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Thread: Renaliac City

  1. #1
    Guild Journeyer Eld's Avatar
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    Wip Renaliac City

    Hey Folks!

    After finishing my map of the Republic of Renaliac (to be found here) I go ahead and plan on mapping its capital: Renaliac itself, mother of cities, queen of faith, wealth, wisdom and art. More than a million people living there, Renaliac is one of Nerrac's (my fantasy world) most important metropolis.

    This work may take a long while because of two reasons. A) The city is quite huge and thus is the map of it. B) I have plenty things to do. So I assume this work to take about...2 years?

    This said let's start!

    Sketching and Planning

    First of I made a layout for the environment of Renaliac. It's situated at the river Natozan on a hill at its northern bank. After gaining a clear vision of the surroundings I thought about the historical growth of the city over the roundabout 3600 years of its existence. I made a gif-data to illustrate my thoughts.

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Basiskarte Renaliac - Stadtentwicklung.gif 
Views:	360 
Size:	6.47 MB 
ID:	101431

    The next step will be to decide where is what in that city. I will make use of these steps of development and lay down basic areas for things like commerce, religion, big places, important buildings and stuff.

    The style of the map will be something very similar to this city. Maybe a change in some colors and hopefully less try and error.

    I work with Gimp and plan to finally print the map. Maybe at A0.

    Ideas, Questions, Criticism are always welcome.

    Eld

  2. #2
    Guild Grand Master Azélor's Avatar
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    That gif is pretty cool. I hope you don't intend to redo the same process with a full detailed city.

    What is the level of technology?
    Assuming a medieval era city, because it's fantasy I guess, 2 millions is a huge population.
    The capital of a large and wealthy empire might reach 1 000 000 and these cities are not the norm.
    2 millions would require a lot of public space (markets) and infrastructures among other things.
    If it's a rich city, it also have temples, parks, government buildings (university?) and stuff like that.
    A higher quality of life generally means a lower population density because a lot of buildings (and having larger houses) take a lot of space.
    Which brings me to my second point.

    The size of the city is 20 sq km or so?
    Which gives a density of 100 000 per sq km. That's pretty dense considering the above.
    Also, the city doesn't look that flat. It has a few places that look less suitable for building. Depending on how steep the area is, it might not be a problem.

  3. #3
    Guild Journeyer Eld's Avatar
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    Hey Azelor,

    thanks for your thoughts!
    Initially I planned to map out the city at each historical point to get the development right but I think that would be just mind-blowing much work.
    So I'll stick to that gif and figure out the inner structure of the city.

    I've done a list of buildings such a city would need with all the infrastructure, cultural and civic buildings etc. I guess this will help me in the process.

    To the questions and population issue:

    The technological level isn't medieval, it's more or less 16th to 17th century without guns (but gunpowder for bombs) and some magic (important for medicine and health system). Also the comparison with Europe isn't truly fitting because in the history of that part of my world there wasn't a technological-cultural setback as big as in Europe from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. So we could think of antique cities as well as of Renaissance cities of Italy or of Near East where antique Roman and Greek knowledge was preserved much better.

    Renaliac itself was capital of a former Empire for twothousand years and still is very rich. Infrastructure therefor is on a very high level. Imagine me mapping the Rome-Constantinople of my world. The territory of the city measures about 33km˛ in 3167 as Gimp tells me and I assume about 1 million registered citizens and some 100ish thousand unregistered people in the slums, maybe even 200 thousand. That makes about 36 000 people per km˛ overall. Of course that figure splits into a much lesser density for the rich and a much higher density for the poor.

    About the height differences: The height lines are scaled at 10m each, so the hills are rather flat.

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    Guild Expert Wingshaw's Avatar
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    Ooh, a city map. I'll have to stop myself writing a whole essay, which very frequently happens when I get hooked on commenting on a city map. I'll try to keep it fairly brief...

    First, I just want to mention one thing: you might have an explanation within your world's lore, but you say this city has existed for thousands of years. In the real world, London has only existed as a city for about 2000 years; Rome for about 2700; Paris about 2200; and both Moscow and Berlin are less than a thousand years old. My point is simply that fantasy cities often have massively exaggerated timescales compared to real-world historic patterns, and that it is possible to squeeze a lot more historic events into a shorter span of history then many people believe (just look at how much of an impact New York has had on the world in the 400 years it has existed).

    Second, prior to the industrial revolution, few cities reached the size of 1 million people. Rome reached that size (circa 100 A.D.), as did Chang'an (ca. 700 A.D.), Baghdad (1000 A.D.) and Beijing (1600 A.D.) [this information comes from a Wikipedia article, by the way, but is quite well referenced and seems fairly accurate]. On this matter my point is that the population figures you are giving for your city are not impossible, but they certainly are unlikely, if applying real-world historical patterns and technology (of course, magic and world-building can completely change that, but it's food for thought, at least).

    Hope some of that is useful information to you. I'm keen to see where you take this map, and I really like the GIF idea for showing it's development. I've been itching to try the same thing myself for ages.

    Wingshaw


    Formerly TheHoarseWhisperer

  5. #5
    Guild Grand Master Azélor's Avatar
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    My point is simply that fantasy cities often have massively exaggerated timescales compared to real-world historic patterns
    This can't be as bad as in Game of Thrones.

    Our family served the Stark for the last 10 000 years!
    Or something like that.

    A city 2000 years is not impossible but for a city to remain important (and a capital) for 2000 years is not very plausible.
    A city like Baghdad is located in a region full of ancient fallen cities. A city rise, fall and another emerge from the ruins.
    That's what most multi millennia city look like.

  6. #6
    Guild Expert rdanhenry's Avatar
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    Some cities have been around for a lot longer than 2000 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...habited_cities). Looking at northern Europe isn't the best place to find old cities, because civilization came there rather later than in the Mediterranean/Middle East and India and China. A story that seems to be a steady rise and expansion is not normal, but if the problem of feeding over a million people and disposing of their wastes is solved, then it won't be an impossible city. Rome had over a thousand years of essentially sustained rising. It took its lumps, but nothing that preventing the city from learning and moving forward. And even after defeat, the city did not disappear, nor did it fail to maintain importance right up to the present day. Scale of history over a few thousand years is doable. Now, if you said it had the same continuous government for all that time, it'd be fantasy politics for sure.

  7. #7
    Guild Journeyer Eld's Avatar
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    Hey guys,

    thanks for your thoughts! I love that discussion about city development, growth, history and timelines in worldbuilding.

    Wingshaw, your thoughts are well considered and I agree that exaggerated timelines in fantasy are often a lack of historical knowledge or a case of legend building.
    I want to add some background knowledge about Renaliac and its role in my world to make it more clearly, what the city is like that I plan to map here.

    First, I work on my fantasy world since 2008 and have thought about many of those questions pointed out in this discussion. Second I want to add that I've got a B.A. in history (1.1) and therefor don't lack opportunities or awareness for historical comparisons, limitations and such.

    The things about city age, constant growth and stuff like that you mentioned is quite good and I agree with it. However, you talk about probabilities, about the majority of cities and the special situation of cities in Europe and elsewhere. Renaliac now is the exception to the rule, it is one of those rare cities like Bejing, being very old and very important throughout its history.
    You shouldn't think of Renaliac as a random city that some guy (me) wants to exaggerate in meaning and importance to magnify the project. Think of Renaliac as the one city in a ten of thousands of cities that is so succesful and special and because of that the guy (me) plans to map it. It's not like I plan on mapping Berlin or Paris.

    Some historical background:
    Renaliac was a small city state amongst a group of city states at the Natozan river back when those city states of the Doranari where like a buffer zone between two antique super powers.
    Then Nazcén Namazalar did his job there by becoming the prophet of a new religion (something like Jesus did, taking up the old religion and transforming it into a new version). He made Renaliac his home and became also king of that city, a prophet-king. His religion was very succesful and soon his state, Nazcenor, united all of the Doranari city states. Later on they learned to tame the Great Dragons for military purposes and subdued the whole area of Lajrén. (Lajrén being the eastern part of the continent with much fertility, rain, rivers and few mountains, framed by high mountain ranges. Lajrén may be compared to India or China concerning these matters)
    The empire of Nazcenor lasted for two millennia, growing, stagnating, under civil turmoil and civil wars, renaissances and stuff (much like Ancient Egypt, Old China and Roman-Byzantine-Empire). After a global natural disaster the then quite weak empire broke apart (imagine the Diadochoi of Alexander the Great) and Renaliac became the capital of the remaining heartland of the Empire. That disaster is now about 1000 years past and prosperity has risen again, especially in terms of agricultural production, trade and crafting.

    In a nutshell: Renaliac is something like Rome to the Roman Empire, like Constantinople to Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire, something like Jerusalem and Rome to (Catholic) Christianity and one of the big European capitals to the EU at once. It's only that succesful because of the combined political and religious importance linked to a very generous geographical position. There are a few more cities in my world with about 1 million people and Renaliac is one of those few. It may seem a bit excessive, but the aim at creating Renaliac was a thought like "what if Jerusalem and Rome would be merged into one, as well as Jesus and Augustus merged into Nazcén Namazalar (translating "Nazcén the very greatest ever")." Also I thought about: "What circumstances would I need to make such a city plausibly be able to happen?" And the things above are my answer.

    These things said Renaliac only nowadays reached that 1.2 million population. For the most part of its history it was much smaller. Mabe around 2000 nN, in the late Nazcenorian Empire, it was about 800 000 people. At the fall of the Empire and due to a sacking of the Capital by enemy forces the population dropped. One could see that in the Gif where the suburbs from 2008 nN mostly dissapear till 2150. 2008 being the year of the natural disaster and 2143 being the year of the end of Nazcenor, this shows the setback of the development in those days. Also one could imagine that the urban area itself lost population.

    In the current year of my world Renaliac could be compared best to Rome: Bigger than in antiquity, much less political importance, still high cultural and religious importance and quite important in economics in the area.

    So I guess mapping Renaliac will be the biggest city mapping project I will ever have. There are many other cities of my world I want to map, but Renaliac being one of the most important places of that world just wants to be early in the line...

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