Cost and coverage
The BuildCity park costs ₩1,000 to build and ₩20 per hour to operate. Its coverage radius is 5 tiles, the smallest of any city service, and it adds +80 to land value inside that radius. Despite the small radius, the cost per benefit ratio is the strongest in the game. A single park can be the cheapest way to push a cluster of 20 to 25 packed tiles into the next density tier.
The trade-off is that a park consumes a tile that could have been a building. That cost is invisible in the budget but real on the map. The right place for a park is the spot where the density it unlocks would not have been possible without it. A park placed in random open space that was not going to attract dense buildings anyway wastes the opportunity.
Placement inside dense clusters
The 5-tile radius means parks reward tight placement. A park near the centre of a packed residential cluster covers many buildings at once. A park on the edge covers fewer buildings and ends up looking decorative without earning back the lost tile. If you find yourself placing parks where land happens to be empty rather than where the density happens to be, the park is being wasted.
Mix park sizes when the game offers them. A small decorative park near homes works differently from a larger civic park near commercial buildings. Land value bonuses respond to variety, so a cluster with two distinct anchors often outperforms one with two identical anchors. The land value guide explains this in detail.
Why parks are an early-game move
Parks pay for themselves faster than most other services because the build cost is so low. ₩1,000 is roughly the income from a few cycles of a small district, which means a park placed correctly recovers its cost almost immediately and then pays off in higher tax income for as long as the cluster lives. That is why parks are usually the first non-utility anchor in a tight budget.
Common mistakes
- Spreading parks evenly across the city instead of concentrating them in dense clusters.
- Stacking parks with overlapping radii. The +80 land value bonus does not double inside the overlap.
- Placing a park in a corner that no dense building can reach. The radius needs density to lift.
- Treating parks as decoration. Their main role is land value, not visual filler.
What to do next
Parks pair well with other land value services so each anchor lifts a different cluster. Combine with a school in one cluster and a hospital covering two clusters for a clean three-anchor city. The happiness and land value guide covers how to plan the anchor mix.