michelel72 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
michelel72) wrote2019-04-22 09:14 pm
michelel72) wrote2019-04-22 09:14 pm
Writing a city
Writing question: I'm playing with a plot, and while I have a loose idea for a city to set it in, I'm having trouble picturing details. And, I mean, I can leave it vague; that's usually how I roll when it comes to settings. But if I wanted to get a sense of the layout / population / amenities of a city from a historical period, are there good (easily accessible) resources for that kind of thing?
The setting is not quite our world, and I'm playing with the technology timeline a bit. They don't have steam power, but they probably have much of what we did right before the development of steam / the Industrial Revolution. I figure the primary transportation methods are horses / carts / carriages / walking. They also have a practical form of magic -- more telekinesis / light shows / energy transfer than creation-of-something-from-nothing or teleportation.
This specific city is a port on the ocean; it's one of a few major trading cities along its coast. My inclination at this stage is for the region not to be particularly densely populated.
The society of the region doesn't have royalty / one dominant religion / feudalism / central authority at the time of plot. This particular city has an elected council; I haven't yet decided if all cities / towns / villages will have that. I'm thinking they all function sort of like independent city-states.
I know there's a port, which pretty obviously would have to be at the coast, heh. From there, would the market(s) typically be very near to the port, or more often central, or lining the route from the port to the center, or ...? If I'm focusing not on the might-as-well-be-middle-class traders and working magicians, what sort of housing is most likely? I figure it'd be varied -- would small freestanding houses, larger freestanding houses, and row houses all make sense? (Would water be by neighborhood wells or individual household wells or a stone/wood piping system? Would that change depending on neighborhood density? If just dumping human waste into the streets is NOT happening, are there examples of period-similar alternatives, such as communal privies?)
I think what might work well would be pictures/descriptions of actual cities from history, but I don't know how to find those. I'd especially love non-European, non-US examples.
Any leads would be greatly appreciated!
The setting is not quite our world, and I'm playing with the technology timeline a bit. They don't have steam power, but they probably have much of what we did right before the development of steam / the Industrial Revolution. I figure the primary transportation methods are horses / carts / carriages / walking. They also have a practical form of magic -- more telekinesis / light shows / energy transfer than creation-of-something-from-nothing or teleportation.
This specific city is a port on the ocean; it's one of a few major trading cities along its coast. My inclination at this stage is for the region not to be particularly densely populated.
The society of the region doesn't have royalty / one dominant religion / feudalism / central authority at the time of plot. This particular city has an elected council; I haven't yet decided if all cities / towns / villages will have that. I'm thinking they all function sort of like independent city-states.
I know there's a port, which pretty obviously would have to be at the coast, heh. From there, would the market(s) typically be very near to the port, or more often central, or lining the route from the port to the center, or ...? If I'm focusing not on the might-as-well-be-middle-class traders and working magicians, what sort of housing is most likely? I figure it'd be varied -- would small freestanding houses, larger freestanding houses, and row houses all make sense? (Would water be by neighborhood wells or individual household wells or a stone/wood piping system? Would that change depending on neighborhood density? If just dumping human waste into the streets is NOT happening, are there examples of period-similar alternatives, such as communal privies?)
I think what might work well would be pictures/descriptions of actual cities from history, but I don't know how to find those. I'd especially love non-European, non-US examples.
Any leads would be greatly appreciated!
no subject
I think sewage systems were developed relatively early, with private toilets even. In general a lot depends on how wealthy the city is, and if the wealth is spread out equally, and how big it is, especially when it comes to the question if freestanding houses make sense. As for water supply, that's probably an area where you could do a lot with some household magic, that'd depend on the magic system.
no subject
As for sewage, I've mostly only heard of chamber pots that get dumped out windows, but I know that's not so much "universal" as "what I've seen/read in media based on England". City size is a puzzle; my instinct is to make it pretty small on our scale, even though it's one of the biggest cities of the fictional region. I don't really have a good reason for that beyond an odd feeling that greater size correlates to greater wealth disparity, which is not a given!
It's an early-capitalist society, in that people do work in exchange for coins and then spend those coins on goods and services. But there's also a strong public-service ethos (general) and a moderately strong resource-conservation ethos (primarily driven by the currently dominant model of magical practice). I'm loosely thinking that this city (if not, perhaps, the larger region) practices early-capitalism-plus-safety-net.
The magical system does not allow for free energy -- that's actually a key plot point, because my second main character is trying to find a way to create the magical equivalent of a battery -- but it does allow for construction projects that might not otherwise be feasible for the era. That character would have been an engineer if she hadn't become a mage, and she leans toward magical engineering, so it would make sense for that to be an existing specialty that previously provided at least a rudimentary water supply / sewage system. (I'd worried that might seem too unrealistic, but the Romans had aqueducts and central heating, so I think I do have some room there!)
There were Bad Old Days in which mages drained energy from unwilling people (and presumably animals); that's considered assault at the time of plot. "Modern" mages have reformed their field so thoroughly that most are varying degrees of vegetarian / vegan, and pretty much all of them would react with varying degrees of horror, revulsion, or condemnation towards a mage who drained energy from someone without clear and enthusiastic consent. What I don't know is whether those Bad Old Days involved wars / general medieval societal imbalances, nor whether they culminated in some sort of widespread depopulation from which "modern society" has emerged. And it may not even matter! I just get so bogged down in worldbuilding.
(Except, well, if this used to be a hugely populated city and now isn't, that would definitely affect the layout/scale, and it would affect the population density of existing structures, and some structures would either be decaying or would need active management to prevent that. So I do need to know, and I'm leaning against something that drastic ... though fascinating to contemplate ....)
Sorry for the infodump. Apparently it's easier for me to talk about the story than actually, you know, write it!