Population stuck at 0

Article verified: January 2020

Symptom

• In a new city, houses are built but nobody moves in to them

Cause

There can be multiple causes, including:

• Broken highway connection
• Missing mods for outside connections
• Broken station or dock assets
• Lots of other stuff...

Solution

Basic requirements

Make sure you have:

• Zoned residential areas
• Water supply to the houses, and sewage outlet too
• Electricity
• Ideally some services like police, ambulance and fire

Outside connections

You need at least one of the following types of outside connection:

• Highway
• Train
• Passenger ship
• Airport (note: not sure if residents can arrive this way)

Local transport types, such as ferries, monorail and metro only work inside your city, they won't bring people in from outside.

To diagnose issues with outside connections, see: Outside connections not working

TM:PE Users

• Check your Vehicle Restrictions:
  • In Policies settings, set Vehicle Restriction Aggression to Low
  • If that works, you've blocked some routes with vehicle restrictions
• Check your Junction Restrictions:
  • Did you block pedestrian crossings near a station?
• Check your Lane Arrows and Lane Connectors:
  • Did you block off access to a lane on a road by mistake?
  • Upgrading roads sometimes resets some or all of the lane settings - so always check!!
• Turn off Parking AI:
  • If that fixes it, please let us know: Report a bug

Mods

• If you have any of the following mods, disable them, exit to desktop, and then try starting a new map:
  • Adjustable Demand
  • Adjustable Demand v2
  • Configure Outside Connections' Limits
  • Demand Master
  • Infinite Demand
  • Local Only Transport Stations
  • More Demands Configurable
  • More Outside Interaction
  • Super Demand

Other

There are some other issues to check if none of the above has worked:

• No vehicles? See: Vehicles not spawning
• Houses must be fully constructed before people will move in:
  • Once constructed, it can take some minutes for people to start moving in - be patient
  • Click a house and then click the routes icon in its info panel - you'll see if anyone is en route to the house
• Make sure the game isn't paused (yes, this literally happened)
• Try different maps:
  • Some maps from the workshop are broken, and there's not much you can do to fix them
• Check your tax rates on the budget panel - don't have them too high otherwise nobody will want to live in your city

Fixed?

If not, consult the internet, maybe there are some other solutions we didn't mention above.

Other issues? See: Troubleshooting