How to Fix Not Enough Customers in Cities Skylines 2

Building a bustling city in Cities: Skylines requires plenty of awareness as you address citizen concerns, optimize your layout, and ensure everyone can access the services they need. Let’s talk about how to fix the not enough customers commercial district warning in Cities: Skylines 2.

Cities: Skylines 2 – How to Fix Not Enough Customers in Commercial Districts

Typically, the not enough customers pop-up appears in Cities: Skylines 2 because you have too many commercial zones around your city, with relatively few residential zones far from your shops. To fix this, you can reduce your commercial space, optimize its layout, or wait until you gain a larger population that can actively visit these shops.

In other words, if you built a large commercial grid and a residential area far from stores to reduce noise, you may instead run into the issue of your citizens being unable to reach the shops altogether.

Fortunately, there are multiple methods to fixing the not enough customers issue:

1. Change your commercial district layout.
2. Lower Commercial Taxes.
3. Implement public transport.
4. Wait for your population to grow.
5. Remove some commercial districts.

Changing Commercial District Layout

When designing your city in Cities: Skylines 2, you’ll want to ensure people can easily access shops without driving forever. By spreading shops throughout your city, residents on one side of town can reach commercial districts near them, while the other half can focus on their shops.

You can also use the commercial zoning tool to determine the best place for shops. Locations with low suitability, shown with red shading, are much lower priority than ones with high suitability, shown with green shading. Focus on building your commercial zones here, as they’re most needed.

Lower Commercial Taxes

Lowering commercial taxes has its benefits and downsides. Raising them means you’ll earn more money for other parts of your city. However, the higher your commercial taxes, the harder it will be for your businesses to profit. By lowering these taxes, your shops will level up faster and have an easier time being financially stable, requiring fewer customers to visit and bring in money.

Adding Public Transport

In the real world, it’s hard for many people to get from point A to B by walking or biking. In situations like this, public transport makes reaching certain locations easier. Cities: Skylines 2 works the same, allowing people to get to your commercial districts quickly and giving your shops more customers.

As you level up your milestones and gain development points, you can unlock additional transportation options such as the train, tram, subway, and airport for flight.

Waiting For Your Population to Grow

In some cases, letting your city naturally grow and adding more residential districts will help you eliminate this issue without changing your commercial zones. After all, if more citizens enter your city, they’ll also need places to shop. While this will eat into your efficiency, this option works if the not enough customers pop-up only shows up for a few shops or is an on-and-off issue rather than an ongoing one. Just make sure to add more commercial districts only once its demand significantly increases; otherwise, this will make the issue more prevalent.

Removing Commercial Districts

Since this issue involves having too many commercial zones in a large cluster, removing them can help focus your residents’ attention on other shops, giving them more customers and helping to eliminate this issue. While this comes with its downsides, scaling back and focusing on raising your population will help you gradually build your economy rather than rushing.

While there are many intricacies to having a thriving economy, the tips above will help address the not enough customers warning in Cities: Skylines 2.

Cities: Skylines 2 is available on PC and is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2024. If you’re struggling with performance issues, check out the best settings to use in Cities: Skylines 2, or click the tag below to explore our growing content list.