Designing Cities

[Hilarious Joke]

Good point. How feasible is a city on a hill with 'layers' of walls, kind of like Minas Tirith? Also, how come fantasy cities are never really huge? As in, over a million residents? Or are there fantasy cities like this?

 

[Ursa major]

New Crobuzon (in Perdido Street Station and Iron Council by China Miéville) has, I once calculated, nigh on 6 million inhabitants. (He gave a figure for the xenian Garuda as both a number and a percentage of the total population.) There are all crowded together, though, so the place is not vast.

 

[iansales]

Also, how come fantasy cities are never really huge? As in, over a million residents? Or are there fantasy cities like this?

Because most fantasy worlds don't have the technology to support that many inhabitants in a city - sewerage, transportation, supply of potable water and food, maintenance of law and order... Also, most fantasies worlds are based on Dark Ages Europe, a time when populations were chiefly rural anyway.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Ok, cool. Hmm, I usually love the fantasy setting, but I also love large cities...I guess even though it doesn't usually work I'll combine the two, add magic and stir.

 

[Kentuk]

Cities are like weeds, spread a bunch of seeds and some grow huge, some don't grow at all. I have a city Qaemulaught located on a swampy cold core world. It is a vertical city of walls and castles. The defenses are necessary as it was located on an interplanetary migration route and later devastated by repeated wars. Point? Oh my point is that cities are organic, they grow, get cut down and have to start again.

 

[Pyan]

Also, how come fantasy cities are never really huge? As in, over a million residents? Or are there fantasy cities like this?

Two I can think of off the top of my head: Trantor and Ankh-Morpork....

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Hmm, so I guess a good way to go about designing a city is looking at history; how the city came about, what's happened to it, what's happening to it, and from that one can mould districts and culture.

A vertical city you say Kentuk? I've always liked Coruscant. I was talking more fantasy cities, but science fiction ones are interesting too!

What's Trantor from Pyan? Ankh-Morpork isn't really that inspirational (no offence Morporkians) but you are right, it is over a million.

 

[Pyan]

Trantor is from the Foundation series by the Good Doctor Asimov, HJ - think Coruscant from the Star Wars universe.

 

[Dragonlady]

That's how I do it, hilarious joke, I work out why it became a big settlement in the first place- easily defendable, on a big trade route, etc, then take it through all the bits of history it would have endured, and the scars they will have left

I find planning is like underwear- you don't see it in big infodumps, but it holds everything together. I tend to invent things about cities that the reader will never know, because it helps me to understand the place my hero's walking round in, because it made them who they are.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Ha! Underwear!

 

[Kentuk]

Hmm, so I guess a good way to go about designing a city is looking at history; how the city came about, what's happened to it, what's happening to it, and from that one can mould districts and culture.

A vertical city you say Kentuk? I've always liked Coruscant. I was talking more fantasy cities, but science fiction ones are interesting too!

What's Trantor from Pyan? Ankh-Morpork isn't really that inspirational (no offence Morporkians) but you are right, it is over a million.

Yeah vertical in the sense that everyone is trying to get just as far as they can above the mud and the stink. Real land is scarce, it has to be made which is further impetious to build up. This was true of the early settlement as well as the city that grew out of it.

 

[chopper]

Ok, here's my take. Not sure if this has been covered, but since y'all mentioned Ankh-Morpork -

I've read that Pratchett never had it in mind to map/design A-M; Stephen Briggs did that later. So Pratchett was only really inventing locations to further the story (it just happened that X location was three streets down from Y location and 'round the back of Gleam Street).

So...while making cities is very much fun, I try to make sure they actually service the story as much as they do the city's own inhabitants.