Not enough customers in Cities Skylines

One of the problems of abandoned buildings in Cities Skylines is the lack of customers. In today’s article, I’m going to show you what helps me to prevent such problems and how to solve them at a time. I hope that my tips will help you and you’ll never be short of customers again.

What is the root of such problems?

These problems came when your stores don’t have customers which would buy goods in them. Usually, such problems occur when you have long distances to commercial zones. From my experience and in my cities, these problems come once I build commercial zones on the edges of my city and there aren’t enough pops to shops there.

The problem with not enough customers is represented through the green icon as you can see above. This particular icon can be just on some units of buildings and your problem will be small. However, if there are districts full of buildings with this icon, your problem will be much bigger.

How to solve the problem with not enough customers in Cities Skylines?

There are several ways how to solve problems with not enough customers. If your problems are large and a lot of buildings have difficulties with not enough customers, you should focus on city planning.

This problem comes when you don’t follow one of the basic rules in Cities Skylines: 1️⃣ You must build commercial zones in the centres of your cities. Commercial zones must be accessible by walking from as many locations as possible. For that, I personally build big streets with commercial zones on the sides of them and then I create smaller streets from these big streets where people live or work.

This means that from side streets are my 2️⃣ commercial zones available by walk and so there will be a lot of people. Then I like to 3️⃣ connect these big streets with other places in the city, such as public transport.

0️⃣ Do not overbuild commercial zones

There are these three boxes in Cities Skylines, which identify which type of zone you must build. In case you have difficulties with not having enough customers, you will see blue in a box in the middle. This color and position indicates that you must rebuild your commercial zones.

But what does it mean in detail? It means that they will be probably located in a bad part of your city and in other parts of your city are people who need shopping. So once you have the problem with customers, don’t build new ones but rather focus on rebuilding what you have.

1️⃣ City planning and layout

In the picture below, you can see that there is one of my layouts from my article What to do first in Cities Skylines? As you can see, the main road is pink and on the sides are commercial zones, which are available from residential zones…

… below you can see an exemplary layout in which I won’t have problems with not enough customers.

2️⃣ Walking distance

One of the main factors is walking distance from residential zones. As I’ve mentioned in the city planning part, put commercial and residential zones together. They must work side by side.

Don’t build districts that are just commercial zones. That’s the road to hell. You must work with sidewalks and parks which connect everything so people can find their way to the shops as quickly as possible.

3️⃣ Public transport

Build buses, trams or metro to connect your biggest streets. If some people have longer distances to shops, they need to use transport to another part of your city to shop. Don’t just focus on your local public transport, because you want to have tourists. They will boost your shops in the centre.

Conclusion and tips at the end:

There are four main questions which if you will follow, you should solve your problems with not enough customers in Cities Skylines:

• Do you build commercial zones near residential zones?
• Do you build commercial zones in your city centre?
• Do you build lines of public transport inside your city?
• Do you have parks and enough walkable routes?

If you combine all the tips above and develop your city properly, I believe you will have no problems with a lack of customers.