File talk:Wydmoor WIP.png

Green is Pasture and Yellow is Agriculture? Detarame (talk) 00:04, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

At this point it could be whatever we want. In my head it was yellow = aggriculture/pasture, dark green = heavy trees, light green = grass and light trees, grey = paved. I was going to start converting some of the spaces in between blocks to light green + some dark green. --Msallen (talk)

Holy shit, this thing has come along! Detarame (talk) 02:18, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

In response to the conversation below, I think the numbers are still to big. If the Wyd walls enclose a square mile, were still looking at 33k nyc densities. I do think pivoting to think about 2 story limits is smart, I was definitely thinking tenement style NYC layouts and that's just too urban. That gives me the excuse to cut down the building density (and thus the tedium) as much as we want to get the numbers we need. I'll probably add in some more open space between houses and embedded in blocks, as well as make the buildings bigger. If I cut by 40% that would bring us down to a 20k/sq mile density, is that still too high for the city proper? --Msallen (talk)

Don't get me wrong, some cities could reach very close to modern levels of urban density in a one square mile area, but only under pretty exceptional circumstances. Detarame (talk) 01:35, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Some notes on estimation between Jones and me:

I've flushed out a few blocks in each socioeconomic group, which are color coded on the map but are broadly red = poor, blue = middle, and purple = rich. Generally would assume poor are more densely packed but buildings per acre and people per building, so population density would be far more sparse in the rich areas.

My gut writing this is I'm probably too dense with the current layout, but here is a thought exercise around this:

I'm going to try to estimate what the population of this city would be based on extrapolating the people/building and building/block ratios. Let's say poor buildings hold 6 families of 8 (extended and multi-generation) so 50 people per building. There's probably 25 buildings per block and maybe 70 blocks of this (very fuzzy counting). That's 87,500 poor. I've got a table here to cover all the groups.

Social group	People per Buildings	Buildings per Block	Blocks	Total
Poor	50	25	70	87500
Middle class	25	12	40	12000
Wealthy	15	7	20	2100
Total				101600

Here are the two assumptions I have the lowest confidence in. First is that the people/building goes down so drastically, especially since the buildings are bigger. Second is that the poor people/buildings are so low, I wonder if those numbers should be higher.

I guess after writing this I decided that maybe the density isn't wrong, but you've thought about this a whole lot more. Check my work before I spent 10s of hours drawing all these tiny little buildings!

M.D. Jones <detarame [at] gmail [dot] com>
Sun, Aug 26, 9:16 PM
to me

I kind of love using this crazy voodoo math to figure all this out. I don't mind the city being a bit larger than in the olden times, but i'd think something like 30k or so would be the target. Megacities still need to be rare or nonexistant in the setting, I think, just for theme. I think you are correct in terms of family size and density by class, at least enough for a make believe census.  

The same magic that explains larger populations (better health outcomes) also leads to better family planning (hedge magic contraception, less infant mortality). If that's the case, we can start by taking all of the average family sizes down by 30-50% and see where that leaves us. Maybe, like a -40% / -50% / -60% poor/middle/rich adjustment? Just that macro adjustment gets us to 50,000 + 6,000 + 1000 = 57,000. Still too large, as you will see, but closer.

Another thing to consider: in residential areas, buildings are basically never going to be above two stories which allows us to revise the density downward somewhat.  "6 families of 8 (extended and multi-generation) so 50 people per building." Is a hell of a lot for a two floor, 20x30 structure.  3 Families of 4-6 doesn't per building doesn't seem unreasonable. That's 12-28 folks per structure, which also gets us down to a much saner number. I think the number of people per building for both poor and middle is way off, though probably rich is about right (because they have servants and shit). I've already given some solid reasons to revise the poor numbers downward. As for the center, consider a lot of middle class people are going to be the artisans an merchants who live at their place of work, so there will be a LOT of middle class residences that are like 5-7 people. 

I mean: The population density for NYC in general is 27,000 per square mile. The population density for Manhattan is 67,000 per square mile. Wydmoor is  between .75 and 1.1 square miles. There is no chance that Wydmoor has twice the population density of New York, much less Manhattan, even with magic. There are only two cities on earth right now that have 100,000 people per square mile, and the #3 most dense city on earth would be well behind wydmoor with only 75k/sq mi.

Here is an interesting article, move down to the part about cities:
https://medium.com/migration-issues/notes-on-medieval-population-geography-fd062449364f