Cities XL

There are 2 different leisure categories (sport and cultural), and in many ways they’re similar (with the largest difference being that sport causes noise pollution). As you’d expect, these leisure services affect your citizens.

Leisure in the game is fairly simple. Leisure buildings have a rather large range of impact, and they influence the happiness of your citizens. A city made up of Unqualified or Qualified citizens will need fewer leisure buildings than a city with Executives or Elites.

While residential areas like leisure buildings, they don’t generate any revenue. That’s right, free Ferris Wheel rides, and free Paintball for your citizens (no wonder they love them). Of course, someone has to pay the workers (yes, it provides some employment), and that someone is you. They cost you money to run. Sport Leisure also creates noise pollution (Cultural does not).

This creates a bit of a catch 22. Your citizens want them somewhat near-by, but if Sport Leisure is next door they won’t be quite as thrilled. Essentially, they want Sport close, but not too close. Perfect placement can take a little planning.

You really want to keep a few things in mind when placing them:
-Sport Leisure should be in range of residential without being right next door when possible (if they’ve got to be next door, unqualified workers probably won’t care about the noise as much as elites would).
-Cultural Leisure’s probably not a bad idea in Executive/Elite areas since there’s no noise pollution.
-They cost you money every turn. If 95% of your population consists of Unqualified/Qualified workers, and the other 5% is Executives and Elites…. just worry about pleasing the poor. It’s probably not worth spending all the extra money to please that last 5%.
-In a city that’s large, spread out, and well-balanced (worker-wise), you may want to consider having a “richer” section of town, and a “poorer” section of town. Then place the minimum leisure in the poor area (it won’t take much), and place whatever leisure is needed in the rich area (it may be quite a bit). That’ll help to make everyone happy at the least expense to you.

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Leisure Chart