Making a parks-and-streets map with the City Parks preset

Difficulty: Easy–Medium. Time: 1–2 hours. Best methods, in order: laser cutting, UV print, 3D printing.

This preset celebrates a city's green space: the street grid in black, parks and recreation areas in three shades of green, and water cut out as holes over a blue backplate. It loads on Central Park, where the rectangle of green against the Manhattan grid does all the talking.

Open the City Parks preset

What You'll Need

Laser cutting

3 mm laser-grade plywood for the land plate; green ply/acrylic for parks; blue acrylic or paint for the backplate (#236cd1)
Laser cutter, glue, weights, masking tape

UV print / sublimation

High-res PNG, flat blank

3D printing

FDM printer; multicolor (3MF) recommended - green(s), black, blue, plus a land color

Step 1 - Start from the preset

Open the City Parks preset. It loads on Central Park at zoom 12.8 - most of Manhattan with the park as a bold green block. Search your city and aim the frame so at least one large park dominates; zoom 12.5–13.5 works for big urban parks, tighter (14) for a single neighborhood park. The contrast between grid and green is the design - pick a spot where both are strong.

Step 2 - Tune the layers

Five layers, top to bottom:

Major roads - Solid mode: motorways (width 4), motorway links and primary (3), black. The structural lines.
Streets - Solid mode: secondary, tertiary, and streets, all width 2, black. The fine grid texture. The first thing to thin out if it's too busy.
Parks - Solid mode, three fills: landusePark #6FBF73, landuseRecreation #8FCF8F, landcoverGrassland #A8D8A8. Three close greens give the green space subtle variety; unify them to one green if you're cutting parks from a single sheet.
Water - Solid with invert as holes: a land plate with rivers/reservoirs subtracted, blue backplate showing through.
Backplate - #236cd1 blue.

Step 3 - Export

Laser: per-layer SVG ZIP, water inversion on, small-polygon cleanup on (grassland produces confetti). The two road layers are best engraved; parks and the land plate are the cut layers.
UV print: high-res PNG; Background off for transparent printing onto colored substrate.
3D printing: 3MF for colors, STL for single color.

Choose Your Build Method

Laser cutting

Cut the Backplate from blue material.
Cut the Water layer - the land plate with water holes - from your land-colored sheet. Tape first; islands (hello, Manhattan neighbors) come loose.
Cut the Parks layer from green stock. These are chunky shapes and cut cleanly; small grassland patches that survived cleanup can be skipped at assembly if too fiddly.
Glue parks onto the land plate, land plate onto the backplate - or use 3M tape for a no-mess bond: 467 or 468 for acrylic, 300LSE for harder materials.
Engrave Streets then Major roads onto the assembled face (or onto the land plate before gluing parks - but the parks sit on top of the grid visually, so engraving after assembly matches the design). Test power on scrap.
Sand, finish, frame.

Make It Yours

Park-proud cities work best: NYC (Central/Prospect), London's royal parks, Vancouver's Stanley Park, Chicago's lakefront.
Unify the three greens to #2E7D43 for a bolder single-green statement, or push them apart for a patchwork effect.
Autumn edition: #D98E32, #C96F2E, #E3B448 for the three park features.
Drop the Streets layer entirely for a minimal "parks and arteries" poster.
Mark a park bench, playground, or wedding spot with a heart icon at export.
Corner holes mounting option + anodized standoff spacers = floating acrylic wall mount.
Add landcoverForest to the Parks group for cities where woodland rings the center.

Open the City Parks preset

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