City Size

[JoeyD473]

10'-30' is what I normally do, so I was in a good range, so that is good. But I have my next stupid question.

How wide should roads be in my town? I know there is some variability in this question so I'll break it up by street type.

Main Streets?
Side Streets?
Back Streets?

[rdanhenry]

The width of streets depends a lot on how they are being used. If they are only to support foot traffic, they can be rather narrow. If horses are being ridden through the street, more room is required. Chariots, elephants, single-horse carriages, small vendor's carts require additional space. Full-sized coaches, dragons as mounts, giants, great trains of tribute, marching bands or armies, and the like want really wide streets.

There is also a question of social conventions. If your inhabitants are comfortable rubbing shoulders with strangers, the streets will be narrower than if convention dictates maintaining a sword's length distance between others.

Finally, you should consider government and city planning. A certain width might be legally required for safety purposes (e.g., to allow four people to run abreast if a fire breaks out) or other justifications. Laws may not always be followed, but this is the sort of thing an effective government can pretty much always enforce. Then you have to consider if the streets are used for something other than traffic. If you have channels for waste disposal (open sewers, basically), you need to allow room for them in addition to space for traffic.

[Ascension]

I make my main streets wide enough to fit two wagons going in opposite directions plus some foot traffic...about 20 feet. Side streets then are about 12-15 and alleys are 6-10 feet. These are numbers that I've made up with no real examination of real world old towns but I'm not so fastidious to go and research it so I've always just used my gut.

[NeonKnight]

Was just watching an Episode of Battles BC, regarding the battle of Jericho, and the BENCHMARK figure used by historians for estimating ancient city/town populations (this is the real deal) is 240 people per urban acre. In Jericho'scase the city was approximate 8.5 acres, so a pop of 8.5 x 240 = 2040 people.

So, in a city of one Square Mile in size, that is 640 acres (or 639.9974 tobe exact).and 240 x 640 is 153 600 people.

[Ascension]

That sounds pretty good to me. Even back then in ancient times they could build 2 to 3 stories upward and have shared walls. It's not medieval numbers but fudging that number up a little bit wouldn't be too drastic. London didn't hit 1 million until like that 1800s (if I remember right) so you could double that number and be real close to having a colossal medieval city.

[landorl]

I agree with the street sizes that Ascension gave. That is what I use. I will occasionally put in a wider street if there is a reason, but for the most part, those are good numbers.

Don't forget to put plazas and squares in various areas. Many will center around a well or a fountain which will be the source for fresh water. They will also be used as local market areas where farmers will sell fresh goods.

[Juggernaut1981]

Your two main constraints on city size are:
Availability of Resources
Availability of Transport

To get more people packed into a city, you have to figure out how to get their CRAP out (literally!). If you don't have that sorted, your population peaks due to pestilence.

To get a "larger" city you need better transport. As mentioned, people aren't likely to walk more than about 2 miles to get ANY daily necessity (would you walk for 1 hour to get breakfast, DAILY??). So, once you know the transport level, that will give you an idea of the kind of size your city can have and the number of markets it will need.


As far as dwellings go. Most of Europe had fairly stable 3 storey buildings by the 1600s. Inner city districts often got replaced with stone townhouses (3 storeys with maybe 3 apartments, but often just one family) and with more stone buildings in slum districts the population density quickly climbed.

Check for old drawings of Moscow/St Petersburg, Hamburg, Rome, Madrid, Paris and London to get the ideas.

[NeonKnight]

Because I have been talking about Jericho recently, i thought these would be could:



An ancient map showing the location of Jericho to the Bottom Right of the RED SQUARE.

Unfortunately, I have been unable at the moment to find a map of the city itself

[Kronski]

As other people have said, the biggest constraints on city size are the availability of food and water and sanitation, coupled with that fact that if a city gets too big it's impractical to get across.

But maybe it would be co0l to have a fictional world where special conditions allowed for a really huge city. Perhaps the city is located at a crossroads of trade, so that food is coming in from other places on a regular basis, and maybe it's built on a river/had aqueducts. Maybe there were sewers built under the city a long time ago. Maybe the local government pays for public transportation - a whole fleet of carriages to drive everyone around. I mean, it wouldn't be strictly realistic but it would be a cool setting.

[JoeyD473]

That would be an awesome setting. Something to consider for a later time