I need districts but don't know how many

[Jaekaido]

The city is being built in a mountain valley filled with magical energy. while the city itself is in progress, in the story i am telling, there are people already there. everyone is working on something the elders are watching and teaching the children while all those who are capable of working are doing their part in building the city. the city is actually a demon summoning circle that will use the citizens to fuel the ritual. no one in the city is royal or noble as it is a collection of people who are looking for a new place and are being guided by an evil wizard. i know i need a shopping district and probably a guild district, but i am at a loss as to what other districts i should have. there are roughly about 300,000 people, including elders and children, in this city and i don't know what else is needed.

i am working from the ground up on this city and so right now the shape will depend on how many districts there will be. i need a number divisible by four for the number of districts.

so my question is this what are all the different types of districts in a fantasy setting as i don't know

[Wingshaw]

Jaekaido, there's no definitive answer to this question, because there are many many variables at play.

First, think about the size of your districts. A district is basically an area that has a common feature (eg. the place where all the bankers live/work, or the area mostly inhabited by Italian immigrants). In medieval London, some districts consisted of just one main street, and then some smaller ones off it (see for example this map of the Jewish ghetto in Venice).

Second, the types of districts will be generated naturally by the history of the city - an area which, for a variety of reasons, has more poor people is likely to remain that way into the future. Similarly, an area that is associated with a craft - e.g. carpenters - will perhaps continue some tradition of that craft even if all the carpenters leave.

I don't think you should focus your districts so much on just one thing (eg. shopping, guilds etc.) because that's not how historic cities worked. It doesn't make sense for all the different guilds to be clustered in one place; it is much more sensible for, say, blacksmiths to live close to their guild, weavers to live close to their guild, glassworkers near theirs and so forth. Additionally, the location of a lot of these crafts will depend on the nature of the craft: butchers and tanners tended to live on the outskirts of cities, because of the smell and noise of their work. You'd probably also expect to see shops all over the city, rather than just in one district. While it is fair to say that some places might have a concentration of shops/markets, it's also unlikely that there'll be only one - in medieval London, there were at least 4 different markets (sometimes with a bit of specialisation). For example, in southeastern London, the fishmongers had their guildhall, and their market, all in the same district.

My recommendation is to think about who lives in your city, what are the main industries and groups of people, and why would some people prefer to live in one place rather than another (obvious example, very rich people probably don't want their houses in the middle of a poor district; immigrants from one country would probably prefer living close to each other, for protection and work)

PS: whenever I see questions about urban history and fantasy mapping, I always get a bit carried away with advice...

Wingshaw

[Jaekaido]

i appreciate the advice. would it be helpful to create a list of things a city could have so i can choose to put certain things in the city that make sense for the style i am going for?

the city itself is to appear Utopian in a sense of everyone has a role to play and everything is equal. i know that historically that is not the case for any city but that is what i am going for.

[waldronate]

As it's new construction according to a specific plan, you're going to have as many districts as are appropriate for your plot. For a city that grows organically over time, the number will depend on why the city is there. In this case, it's new construction by a HUGE population for a purpose (even if they don't know the purpose). I would expect the wizard-in-charge to offer significant input into the number of centers in the city and the positioning of those centers.

For any group of people, you need a reason for them to come together, a source of food and water, some sort of sanitation system, and a source of building materials.

Why are the people there? You've explained why the wizard chose that location for his summoning circle, but people typically need a reason to form a city, such as: a local abundance of specific resources, a travel nexus for the surrounding area, or possibly religious reasons. They have to want to be there or they are not going to be. A high vision will let the people endure huge amounts of hardship and unhappiness on the way to realizing the great goal. Letting them know that they are working to bring the mighty Antsinpants into the world (but not mentioning that they won't live to see it) is a good way to get focus from a people.

Where is the food coming from to keep them alive? 300,000 people requires a huge amount of land to feed them - a very high density modern agricultural system needs about 0.1 hectares per person, giving 30,000 hectares of land (120 square miles) to support your population. A more reasonable density older agricultural system would be on the order of 1 hectares per person, or around 500 square miles of land. If your city was on a fertile plain, everything within 15 miles of the city in any direction would be farmland. You're in a mountain valley, which means that the travel costs will be much higher. I recommend magical food pillars or some other way of producing food and water without agriculture. This magical system has a major additional advantage from the evil wizard's perspective: the food temples let him put his district centers exactly where he needs them.

What is their source of water? There is likely a river in a mountain valley, but you're looking at a very large population and a large amount of necessary water. Distributing water in a large city is a difficult task and might be a construction effort about the same as habitations for the people.

Where is the food and water going after the citizens are done with it? A sanitation system is very important for a crowded city to prevent large losses due to disease. Letting waste accumulate in a big pile or flowing sluggishly out of town on what was originally a water-based river are not good recipes for keeping the sacrifices alive. And unless it's a very specific kind of demon, it will probably be unhappy if it rises through a giant cesspool.

Where are the building supplies coming from? Unless the supplies are being magically created, the building materials for the city are likely to be stone and some wood sourced from the local mountains. Like food, those materials will be need a distribution system of roads and markets.

Where is the fuel for the citizens coming from? Mountain valleys are notoriously cold and will require lots of fuel for heating without magical assistance. You're not worried about long-term stability here, but the progressively longer treks to new fuel sources will slow down construction.

Historically, guilds tended to be associations of like-skilled folks whose primary goal is price-fixing and limiting of competition in their local area. That is, they work together to make sure that everyone in their group eats and that nobody new comes into town to undercut their living. They may also be engaged in the suppression of technology that might impact their livelihood. They may not have a place in a town with common folk working together to a glorious purpose, especially if there is a single leader for the group of common folk and that leader has his own agenda.

A final note: real cities are fractal in nature. For the purposes of this discussion, that means that they are inherently hierarchical. The city is composed of districts, which are composed of smaller districts, and so on until you reach the neighborhood (distinguishable by being ruled over by a small cabal of elderly grandmothers). Planned cities don't form from the coalescence of many villages over time (the ultimate source of neighborhoods), but they will ultimately converge on that sort of systems because humans form social structures of at most a couple of hundred people associated with any individual.

I'll stop rambling now.

[Greason Wolfe]

Years ago, Chaosium Inc. put out a guide for developing cities that broke things down into "quarters" (i.e. Poor, Merchants, etc.). If you can find a copy of that, it might be helpful. It was geared more towards quick generation of cities for roleplaying, but might be able to get you on a path you like. It might also be helpful to take a look at Medieval Demographics Mad Easy and/or Ravel's guide to City Making, the latter being a PDF file in the tutorials sub forum.

[Azélor]

First 300 000 people is a large city assuming it is in the medieval era.
Cities with that many people don't just need food but also all sorts of goods.
They tend to be located in the center of a large trade network.
In doesn't need to be the case but trade is a major factor contributing to city growth.

Since it is ruled by an evil wizard, maybe it is a totalitarian regime?
If so, they are free to plan the city how they think is the best, and force people do things that normal people would not do in normal circumstances. Like walking 1h to get to the nearest shop because all the shops are in the shopping district on the other side of the city.

To me, except for some specific cases, building a city using district doesn't make a lot of sense.
To me, districts are either very small and very specific of larger and with vague similar characteristic.
I think others have mentioned it already but shop, temples, housing, even military buildings tend to be spread out across the city, not clustered in one area.
Sure you might have one area with a lot of military buildings or temples, but most of the districts will look similar with a mix of different building types.
By vague characteristic I mean that some areas might have richer folks, but it doesn't mean all rich people live there or that poorer folks can't have a home in that district.
This is often tied to geography. For example, areas that are downwind receive the pollution from another district. This lowers the attraction of the district and tend to be poorer because rich people avoid it.
It's not just the smoke of industries, households produce pollution when they burn wood.

If you're looking for inspirations, you can have a look here at the community project. The city is about 1/10 the size of yours.

[Gidde]

I like a book (ebook) for this called a Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe by Expeditious Retreat Press, that I don't remember where I purchased. Probably drivethru or some such. It also is geared toward quick generation for D&D etc games, but it has great tables for "did I forget a profession" and a nice district system (it calls them wards).

[Wingshaw]

This is often tied to geography. For example, areas that are downwind receive the pollution from another district. This lowers the attraction of the district and tend to be poorer because rich people avoid it.

And economics. But many people interested in fantasy cities don't tend to be interested in microeconomic theory

Wingshaw

[Jaekaido]

okay well i am just not getting what i want out of the editor anyway so i have changed the idea now i am looking at something like Helms Deep and Minas Tirith. but instead of it being on a jutting out portion of the mountain the city is expanding into the mountain thanks to dwarven quarries and mines. so the city will consist of three main features the mountains to the north west with a forest that runs along the mountains. the forest is magically maintained so not to run out of wood for building and heating and cooking, maintained by the elves. the final section is basically a flat area where crops and butcherable animals are, to the south west and to the northeast and south east are the basic living areas for everyone who is not an elf or dwarf. in the center of the city is going to be a large area where the citizens cane gather and will be the sacrificial location to power the summoning spell.

so my next question is, what size population would be good for a large city that is maintainable for an area of about 100 square miles of magically maintained farmlands? the farm lands generate four harvests per year.

[Gidde]

According to Medieval Demographics Made Easy (I trust his research so that I don't have to do my own), 1 sq. mile of farmland can sustain 180 people. So you're looking at about 18,000 people tops. You may be able to push that to 25,000 based on your magical farmland, but I wouldn't go much higher than that.