Untitled Town WIP

[LizardInk]

I haven’t done many town and city maps, so I decided to do a practice one. Am very open to critiques and suggestions! This is just a standard little coastal town that I may put up for sale when finished, so not sure how much titling I will do. It includes a small military center, aristocrat mansions, one main market and a few small markets in the poorer sector. And those funny little shapes in the north area are horses!

### Latest WIP ###
4E3BFCD7-5406-4D34-823E-B04060BE70B5.jpeg

[aeshnidae]

"I haven't done many town and city maps, so I'll just leave this really awesome one here..." This has really great detail - not just the town structures, but all of the surrounding areas, too (and the legend). The only thing that strikes me as a bit off is the size of the building on the west side. I'm sure it's supposed to be massive, but in terms of scale it looks bigger than the Palace of Versailles. That could just be me, though.

[LizardInk]

"I haven't done many town and city maps, so I'll just leave this really awesome one here..." This has really great detail - not just the town structures, but all of the surrounding areas, too (and the legend). The only thing that strikes me as a bit off is the size of the building on the west side. I'm sure it's supposed to be massive, but in terms of scale it looks bigger than the Palace of Versailles. That could just be me, though.

That's a great critique! Thank you! I may scale it down, on that note; it's a very general map right now, and that building is just supposed to be the house of the mayor/governor/local tyrant, so it probably doesn't have to be massive.

[Wingshaw]

Alright, LizardInk, as promised, here are my thoughts on the layout of this town. Note that my approach to city-mapping is to try to make it more 'realistic' by going through the various patterns of historic cities and looking at what details one might reasonably expect would be present in a fantasy city. Also note that this is not intended as a criticism of your city - I think you've done a good job, like Aeshnidae said - but rather things to think about for this and future city maps. As such, feel free to reject any and all that you don't like or that conflict with your in-world lore. So, without further ado, here are my tips on layout:

Tips on the layout of fantasy cities

• Almost everything that I'll suggest relates to one point, so I'll start with it: as per simple economic theory, the land inside the walls of a city is very high value, and the land outside is less valuable. The reason it is more valuable inside the walls is because: it is better protected, it often comes with greater rights and privileges (like eligibility to be part of a guild), it has better access to goods and services, it has better access to customers, and, of course, there's less of it, which drives up the prices (as per supply and demand).
• The first thing that I noticed about your town map is that all of your buildings - including those belonging to your richer inhabitants and those belonging to your poorer inhabitants - are free-standing buildings, not connected to any others. Medieval cities would fill most of those gaps with buildings, because that makes much better use of the valuable real-estate. To help you out with this, here are some links that show a bit what I mean: London 1676 (Ogilby & Morgan map), Milan, Italy, Antwerp, Belgium, Dublin, Ireland
• It is exceptionally rare – if ever – that a walled medieval city would not have some spill-over of buildings into the surrounding landscape. Going back to the first point: land is valuable inside the walls because it is sparse and offers benefits; but it is relatively cheap outside the walls, and so naturally that’s where people will go if they have less money – the poor, migrants, the outcasts (eg lepers). The small towns that grew outside walls and gates were known as sub urbis, and that’s where we get the word suburb (although it means something very different now, of course). Here are some references for you to get an idea: Paris, 1589 (I hope it’s clear in that image which parts are the suburbs?), Chester, UK (Braun map)
• At the moment, there’s only one gate into or out of your city. Not only that, but the gate faces away from the main road. This means (a) all visitors arriving by land have to go all the way around the city to enter through that gate; and (b) if there’s a siege, all the refugees/supplies have only one way in, and the defenders have only one way out. Note also that gates are places where taxes get collected from anyone entering the city, so they’re also important for that economic reason (that’s also the reason there are often markets just outside the gates: because farmers don’t want to pay to go into the walls, and so just sell their goods at the entrance).
• You have put quite a lot of walls inside the city, dividing it up into districts. Considering the value of the land given to those walls, and the cost of building them in the first place, you migt just want to consider that walls were built to (a) keep other people/things out; and (b) control those that are within. You might just want to think about that, and decide if you want to keep those walls…
• You have devoted a whole district to stables – including giving land within the walls to free-range horse pastures – when the stables are something that could easily sit outside the walls. Even if you are sure you want to keep the stables inside the walls, I have one question to ask: why are they stables so far from the gate? Anyone arriving by horse is going to have to travel the whole way through the city to get to the stable.
• Those docks are very small and very far from the town. You gotta remember, people are generally lazy – they don’t want to walk a longer distance to work than they have to, and so they’ll take shortcuts; and those shortcuts often turn into paths and roads. In a town of this size, you’d imagine that water-borne trade is quite important: therefore the area around the docks would be buzzing – lots of workers, lots of traders, lots of warehouses, lots of shops, lots of inns, lots of houses (but not necessarily expensive houses, as dock-workers don’t tend to be the richest people). Also, you might want to consider having one dock for the traders and another for the fishermen (assuming there are fishermen). And if you do have fishermen, you’ll probably want them to be able to get their catch to the market quickly, so they can sell it while it’s still fresh – so having a fishmarket nearby would be a good idea, too.
• Everyone needs to eat, but there is no farmland around your city. They could be a fish-eating people (although my previous point applies here), but you’d still expect to see some kind of agriculture going on outside the walls. Also, the area outside the walls could be given to non-food related farming: sheep for wool, grapes for wine, hemp for rope, cows for leather etc.
• This is an aesthetic point, but you can improve the appearance of your city by varying the roof-types and adding details. Some simple things to try include adding chimneys, attic windows, dormers, gable windows etc. In my opinion, J.Edward is the master of this, so you could try checking out some of his city maps here on the Guild.

I hope that’s helpful to you.

Wingshaw

[LizardInk]

Alright, LizardInk, as promised, here are my thoughts on the layout of this town. Note that my approach to city-mapping is to try to make it more 'realistic' by going through the various patterns of historic cities and looking at what details one might reasonably expect would be present in a fantasy city. Also note that this is not intended as a criticism of your city - I think you've done a good job, like Aeshnidae said - but rather things to think about for this and future city maps. As such, feel free to reject any and all that you don't like or that conflict with your in-world lore. So, without further ado, here are my tips on layout:

Tips on the layout of fantasy cities

• Almost everything that I'll suggest relates to one point, so I'll start with it: as per simple economic theory, the land inside the walls of a city is very high value, and the land outside is less valuable. The reason it is more valuable inside the walls is because: it is better protected, it often comes with greater rights and privileges (like eligibility to be part of a guild), it has better access to goods and services, it has better access to customers, and, of course, there's less of it, which drives up the prices (as per supply and demand).
• The first thing that I noticed about your town map is that all of your buildings - including those belonging to your richer inhabitants and those belonging to your poorer inhabitants - are free-standing buildings, not connected to any others. Medieval cities would fill most of those gaps with buildings, because that makes much better use of the valuable real-estate. To help you out with this, here are some links that show a bit what I mean: London 1676 (Ogilby & Morgan map), Milan, Italy, Antwerp, Belgium, Dublin, Ireland
• It is exceptionally rare – if ever – that a walled medieval city would not have some spill-over of buildings into the surrounding landscape. Going back to the first point: land is valuable inside the walls because it is sparse and offers benefits; but it is relatively cheap outside the walls, and so naturally that’s where people will go if they have less money – the poor, migrants, the outcasts (eg lepers). The small towns that grew outside walls and gates were known as sub urbis, and that’s where we get the word suburb (although it means something very different now, of course). Here are some references for you to get an idea: Paris, 1589 (I hope it’s clear in that image which parts are the suburbs?), Chester, UK (Braun map)
• At the moment, there’s only one gate into or out of your city. Not only that, but the gate faces away from the main road. This means (a) all visitors arriving by land have to go all the way around the city to enter through that gate; and (b) if there’s a siege, all the refugees/supplies have only one way in, and the defenders have only one way out. Note also that gates are places where taxes get collected from anyone entering the city, so they’re also important for that economic reason (that’s also the reason there are often markets just outside the gates: because farmers don’t want to pay to go into the walls, and so just sell their goods at the entrance).
• You have put quite a lot of walls inside the city, dividing it up into districts. Considering the value of the land given to those walls, and the cost of building them in the first place, you migt just want to consider that walls were built to (a) keep other people/things out; and (b) control those that are within. You might just want to think about that, and decide if you want to keep those walls…
• You have devoted a whole district to stables – including giving land within the walls to free-range horse pastures – when the stables are something that could easily sit outside the walls. Even if you are sure you want to keep the stables inside the walls, I have one question to ask: why are they stables so far from the gate? Anyone arriving by horse is going to have to travel the whole way through the city to get to the stable.
• Those docks are very small and very far from the town. You gotta remember, people are generally lazy – they don’t want to walk a longer distance to work than they have to, and so they’ll take shortcuts; and those shortcuts often turn into paths and roads. In a town of this size, you’d imagine that water-borne trade is quite important: therefore the area around the docks would be buzzing – lots of workers, lots of traders, lots of warehouses, lots of shops, lots of inns, lots of houses (but not necessarily expensive houses, as dock-workers don’t tend to be the richest people). Also, you might want to consider having one dock for the traders and another for the fishermen (assuming there are fishermen). And if you do have fishermen, you’ll probably want them to be able to get their catch to the market quickly, so they can sell it while it’s still fresh – so having a fishmarket nearby would be a good idea, too.
• Everyone needs to eat, but there is no farmland around your city. They could be a fish-eating people (although my previous point applies here), but you’d still expect to see some kind of agriculture going on outside the walls. Also, the area outside the walls could be given to non-food related farming: sheep for wool, grapes for wine, hemp for rope, cows for leather etc.
• This is an aesthetic point, but you can improve the appearance of your city by varying the roof-types and adding details. Some simple things to try include adding chimneys, attic windows, dormers, gable windows etc. In my opinion, J.Edward is the master of this, so you could try checking out some of his city maps here on the Guild.

I hope that’s helpful to you.

Wingshaw

This is SO HELPFUL, thank you thank you!! I really appreciate the time you took to put this together and I have been reading and re-reading it. The central theme of the value of real estate makes so much sense and I can see how that informs so much of the city layout. If I get a chance to edit this map further, I'll probably incorporate all of these points to a degree.

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with me! Bless you!

[CraftyGepetto]

Wingshaw, that feedback was amazing; so many constructive and on-point elements to draw from. In particular, thanks for sharing the various image examples - those references are valuable well beyond their pixels, and a great reminder that even if a map is fantasy, people are generally people.