Port City Renaissence

[MysticMagellan]

I love maps for novels and I'm always excited to see a writer involved in the cartography of his world.

Atpollard covered a lot of good points to consider regarding city planning, and I only have a couple things to add.

First, if this is a city that exists in a book you are writing you might want to place certain points of interest within the city before adding too many nondescript structures. When I read a book and see a map I like to see the places visited by characters represented.

Second, other things that can heavily influence city planning are important structures like churches, parks, monuments, and expansions to previous parts of the city. Rarely do the walls of a city restrict its growth, so poorer sections or markets might have sprung up outside, and farmland might still be cultivated close by if the land is fertile.

Last, I've never used paint.NET but I think you will reach its limits pretty quickly (it already appears that making smoothly connected line structures might be difficult), so I would suggest looking up some of the tutorials here for Photoshop.