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Police station: crime prevention with 8-tile coverage

A police station reduces crime events inside its 8-tile coverage radius. This page covers the cost-to-coverage trade-off, why placement near density beats placement near edges, and how to recognise when crime is actually limiting your growth.

Cost and coverage

The BuildCity police station costs ₩3,000 to build and ₩60 per hour to operate. Its coverage radius is 8 tiles, and it adds +100 to land value inside that radius. That cost-to-coverage ratio is competitive with the fire station and slightly more expensive than a park, but its event-prevention role is unique. No other building reduces crime events.

Coverage shape matters. Eight tiles is enough to lift a tight cluster of housing or a small commercial strip but not large enough to cover an entire district from one corner. Planning for two stations in a wide district usually costs less than retrofitting one after crime starts triggering.

Placement and density

Place the police station where the coverage circle reaches the largest number of dense buildings, not where it fits visually. A station on an empty edge looks tidy in screenshots but wastes most of its 8-tile radius. The same money near a packed cluster lifts more buildings into the next density tier.

Reserve a service slot near the main road corridor during your initial road plan. A police station that sits next to corridor access stays useful when the city expands, because new districts can grow around it instead of forcing you to relocate the building. The road layout guide explains how to leave service slots in advance.

Diagnosing crime as a real bottleneck

Not every unhappiness drop is a crime problem. Before placing a second police station, scan the district visually. Concentrated unhappiness in one corner usually points to a specific cause like a missing service or noisy industrial neighbour. Spread out unhappiness across a district usually points to a system-level issue like saturated utilities or high taxes.

If crime events have actually triggered, the visible signal is buildings taking damage and a happiness drop nearby. That is the right moment to either expand coverage or upgrade an existing station, not before. Pre-emptive police placement on every block wastes money that could fund the next utility upgrade.

A police station near density beats a police station everywhere. Reach matters more than count.

Common mistakes

  1. Placing the station on an empty edge where most of the 8-tile radius covers nothing.
  2. Building a police station before any utility upgrade, then running short of money on the next district.
  3. Stacking two stations with overlapping radii instead of moving one to an uncovered cluster.
  4. Treating crime as the visible cause of unhappiness when the real cause is a utility shortage.

What to do next

Police is one of five public services. Pair it with the fire station for full event coverage, and read the happiness and land value guide for the density rules that decide where each service lifts the most buildings.

Try a service-focused city Back to Buildings