I'm currently creating my own neighborhood and looking for inspiration. I have downloaded some wonderful lots, some of them are "useless" gameplay wise, but add nice realism such as the ones mentioned in title.

I know there are mods to add gameplay to some, but I honestly didn't really bother with them yet.

So those of you who also build their own nhoods, did you add such lots (hospitals, schools, prisons, police station and whatnot) or not? Do you use mods to add gameplay? If not, are they purely decorative or how else do you play on them?

I have Chris Hatch's hospital mod and Simlogical's school/prison stuff. I don't like deco only stuff like that. Functional all the way!

Those would hurt immersion for me if I saw townies goofing around in the prison or hospital as usual or cluster around remaining few fun objects, or I would never visit those lots making them pointless.

I have a School and hospital as mostly just storytelling/posing backgrounds. But I have used the hospital before as place I send Sims to get medicine or plastic surgery, or to go fix themselves after getting struck by lightning.

I use those type of lots for storytelling purposes, and quite a bit (hospitals, schools...). For storytelling, I keep all lots residential, because it's a whole lot easier to pose sims and all that, plus other sims don't come barging into every space unwanted, and there's no need to travel to the lots.

For purely playing families/legacy-style and such, or for decorating hoods, I don't tend to bother too much with these types of lots. I'm also not the most aesthetic person when it comes to hood decorating, so these days I might just throw a bunch of deco houses around a lot to avoid looking at lot imposters (because I still don't use the RPC )

(If they already are interactive gameplay elements, such as in TS3/4, then I'll use them in gameplay. I just don't bother too much with modded versions for TS2).

I've made a hospital and a police station already, and a school and a prison have been on my to-do list for a long time. In my case it's because I tend to just have more fun trying to make a 'believable' cityscape, so even though the game might not have any real use for those kinds of lots from a vanilla gameplay perspective, they're still interesting to try to build, and to try to find ways of making them at least somewhat functional for Sims to visit in some cases too.

Like for instance, a school I'd make in TS2 (someday, I hope!) would have more space for extracurricular activities (sports, art/drama clubs, maybe prom night, etc) and fewer 'normal' classrooms, because focusing on extracurriculars makes it more useful for players who actually want to visit it with their Sims- the classrooms are essentially just decoration to make it feel like a proper school.

I have your hospital! I've even used it in pics for storytelling on a few occasions! It's so prominent in the downtown's cityscape, that I even call the area sims live around it the 'hospital district'.

I have lots of "extra" lots like that in my 'hood, but they're there for BACC purposes (opening career tracks, etc). I rarely ever have my sims go there though, there are much better lots for them to interact on/with.

Your hood needs the lots you want to use and play. No need for anything else.

I do add hospitals and schools, and I always make them functional, either with career rewards or with gameplay objects. Once, I made a hospital with lab equipment and a plastic surgery station (career rewards), and it also had a caffeteria. At another occasion, I made an engineering building and I put the robot station from OFB to make it worth visiting.

The closest I ever got to this was building military bases for both normal and Apocalyptic neighbourhoods. And even then it was mostly practical stuff (barracks, training grounds, mess halls/clubs, and the general's residence) plus a few decorative towers or something like that.
Or things like "this used to be, for example, a church many years ago but now we use it as a library/teen hangout spot" and stuff like that, like the community lot with the former church in strange town.

But in general I don't like building things in game that wouldn't have a function in gameplay. So that eliminates all reason for hospitals, schools, prisons, police stations or similar things for me, personally. And only having them so they'd be shells in neighbourhood view is also not something I, personally am interested in.
I know there are mods to give gameplay to to some of those things, as other users have already mentioned. But...to be honest, in Sims I, personally, am not interested in playing schools or hospitals or prisons or office buildings or whatever. I don't wanna follow my Sims there, I'm glad when they go to "Sim City" to do those things off-screen.

The one thing I really go for mods that is even remotely in this category is farming tbh, and even here I stick with plants and crops.

I PUT hospitals, police stations, schools, and things like that in my hood-- but not with lots. If it was a community lot, I wouldn't visit it, not am I interested in running any mods or systems that would need dedicated school lots or hospital lots, ect. But I do like having it look like my neighbourhood has those amenities from nhood view, because that would make sense.

So I use Sims 3 Rabitholes converted to Sims 2 as nhood deco.

I have Simlogical's school and prison mods. I was initially more excited about making a prison but I have yet to set up a justice system and my sims haven't really done anything bad enough to warrant going to prison... so at the moment it's not really used. Schools, on the other hand, I have loved more than I thought I would! I realised a lot of my sims wouldn't really get many friends until they went to University, which was a bit sad. It's been really nice seeing friendships (and enemies!) develop at the schools and has really brought my hood together. High schools have been particularly fun with all the drama the teens get up to! I even had an accidental teen pregnancy because I naively put a sofa in the library...

That's the reason I haven't got a prison too. Nor can I imagine my lovely Sims ever doing anything bad enough to deserve prison.

I have Simlogical schools in a couple of custom 'hoods that I occasionally play, though a girl (the local papergirl) ran away from the school in Baldrair Bluffs. As yet there is no playable school in Veronaville, the 'hood I play most. However, if and when I eventually add a university, I think I'll need a sort of "crammer" school, mainly for townie teens and a few playables. I feel that Sims who have only managed a C grade or less at school, will be likely to struggle academically at university, so I'd like to see them get their school grades up to at least B- (or possibly even just C+) before going to uni.

Interesting to read what others do. I have decided should I have space left, I might add these lots mainly as deco to make the city seem more lively. Maybe try setting up the mods too when I feel like it.

If someone has a school mod then classrooms are totally useful.

My school in New Desconia has an art room where they paint at easels, a gym and a swimming pool. They improve their grades in the regular classrooms, but they certainly build their other skills too. (They even get to improve their skill at romance in the dormitory; it only has double beds!)

Yes, but they are decorative.

There are no prisons in my world! Stealing newspapers and gnomes doesn't deserve jail time. I did have one burglar who targeted the house of the chief of police and was caught, so i figured that deserved consequences - his life of crime was over. I had an established family agree to sponsor his return to society; he moved in with them and was required to study several skills and gain a good reputation (as well as helping with the housework and acting as live-in babysitter) to prove that he was a trustworthy member of the community and could start his own household. I made him give back the handcrafted quilt he stole, too. He married a chef and has four children and many friends, but he still remembers how to sneak around! Sims who start brawls all the time are a bit of a problem; I'm thinking up ways to deal with them, but they won't get locked up - it'll be some sort of community service and wiping out their enemy relationships for a fresh start.

I don't especially want to play a school, but in certain hoods it seems weird that all the children and teenagers in town get on a bus and disappear completely. In some hoods it makes perfect sense that they're going to a nearby suburb or the nearest town, but in others I feel like kids from outlying areas should be coming to school here, and there should be a building to represent the place they all disappear to, even if it's just there as hood deco.

As for hospitals - home births are 100% safe, smoke inhalation is cured after a shower, and sims who are so sick they're at risk of death are better off at home where they have loved ones to plead with the Grim Reaper for them!

I play all the way just EA and custom created worlds which are lack of municipal buildings. BUT my Trio Lake Borough happened to have the house for fire brigade, detective's station with one bunk in jail, chemist's home business and even a switching boards and telegraph, although they are both just residential house fer 6 housewives and regular community lot with PCs respectively.

I miss A LOT group game featured in TSO called MAZE which was the working telegraph! One sim sent coordinates to another one with blind eye about how to move in maze, when the second sim should find those target on an empty board! I don't quite remember all the details OMG I am soooo old 😱😱😱! EA could have made at least something alike in the Sims 2, Sims 3 either Sims 4 T_T

One can do the following (some of these ideas are not mine, I remember other players posting about it)

1. A community lot functioning as a "school" with skilling objects for kids on it - just teleport in a couple of kids and one parent and let them have fun.

2. Doctor's office as owned business - let them pay an entrance fee; have some healthy things for sims to do (exercising, a massage, whatever), and if you have a sim who can feed them Grandma's comfort soup, that will work even better.

3. Never needed a prison either, but a small police station as owned business again - a few things sims can do, or buy, and as long as the lot looks a bit like a police station it is fine?

(I think Jo - @joandsarah77 - had the above owned businesses in her hood).

As for the gnome thieves - my sims tend to come back with a lot more gnomes when they go off to steal their gnome back. I would have to lock up my whole hood. And, on a personal note, I have these 2 frog statues between my pot plants in RL. Imagine my surprise, after visiting my daughter one night, when I returned to find a 3rd one, neatly placed next to the other 2! Nobody seems to know where it came from either

We need prisons for gnome and newspaper stealers ever since the Sims 1. Luckily each part of the franchise came with a gate and cage-looking window.

Sorry "The Prison" came up as my thing for the last three months or something. And we had a paper witch! The most bizzare summer ever, in town with absolutely no nature escapes.

I have had and played all of those.
1>Simlogical School. You can enroll children and set their class 1-4. I use the homework book rather than the class book for bookwork as kids will normally sit and finish that rather than getting up. I use a wide range of skilling items including fishing and gardening. You start school by clicking the bell and all your kids and teachers appear. I have played a school on both a residential and owned com lot. I also tried the boarding school but didn't like how drained the teens were when they came home on Fridays.

2> I play a clinic/hospital as a home business. I have a pharmacy that sells medicines, birth control and glasses. A doctors office with the pc sims medical bag and eye chart, a surgery with the plastic surgery machine, physio with the massage table and a maternity ward.

3> I have played the Simlogical prison once but found it rather confusing. Next time I will just play it my own way. The police station has 2 holding cells. They sell toy police cars, books on home safety and burglar alarms.

4> My fire station is also a home business. They sell similar items, the toy fire truck, book on fire safety and smoke alarms including kitchen extractor hoods.

Thank you, @joandsarah77

When I get around to playing the hood again, I do want to re-build the courthouse (I had a really nice looking-one a few years ago...until a power surge ate my computer...), definitely want to build some schools (if for nothing else for the screenshots needed for that story I meant to write), and the doctor's office, since the decade my hood was in when I had a sim interested in the Medical field (I was going by what wants the students rolled while in university), had housecalls, I figured a small clinic could nicely represent where Dr. William Marsh was primarily based out of.