districts painter tool. This tool is between zones builder and electricity tab. Theoretically, this part is not so important, the game could definitely be pushed further in this direction. But maybe we’ll see it in Cities Skylines 2.

When you open district painter then you could setup size of “brush”. It depends how big district or articulate town you have. I’m using “middle” brush when I making new districts…

… after selecting brush size you could select type of district. For basic usage you will ned “paint district” which paint normal districts.

After selecting you could click to map and when you move with you mouse when is clicked you will paint new district. The good thing is that district are trying attach to big roads which could make borders of your districts. But don’t worry this function isn’t coercive and you can simply draw wherever you want.

Over new district will be visible name of district and when you click to this detail you could see stats of this districts. Main information for me is average zoned buildings level which shows how complex are houses in district…

… second important information is about average land value which shows you how successful you are in expansion of your city.
What types of district are in Cities Skylines?
In Cities Skylines are a lot of types of districts and a lot of are added by DLC.
In first view are districts defined by DLC which affects what you could build and how will be everything calculated. There are 6 types of districts defined by DLCs:
- Basic
- Park Areas
- Industry Areas
- Campus Areas
- Airport Areas
- Pedestrian Areas

After this districts there are “specialization” districts. Where you could setup some properties of your town. There is industry specialization where you could specify what industry must be build in industry (orange zones).
Or there is resident specialization where you could set Self-Sufficient Buildings which will looks different than classic resident buildings. Or if you have DLC Plazas and Promenades you could select Residential Wall-To-Wall Buildings which looks different than normal resident buildings.
