[WIP] Ringstadt - Progress of a city intermixed with questions

[dot_Sp0T]

I am starting this thread for a few reasons:

1. I want to showcase my work, I hope to get feedback and some recognition.
2. To ask questions and resolve issues I encounter during the creative process.
3. Having something out in the open will hopefully motivate me to work on it more dutifully and finally get somewhere.

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With that said, here's the gist:

The city below is currently called 'Ringstadt' this is a WIP-name stemming from the earliest ideas about the city - namely it being surrounded by a circular wall (a 'Ringmauer' in German).

The city's gone through its fair share of iterations regarding how it came to be.
Originally when my setting still had a high-fantasy pitch (magic based on literally burning metals/ores, dwarves, elves, etc.) it was located next to a mountain in a marshy plain. The wall had been built by the dwarves to fill the whole thing with water washing through the mountains. They would then let the water evaporate so they could mine the precious metals without any much effort of mining new tunnels.
Later when I dropped the high-fantasy and decided to go for a more gritty and down-to-earth setting (mind airships though, because airships are awesome and I definitely need them for my fiction), I dropped all the magic & dwarves. The city got a lake next to it and it was decided that it starts off as a small mining outpost that would later grow into the most important city of the three surrounding regions (small more-or-less self-governed areas that bound together to form The Koalition).

The city itself would thus start off as a mining outpost founded near the lake due to a) the rich ore veins inside the mountains, and b) the proximity to a waterway that would make it easy to transport off all the mined ores.
From there it quickly started to grow, as the veins reached way deeper into the mountains than prospectors had though. More shafts would open and a smelting industry would form along the lake-shore. The flow of ores would soon subside and be replaced by a flow of refined metals, shipments of coal would start arriving day & night to only just still the hunger of the smelters.
In time the workshops and manufactories that settled here as a means to fix and build more machinery and tools for the workers would take off as people moved here to take part in the iron-rush.

In the meanwhile the town grew rich from export-taxes they started to impose on every shipment leaving the now bustling harbour. They decided to invest into the future by designing a circular grid of streets to support expansion.
In order to being able of providing the growing industry and the people they hoped to lure into the growing town with access to fresh water, they took it upon them to start mega-project: A circular wall stretching a good 7 kilometers from the far mountain-front towards & around the harbour-area, enclosing what they imagined the city might grow to. On top it an artificial channel, fed by a freshwater lake further up the mountains, able to provide as much water as anyone could ever need.

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Anyways, that's approximately how I imagine the history as of now. There's a few issues like finding a really good reason (other than huge circular walls being my soft-spot) for building the thing the fashion it is built (currently I imagine it some 30m tall and some 12-16m wide at its base, with room inside of it for corridors, barracks, storage, shops, cannons, and so forth) - I will soon add a cross-section on the right side of the dashed line.

Currently visible is a provisional road-grid with main thoroughfares (thicker, darker) and secondary thoroughfares (smaller, lighter). More streets will definitely be added between these main roads wiggling and worming between houses, workshops, parks. There's 4 major and 4 minor gates in the wall.
To the left is a rough draft of the harbour-area walled off by artificially made strips of land, on which the wall is built. There's 2 major and 2 minor arches through which ships can pass into the secured harbour.

Along the mountains there's a few mining shafts marked. On top there's a roughly triangular area of massive landscaping. The material removed from there was used to create the artifical landmasses on which the wall is built through the lake. The area is now planned to become a mining-hub with mountains of excavated material, a railyard and some workshops. The area is dug into the mountain, removing the originally sloped mountainside (think of a surface mine / quarry.

To the right there's a placeholder for a monastery / cloister / brewery.


My current goal is to get a feeling for the size I am going for. I decided to give the wall a diameter of 1 mile because it produced a circumference of almost exactly 10 kilometers - two values I can easily work with. When deciding on the street-layout I went for a 5-sided symmetry as I wanted something distinctive and different to the classic 4 cardinal directions.

When placing the streets and deciding on distances between main- and secondary thoroughfares I overlayed my drawing area with a google-maps screenshot of a city near where I live. I know the city and thus can get a better feeling for the approximate distances I am working with.

As of now I am mainly trying to get a feeling for the sizes of everything. I am spending time looking at maps of cities, searching for data on sizes and heights of buildings around the 1700s to 1850s (late medieval to early industrial), sizes of cars & trucks, widths of roads, make-up of households, etc. - If anyone's got good sources on that sort of data or if you've got way better ideas (which I desperately hope you have), I would be glad if you'd share them with me


Ringstadt_Concept_wip_2017_06_08_2015.jpg
^{The mining-town become walled manufacturing hub - WIP-Name: Ringstadt}

The Ringstadt is situated somewhere inside The Koalition Area (marked with a 'K' on the below map).

world_digitalized_240316.jpg
^{The northern half/continent of my world without a name yet.}

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I using Clip Studio Paint Pro running on a Surface Pro 4 tablet computer drawing thus 'by hand' (on a digital canvas mind me); my canvas is usually sized A4 @ 1200 dpi. The uploaded images are JPGs capped to about 2MB in size. I use raster graphics for drafts & sketches (pretty much all I did so far on the city) and vector graphics for the clean versions (the world map).

[Mouse]

My goodness! Quite a project

I have no idea if you will find this useful, since it is about Medieval cities, not modern ones, but it might be of some use

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

[Wingshaw]

It seems like you've got a lot of this worked out already, and in a good amount of detail. Below are a list of questions which might help you resolve some of the issues you're having trouble with.

One thing that immediately jumps out at me is that, from the history you describe, this sounds like quite an old city. However, there's none of the usual indications of old cities. Where is the historic centre? Did the city begin as a grid, or was that imposed afterwards? If it was introduced later, did they retain the old street pattern, or demolish it (demolishing the old streets is an extremely difficult process, and one that has never been fully accomplished in the past, to my knowledge)?

Are there satellite villages that supply labour/resources/agricultural produce to Ringstadt? If there are villages surrounding, it is likely that the roads and lanes that lead to them will be gently bent and irregular, as they would be very old paths. Alternatively, has the grid been imposed on the villages and their access routes, too? If there aren't any villages, where does the city get its food from?

You say they're building a monumental wall, but you haven't determined the absolute reason, yet. Are there enemies that threaten them? Are they trying to keep people/things out, or keep people/things in? Or does the wall have an entirely different purpose that has no connection to security/defence?

Who runs the city, and decides on things like building massive walls? Who decided to make it a grid?

How old is the city, really? You mention that it was founded as a mining outpost; who founded it? Was it the colony of another nation? individual prospectors? trading companies? If it originally belonged to another country, how did it become independent?

What are some of the biggest events in the city, and how have they left their mark (eg. statues that commemorate great leaders or events, scars from war, fire and earthquake, etc.)?

For detailed world-building, this article is one of the most useful I've encountered: Patricia C Wrede's World-building questions

Hope that's helpful.

THW

[dot_Sp0T]

Thought I'd do an update so you folks know that I didn't just briefly pop up to vanish again forever

@TheHoarseWhisperer
Thank you for the time you for the numerous concerns & tips. The point you make about the age is a good one. I am from Europe (Switzerland to be precise) and thus I might live/think in another timescale. For my timescale I intended the city to be relatively young, at most some 150 years old at the point where the final map will be set (and the surrounding stories).

Thus I am currently working on designing a rudimentary 'old city' on the plot where the eventual Ringstadt will be - down below you can see the first parts of that old city, grown over the last few days.

I am currently spending most of the time I work on this map reading up on things like how abbeys are designed and how old cities (again around 1700-1800) are set up and work. I've even managed to get hold of maps of a city near me from the 1500s, the 1700s and the 1820s - it's a great help to see how such a city grew and got bigger. E.g. there were huge fortifications and ditches that there's no noticable traces left off today (at least none I'd ever seen when wandering the place).

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Something really great would be if some of you could link me to some of your favourite city-maps that have a ruler or similar on them. For me it seems quite hard to get a feeling for sizes of buildings, and although I'm getting forward by searching for old groundplans of historic buildings I've visited, it would tremendously help

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So the latest version:
- I've added the first draft of the freshwater reserves up in the mountain
- Started adding mines and initial industry (mostly stuff like workshops and mills for doing initial refining of the mined material)
- Added an abbey on the right side of the map (not christian, so no classic church)
- Overlayed old waterlines & rivers with yellow; new waterline & rivers are blue

### Latest WIP ###
Ringstadt_Concept_WIP_2017_06_12_1635.jpg

[XCali]

Hey buddy, I want to ask something, is the picture a 14k size?
Because, I think it is so big I can't seem to open it. And because of that, I am not able to comment. I'd advize you post a version also that is less than 5k.

[Mouse]

XCali - Maybe there was a blip in the broadband? I don't know. I think 16 people have opened it so far, so I don't think its the size.

DS - all this technical stuff is just flying way over my head, since I'm a pure fantasist and tend to ignore all the general rules of how things should be done, so I'll hang back and wait to comment on the aesthetics of your map at a later stage

[jizerai]

I can open it just fine (takes perhaps a second or two longer than usual), but if I try and zoom in.. well, let's just say it doesn't appear to let me do that. :/

[XCali]

I really don't think South Africa has the same internet infrastructure than overseas, yet. At the moment, I'm sharing a 10mb/s line with a whole family.

(And it is not a blip. I've tried it multiple times over several days and it stays blank, even if I wait several minutes. So, no, I don't think it is that.*shrugs*)

[ChickPea]

As far as I can tell, the file size is just under 2Mb, so it's not an especially large download. However, its pixel dimensions are 14,031 x 9921px which may cause some devices to choke. Might be an idea to scale it down a little next time to prevent problems.

[Mouse]

XCali - I won't rub salt in the wound by telling you what my mobile broadband rate is in the UK, but its almost certainly down to the rate you have there, and not necessarily anything to do with your machine.

DS - In case you are wondering what sort of size is more normal here, I can only speak for myself, of course, but personally I find that in most cases a map that is about 2-3000 px square is more than sufficient during the WIP stages - until you get right down into the final details. I've just checked my own finished maps folder on my PC, and I can see that the largest Finished Map I've ever uploaded was no more than 4,000 px on the long side.