City study

[Raven Moon]

This is more or less just a study or practice piece not crafted to be any specific city in my home brew world. This is one of two I am working on at the same time. If I have positive response I may post the second. This is just hand drawn on printer paper nothing special. If I like the results I may transfer to vellum. Plans for a water color on vellum may be in order if this works well.

[Caenwyr]

Weird... if I click on the image, I see the CW-rotated version of the thumbnail!

I like the general layout of the map, Raven! Maybe the houses are a bit too regular, you might consider throwing in some L-shapes and the like, but other than that this looks like it might turn into an interesting map! Curious how you're going to do labeling and colouring!

[Raven Moon]

Weird... if I click on the image, I see the CW-rotated version of the thumbnail!

I like the general layout of the map, Raven! Maybe the houses are a bit too regular, you might consider throwing in some L-shapes and the like, but other than that this looks like it might turn into an interesting map! Curious how you're going to do labeling and colouring!

Thats kind of the point of this study is to figure out some of those things. The biggest thing I wanted to get a feel for in this was the shape of streets and filling in the spaces. I have another I am working on side by side with this and it has a more round shape. But yes I normally have much more variation on building shapes and lay out.

[Wingshaw]

What kind of city are you going for? That question has a lot of significance on how the city should look.

Modern cities in wealthy countries, like those that are common in Australia, Canada, and the United States, will tend to have different neighbourhoods with different uses (a downtown area for shops and businesses, suburbs full of residential dwellings, segregated industrial uses, etc.). As cities that were founded in a more modern era (post-Renaissance, in most cases), they will tend to have more modernistic features, such as:
--straight roads and avenues,
--wide streets (for use by motor traffic, rather than just pedestrians),
--different forms of architecture depending on use (eg. structures with very large footprints for skyscrapers; free-standing houses for suburban houses, etc.)
--a lack of narrow alleyways, courtyards and 'negative spaces' between buildings, dense clustering of structures due to poverty etc.

Contrast this with a more historic city (i.e. pre-Renaissance), such as Rome, London or Madrid. These cities grew through 'organic' processes: this means, the gradual development of a town over the course of a long period of time, in the absence of town planners (i.e. in the absence of anyone giving directions or setting rules*). The result was that these cities tended to be less segregated: i.e. different uses were in close proximity to each other; a classic example is a building with shop/s on the ground floor and residential above (and often a work-yard in the rear, too). Typical characteristics of these cities are:
--streets that are not straight (avoid 'spaghetti' style streets, though) or consistent in width,
--streets that vary in width along their length, and include alleyways as well as major highways,
--buildings which often have much more complicated shapes (eg. houses with courtyards, houses with separate annexes etc.),

*Note: these cities, and many others like them, did in fact have people who gave directions. But rarely was town planning a systematically applied craft before the modern era.

Essentially, a few things to keep in mind with street layouts:
--where did the street come from (farmers walking to the fields, merchants going to the market, goods being dropped off somewhere)?
--although cities can be divided between planned and unplanned, there is no such thing as a purely planned or purely unplanned city
--following from the above point, most cities will have a bit of both, but in varying degrees (possibly too subtle to be seen)
--this is a good example of a modern-style city (New York): https://metrhispanic.files.wordpress.../crhysler1.jpg
--this is a good example of a historic city (Rome): https://landlab.files.wordpress.com/...roma-17482.jpg

Hope that's vaguely helpful.

THW

[Raven Moon]

What kind of city are you going for? That question has a lot of significance on how the city should look.

Modern cities in wealthy countries, like those that are common in Australia, Canada, and the United States, will tend to have different neighbourhoods with different uses (a downtown area for shops and businesses, suburbs full of residential dwellings, segregated industrial uses, etc.). As cities that were founded in a more modern era (post-Renaissance, in most cases), they will tend to have more modernistic features, such as:
--straight roads and avenues,
--wide streets (for use by motor traffic, rather than just pedestrians),
--different forms of architecture depending on use (eg. structures with very large footprints for skyscrapers; free-standing houses for suburban houses, etc.)
--a lack of narrow alleyways, courtyards and 'negative spaces' between buildings, dense clustering of structures due to poverty etc.

Contrast this with a more historic city (i.e. pre-Renaissance), such as Rome, London or Madrid. These cities grew through 'organic' processes: this means, the gradual development of a town over the course of a long period of time, in the absence of town planners (i.e. in the absence of anyone giving directions or setting rules*). The result was that these cities tended to be less segregated: i.e. different uses were in close proximity to each other; a classic example is a building with shop/s on the ground floor and residential above (and often a work-yard in the rear, too). Typical characteristics of these cities are:
--streets that are not straight (avoid 'spaghetti' style streets, though) or consistent in width,
--streets that vary in width along their length, and include alleyways as well as major highways,
--buildings which often have much more complicated shapes (eg. houses with courtyards, houses with separate annexes etc.),

*Note: these cities, and many others like them, did in fact have people who gave directions. But rarely was town planning a systematically applied craft before the modern era.

Essentially, a few things to keep in mind with street layouts:
--where did the street come from (farmers walking to the fields, merchants going to the market, goods being dropped off somewhere)?
--although cities can be divided between planned and unplanned, there is no such thing as a purely planned or purely unplanned city
--following from the above point, most cities will have a bit of both, but in varying degrees (possibly too subtle to be seen)
--this is a good example of a modern-style city (New York): https://metrhispanic.files.wordpress.../crhysler1.jpg
--this is a good example of a historic city (Rome): https://landlab.files.wordpress.com/...roma-17482.jpg

Hope that's vaguely helpful.

THW

Thank you for the input thats exactly what Im looking for and some of the things I thought about when making it.
While the general idea behind this city study was a fantasy RPG setting mainly in mind. I tried to do something different than I have done in the past. I started with a handful of hand drawn buildings and loosely figured what they were in the beginning. For example I had the very first building I drew in my mind as a sort of tavern inn kind of thing with a general store in it. Then I figured a town hall would be in order followed by a few permanent houses as the early residents lived in either semi permanent structures like a yurt or tents. From there I began to just lay down a few buildings. Then I stepped away from it and went to work on the other map. I returned to this map and started a rough plan for a city outline. I attempted to make this an organic process with less emphasis on diversity of building structure (shape) and more on following the city planning. As I did not intend to use it but learn from it. However I may just use it in a lesser know location in my homebrew world. Ill post the second map I worked on at the same time.

[Raven Moon]

This is the second city map I was working on at the same time.