Diary #2 was about turning roads from something you draw once into something you can keep editing. This diary is about what goes between those roads, because a city made entirely of intersections and parking lots is not particularly useful.
In most city builders, zoning means painting colored squares beside a road and waiting for the game to fill them.
Regions works differently.
Draw a parcel, define how the property is used, and then draw the buildings, plazas, and parking areas that exist inside it. You are not placing a prefab or painting a rigid roadside grid. You are dividing and developing the land yourself.
Custom parcels
Parcels are the foundation of the entire system. Draw one beside a road and shape it to fit the city you are building. Properties do not need to follow a uniform grid, so angled roads, unusual blocks, large developments, and oddly shaped leftover spaces can still become usable land.
Feeling a little lazy? Parcels can also be generated automatically. Click along a road, control the approximate width and depth, and regenerate the results until the properties fit the layout you want.
Combining and splitting
Smaller parcels can be combined into one larger property, while oversized parcels can be divided into several smaller ones. This makes it possible to start with a row of narrow properties and later combine them into a larger apartment complex, shopping center, industrial site, or other development.
The parcel system also reacts when the road network changes. Build a road through an unowned property and the parcel is divided, with new parcels generated around the road.
Alleys are an exception. They are considered parcel-owned road types, so they can pass through and service a property without automatically splitting it.
There is much more happening beneath that distinction, but that connects to a future breakdown of the simulation engines powering Regions.
And yes, I said engines, plural.
Every major zone type
Residential, commercial, industrial, mixed-use, parks, and other specialized properties all use the same parcel system. The property determines where development can happen without forcing the entire city into one universal roadside grid.
Once a parcel has been created, switch to paint mode and an internal construction grid appears.
Yes, boxes are back—but only inside the parcel.
This was the necessary compromise between freeform properties and dependable procedural building generation. The parcel itself can follow the shape of your city, while the internal grid gives the generator enough structure to create usable buildings and spaces.
Select a construction type, then click and drag inside the property.
Current options include buildings, plazas, and parking areas. Parking uses the same underlying systems as the dedicated parking tools, allowing custom stalls, curbs, and layouts instead of placing a decorative parking texture that vehicles cannot actually use.
I also have plans for 45-degree building corners, which should make structures along angled streets and irregular parcels feel much more natural.
Multiple buildings, one parcel
A property is not limited to a single structure. Larger parcels can contain several buildings alongside parking, plazas, service areas, and other features.
Every building can also receive its own unique address, even when multiple buildings share the same parcel.
Road names are generated automatically when a road is constructed, but they can be renamed at any time. Split an existing road and its name carries across the new sections instead of treating them like unrelated streets.
From there, each parcel receives an address tied to its road, its zoned city, its county, and the larger region.
You get the idea.
The point is not simply to display an address above a building. These relationships give the simulation a consistent understanding of where every home, business, workplace, and destination actually exists.
Procedural buildings with editable results
Every generated building can receive its own height, property-line setbacks, facade layout, and real window grid.
The window grid is important because it gives the generator actual locations where additional details can appear. Individual windows can receive air-conditioning units, canopies, security bars, and other facade elements instead of those details being baked randomly across a flat wall.
At night, windows illuminate independently. A street of buildings no longer turns into a row of identical glowing rectangles, and the skyline can look a little different every time the sun goes down.
The generator creates the starting point, but the result remains editable. Buildings can be regenerated, adjusted, customized, and decorated with additional props.
Procedural generation is there to accelerate construction—not take control away from the player.
As the system develops, buildings will gain more details such as rooftop ductwork, vines, exterior cables, antennas, graffiti, trash, helipads, mechanical equipment, and the other clutter you would expect to see on or around real buildings.
Suburban residential structures and lower-density neighborhoods are also planned, and procedural construction will not be the only option. Regions will support ploppable buildings for landmarks, services, handcrafted structures, and anything else that benefits from a fixed design.
Hillside buildings
This is still a work in progress, but it is one of the more interesting problems in the system.
Buildings need level floors. The terrain beneath them has no obligation to cooperate.
Simply placing a flat building on a slope leaves one side buried and the other floating above the ground. The current generator evaluates the slope and attempts to adapt the building and its foundation to the land beneath it.
I have been experimenting with layouts inspired by cities like San Francisco, where buildings follow steep streets while maintaining usable interior floors.
The current attempts are not perfect yet. Steeper properties will need improved foundations, retaining structures, and art pieces designed specifically for hillside construction. The important part is that the generator is becoming aware of the terrain instead of assuming every parcel exists on a perfectly flat map.
A few more development passes and a larger set of slope-compatible pieces should turn this into something really nice.
Drawing the city
That is the larger direction behind all of these tools.
Roads are drawn. Parking lots are drawn. Parcels are drawn. Buildings are drawn inside them.
You are not painting a zone and hoping the game eventually produces the city you imagined. You define the land, shape the property, decide how it is used, and let the procedural systems build from those decisions.
Everything shown here is still early, but the foundation is now in place for properties that can respond to roads, terrain, zoning, addresses, and eventually the people and businesses occupying them.
The next dev diary will be decided by the community. Join the Regions Discord and vote for what you want to see next.
You can also wishlist Regions now on Steam.
Thanks for following development. I’ll see you in the next one.
Cumulative status: roads ✓ traffic ✓ terrain ✓ grass ✓ parking ✓ roads v2 ✓ zoning, parcels & procedural buildings v1 ✓. Next: whatever the community votes for.