These three services keep your city running. Without them, nobody would take care of the sick, nobody would fight fires or crime. You can find out everything you need to know about these services in this post.

In Cities Skylines you can build hospitals, fire- and police stations to protect your city's citizens. If you click on the according construction menu, you can see from the color coding of the buildings, which parts of the city are well protected and which are less well protected.

So you can see in the screenshot below the effect of a single fire station in this part of the city. The purple bar shows the location of the fire station, and all the houses in the direct neighborhood are marked in blue, which means the firefighters can easily reach them. The more distant buildings on the right then slowly turn orange or red, which in the event of a fire would mean that the fire engines might arrive too late.

Red buildings don't mean they're not protected at all, but it may take a long time for emergency services to reach them. It is therefore always important that the hospital, fire station and police station have good road connections (preferably without traffic jams and with a connection to the highway) so that the vehicles can get to the scene on time.

Fire Safety in a City in Cities Skylines
Map of Fire Safety in a neighborhood in Cities Skylines.

For all emergency services, the map is colored in this way. This tells you straight away where there is still room for improvement or where you have taken good care.

Fire Department

In the tab for the Emergency Services you can see all buildings for the fire department and also in another tab buildings for Disaster Services (however, these belong to the Natural Disasters DLC).

In the Fire Safety info view of your city, you can see which buildings have little or no protection against fire. To protect your city against fire, you can construct various buildings:

  • Fire House (6 Fire Engines)
  • Fire Station (25 Fire Engines)
  • Fire Helicopter Depot (3 Fire Helicopters) - Natural Disasters DLC
  • Fire Watch Tower - Natural Disasters DLC

Of course, the Fire Station has a significantly higher firefighting capacity, but this building is also significantly more expensive. At the same time, with this number of vehicles, it must be ensured that they do not get stuck in traffic or cause a traffic jam themselves.

My personal favorite variant, on the other hand, is to place the smaller Fire Houses more often in the city. This results in lower costs and the fire engines reach their destination faster because they are better distributed in the city.

The firefighting helicopters are a nice firefighting add-on and fun to watch. However, the depot is almost as expensive as a fire station, so it's not really worth it. Fire Helicopters are particularly important for fighting forest fires because the vehicles can only drive on the road.

By placing Fire Watch Towers, you can detect forest fires early, so you can better stop the fire from spreading. As soon as a Fire Watch Tower detects a forest fire, the Fire Helicopters start their mission.

Police

Crime can occur throughout your city, but is most prevalent in the commercial zones. Set up police stations there to deal with a high crime rate with maximum efficiency.

These buildings are available to you to fight crime and the resulting citizen unhappiness:

  • Police Station (10 Patrol Cars, 20 Prison Cells)
  • Police Headquarters (25 Patrol Cars, 60 Prison Cells)
  • Police Helicopter Depot (3 Police Helicopters) - Natural Disasters DLC
  • Prison (500 Prison Cells) - After Dark DLC

If your prison cells are already very full, it helps to set up more police stations to reduce crime, or to build a prison. Prison vans pick up prisoners at the police stations to transport them to the prison.

The police helicopters patrol over the city, reducing crime. The criminals are still picked up in the patrol car.

Healthcare

There are a number of buildings to improve the health of your residents. You can find the essential services here:

  • Medical Clinic (8 Ambulances, 100 Hospital Beds)
  • Hospital (30 Ambulances, 500 Hospital Beds)
  • Medical Helicopter Depot (3 Medical Helicopters) - Natural Disasters DLC
  • Cemetery (3.000 Graves)
  • Crematorium
  • Medical Center (50 Ambulances, 1.000 Hospital Beds)

For healthcare, it also makes sense to have many medical clinics well distributed across the city. Hospitals can be important in dense city centers, but medical clinics should do most of the work.

You need at least one cemetery for deceased residents of your city, but in order not to overcrowd your cemeteries in the long term, you also need at least one crematorium.

Sick Citizens From Drinking Water Pollution

Your city's citizens can all get sick from polluted drinking water. Therefore, make sure that the water pumping stations or water towers do not take in contaminated water.

To prevent this circumstance, the water tower must not be placed on polluted ground. Same with the water pumping station, here you must ensure that it does not take in any polluted water.

This can mainly happen due to incorrectly placed water drain pipes or water treatment plants, where the current transports the polluted water directly to the water pumping stations.

To prevent citizens from getting sick from drinking water pollution, you can look at the pollution info view. Here the "Average Drinking Water Pollution" must always be at 0%, otherwise your citizens will get sick.

Medical Center

You can even unlock a monument for healthcare (the "Medical Center"). Once you've built this, you won't need another medical clinic in your city. This monument works so efficiently that your residents no longer get sick at all.

Cities Skylines: All 8 Monuments and their Requirements
The monuments are the buildings in cities that are by far the most difficult to obtain. The reason for this is that they offer extremely good bonuses and services for your city. You can find out everything about the requirements and functionality of the monuments in this post.
number13Julian
You can find out everything you need for the Medical Center in this post.

In this context, you should definitely also check out the post about death waves, because they can decimate your city in a very short time. Good healthcare and natural urban planning can prevent these death waves:

Cities Skylines: How to Deal With Death Waves
During a death wave in Cities Skylines, a part of your population in the city suddenly dies. This can have a massive impact on your infrastructure and tax income. This post will help you to better understand death waves and gives tips on what to do about it.
number13Julian

Other Healthcare Buildings

  • Child Health Center: Increases the birth rate in the radius and increases the health of children
  • Eldercare: Increases life span in the radius and boosts health of the elderly
  • Sauna (Snowfall DLC): Boosts health and happiness in the radius
  • Sports Hall and Gymnasium (Green Cities DLC): Nearby health bonus
  • Community Pool (Green Cities DLC): Nearby health bonus
  • Yoga Garden (Green Cities DLC): Nearby health bonus
Cities Skylines