City Size

[NeonKnight]

Dear God! TEN MILES! That is way too big (unless you are including in that figure the farmlands). With an average human walking speed of approximately 3 miles per hour, it would take a person 3 hours to walk from one side of your mythical city to the other, or nearly a full day for a round trip. Worse if the PC/character is a halfling with a shorter stride/movement rate

The following link gives some interesting studies on size of ancient cities (Notably Ancient Babylon, and Ancient Egypt): https://faculty.washington.edu/modelski/WCITI2.html
*NOTE Some of the table entries appear a little 'off' and reading the document I can only suppose they are missing some hyphens in areas.

Now, the above mentioned document shows cities like Eridu having a population of 10,000 people and only occupying a space of 50 hectares, or about 7 hectares by 7 hectares. Now 1 hectare is an area 100m x 100m, and a square kilometre (km2) is 1000m x 1000m, so there are 100 hectares in a square kilometer. What's that in Miles? Well, 1 square mile (1 mile x 1 mile) is approximately 259 hectares or 16 x 16 hectares.

SO, A population of 25,000 people would likely be at most for the city proper in a medieval period be around a single square mile. Even using a town like London, by 1600's had a population of approximately 250,000, and thus would be larger. By that period hansom cabs were common, and foot traffic was limited to one's burrough.

See Diagram below for comparison

[JoeyD473]

Thank you all very much. The articles were all very useful. I decided for my purposes I needed a city of a high pop so I went with the 10K/50 Hectares. My city is now 1.572 miles (8,300') x 1.9138 Miles (6,300') )can hold about 97K people, but it will hold less then that because several areas won't be as dense as others, for instance, the upper class district of the city.

I have another stupid question which wasn't covered in about those articles, what would the typical size of a home for the average family be?