On Worldbuilding: WHY are cities where they are?

let's say graeme the wizard who likes cats is setting out on his adventure and you want him to travel through an immersive world full of colorful but realistic towns and cities where should you put those on your map settlements towns and cities have sprung up for different reasons across history as different economic political religious and social forces act on the world and demand different things we're going to go through those reasons from five different ages to see which things might decide both where new settlements grow and which cities are thriving in your world taking graeme the wizard who likes cats on a journey through time and space the ancient era the pre-industrial era the industrial era the post-industrial era and the futuristera oh and cheers to the writing and world building software campfire blaze for sponsoring this video you know the drill links down below review at the end let's go part one the ancient era our first cities popped up for a number of reasons but chief among them was agriculture in georgia martin's a song of ice and fire humans once again proved their creativity when they named the oldest town in all of westeros uh old town oldtown is built around a broad freshwater river that creates some of the most fertile lands on the continent capable of easily supporting a large crop harvest the reach is regularly referred to as the bread basket of the seven kingdoms see agricultural technology and skills mean that a population can produce more food than they otherwise would hunting and gathering but it requires that they remain in the same place leading to some kind of city this partly explains why our first cities emerge in places along the fertile crescent and in southern china with a fertile land and fresh water would most encourage agriculture fresh water is necessarily an important part of this a resource to have access to at all times so these cities were often based around rivers as well and sure enough old town is the question for you as a map builder is one where is good fertile land and two where is fresh water these often coincide and where they do well you might get these early settlements so if graham the wizard who likes cats is wandering along this totally randomly generated map where do you think he might settle down a second important element to engender cities is the systemic organization of work which sounds scary but i trust you it's really not that bad this is where society changes from everyone gathering food and water to a society with a labouring class and a managerial class to direct that labor this requires a larger population and thus a lot more workable land and water so while fertile land and water is important cities need space this is partly why irrigation projects along rivers and egypt and mesopotamia were crucial to the development of the largest cities in those regions anyone can farm and where there's a little bit of land and a little bit of water people might build a house but it takes a massive group of people to properly develop massive irrigation projects using the nile creating a center for people and thus a city as well a hub of population osgiliath was actually the original capital of gondor in tolkien's middle earth for over a thousand years it was actually bigger than minnes ever got for obvious reasons it's built upon a freshwater river which ministereth doesn't have and has a lot more space to expand into and farm this was the natural place for gondor's largest city to grow until plague and threats from mordor led to a mass exodus with the far more defensible menace tirith becoming the capital what we see in this world building here is the logical reason a city might grow and the logical reasons it would be replaced by somewhere you would think is less likely to be the capital so where would graham the wizard who likes cats going out on his adventure come across a major city well maybe next to this freshwater river but there's probably not enough flat land for a city to work with so maybe over here next to this braided river there's lots of flat fertile land to work with here too you aren't just looking for places that agriculture could spring up in your world but places large enough that a lot of people would be needed to fully harness the food and resources of that region leading to a managerial class forming important religious sites also often drew people together too especially since tradition ceremony and religion were a major reason for people to congregate when the economic benefit was not as clear part of the reason that kyoto was an earlier capital in japan was that it supposedly sprung up around the shinigamo shrine which people would often make pilgrimages to as a form of imperial patronage its location was partly chosen for religious reasons the northern mountain border could protect the city from evil spirits and note that it eventually got replaced by tokyo which is on the largest agricultural area in japan eventually on some level agriculture overtook religion the sun warrior ancient city from avatar was built around a rock formation that gained religious importance because it perfectly framed the sunset and maybe graham the wizard who likes cancer is a member of the church of crossing bridges at narrow points yeah that one so he wants to go visit the town that is set up here which sites have symbolic or historic ritualistic importance to the populations in your world integrating your city building with your world religions and it can even help you figure out the layout of your cities themselves it was very common for government and religion to be one and the same or at least in very close connection in the ancient world so political centralization often delined with these religious sites you can see this with a lot of ancient empires but maybe your aliens operate entirely differently or your humans or fantasy races operate on an entirely different level in austin scott card speaker for the dead uh spoilers by the way it's a great book but the picking in yours naturally start out in cities because of how their life cycle works when they sort of uh die they become trees which help fertilize and produce their young and provide guidance and materials for their society they can't migrate very easily the main reason for where their cities grow is their biology they need to stay near their ancestor trees though the story does explore how agriculture actually helps one society grow 10 times larger than the rest into the greatest city on the planet even if they started differently from humans if your fictional species does not use agriculture like we did then figure out which primal concerns they would have that would make them come together in the first place where their sustenance comes from usually their biology or their fears if it's a particularly dark world who knows their needs and work from that graham the wizard likes cats however is unfortunately a very human person and this is a really cool and simple way to world build because just changing what one of those original or primal desires for people to come together might be would massively change how your civilizations play out even if this isn't deciding where your biggest and most thriving cities are now in your world it's still important to think about when constructing a sci-fi cyberpunk fantasy steampunk or whatever have you world because it helps inform where the greatest cities and towns or maybe which planets were the greatest at points in the past allowing you to maybe put down creepy ruins in their place or to have large mostly abandoned cities or clearly places that are in decline part 2 pre-industrial cities so i want to move on to the very narrow field of discussion which is otherwise known as pretty much all of human history cities and towns were still being propped up for religious organizational and agricultural purposes that much remains true but new reasons came along as well the most important one that you already know is trade aside from the mildly important need to not die of thirst cities sprung alongside rivers oceans and even large lakes because shipping was the fastest and often safest way to receive and trade goods from around the world cities became a way to increase your standard of living it's why cabrinifen sanderson's the stormlight archives is on the coast allowing shipments to pass through with a little question to keep it wealthy but maybe graham the wizard of cat's world skipped the oceanic trade entirely maybe magic means that he has flying ships or portals from an early time that means that no cities need to be positioned next to the water you can do stuff like this and if you do have this sort of alternative transportation then how does it affect the placement of your cities or maybe there are no oceans so cities grow in places with excellent climates what would be their next priority in your world defense proximity to resources even perhaps leisure and once you have a couple of cities established you'll find that trade begins to go between them as they trade goods from their different regions and this creates trade routes which are kind of like the veins of civilization the silk road was a major trade network and as it was used more and more towns like kashgar and merv grew along it to thrive as people capitalized on others reliably moving through the same spot over and over they won't pop up too close to one another normally but with what we've discussed in mind consider where smaller towns might pop up along those trade routes between the major cities you'll remember the crossroads inn from westeros and the song of ice and fire it was built at the same time as the king road was developed between the north and the south facilitating safe travel and trade and it's also on the east west road as well it's actually surprising that this hasn't turned into a major cities in the centuries past by the time the series begins given the attention that martin clearly paid to his world building this is exactly the sort of place that i would imagine a city to grow a major junction full of trade like this and if we return to the fantabulous adventure of graham the wizard who likes cats we might see that townships pop up all along these lines these trade routes between major cities again if traders going by air or underground or through multiple dimensions then town would pop up along routes conducive to that say on mountain ridges or following parts of soft earth or in particular dimensions that can sustain life one thing to consider when developing this trade network that your transform around is fall lines they're kind of like a good episode of dragon ball z totally imaginary well they're where two different types of land meet at relatively different elevations like foothills and coastal plains a substantial drop in elevation creates waterfalls and rapids for rivers along a relatively consistent line towns often spring up along the fall line to one take advantage of the waterfall energy to power turbines and two to be the transition point for trade moving upstream and onto land as boats surprisingly cannot go up waterfalls unless they really believe in it with the power of friendship or maybe ancient earthquakes or the battlefields of the gods have created sharp tectonic shifts that really change where the elevation drops happen but also four line towns are partly dependent on people wanting to use that falling water to power turbines what if people in your world don't do that they have an alternative power source then maybe they wouldn't prop up along these four lines as much the next point isn't going to be so much about where cities go but the type of cities that appear city-states these are cities which are shockingly a solid liquid or i'm kidding i'm kidding they're states as well the city of cabranth on rasha in the stormlight archives best embodies where they come from the environmental factors that they need it is perfectly situated for trade on the coast with a number of large cities always having their ships pass it making it great for trade it's also incredibly defensible it's situated inside a wedge of a canyon keeping it safe from other powers but also from the massive storms that ravage the continent that cities need to find a way of dealing with city-states need to be geographically isolated enough that the empires of their world do not swallow them up which is why so many fell during our colonial age as these empires rapidly expanded dozens of city-states used to thrive along the mediterranean coasts before the rise of the european empires cabranth is situated in the frostland a wild area that no one truly controls and it lives and dies on trade its main connection with the outside world is via ship it would have been a truly draining military task to take cabranth in the first place similar to how venice kept its independence simply because of how defensible it was for so long so looking at your fictional map where is one defensible two excellently positioned for trade networking and three away from major powers which would otherwise go economically thriving city state and it's common for these cities to crop up in clusters the greek city-states or the hanseatic league get two examples they often get together when confronted by greater powers to go hey we are working together so that we can work not together at all i can imagine a city state popping up here a defensible background of hills open to sea trade and no major powers lurking nearby and a big part of this growing trade idea is specialization which happens more and more as cities get bigger and more sustainable this is where a class of people begin to specialize with more niche skills baking boutique clothing fighting and blacksmithing there's enough surplus food to support them it seems this creates a demand for new resources not just food and water anymore but clothing materials gemstones metal leather this demands in turn leads to towns propping up where they can provide these materials the town of kremnik in slovakia popped up in the 9th century to mine the kremnik and mountains for gold an incredibly valuable resource as the idea of currency grew and jewelry went into demand as the specializing class grew and also because like filthy magpies we also like things that are shiny in the world of graeme the wizard who likes cats there comes a demand for say amber a magical material with levitation powers that can only be found in rainforests so the town of uh let's call it forest and trent town popped up to provide that amber material here the question for you is which new materials came into demand in this era leading to new types of towns being positioned near those resources what types of resources and things do people want as the specializing class grew another new ish reason is political centralization i touched on this before with cities growing around important religious sites but political centralization becomes an even more important force in this new era coming out of the ancient era it's not just settlements and cities that are forming but states and even empires one of the mongol empire capitals of karakuram was religiously important yeah but it matters more that it was at the heart of the orkon valley in the center of mongolian territory and this was in a time where physical distance is important for efficient governance both in communication and in military movement political centralization matters this is why the capital of the late roman empire moved from roamed byzantium following the fall of the western roman empire and getting a way cooler name while it's at it byzantium seriously the coolest name in history but maybe physical distance isn't an issue in your world because of magic or maybe your species is telepathic in which case maybe political centralization matters a lot less for example the hist a kind of eldritch tree that the argonians and tamriel rely on and protect well they can talk telepathically to them they have kind of a network that they all share so there isn't the same need for political centralization which is why black marsh is the only province on the continent without a clear capital city they also don't use agriculture like we do so the same forces really aren't acting on this species if there are ways around communication and military movement in your world then maybe this isn't a force you need to consider so much and beyond this there are any number of reasons for settlements to spring up and it would be awesome if your world has some unique ones maybe long and terrible season changes force migration every thousand years or they're based around the bodies of fallen gods who make up the earth and your species needs to make pilgrimages to keep their souls alive to certain parts of those bodies so towns spring up along those pilgrimage parts be creative be free you can make whatever you want your world to be part three the industrial era in our world this was when where cities went and which cities thrived radically changed very quickly stories like the crimson campaign and even mistborn are set during something of an industrial revolution so keeping these new forces in mind is important the first is of course boom towns thousands of mining towns suddenly sprung up sometimes overnight as new coal or gold or fuel reserves were discovered necessary to propel this revolution forward likewise many of these have been long since abandoned in our day and age author and infrastructure and population decline as we moved out of the industrial age if your world has as well then maybe there are ruins of industrial towns left over your map figure out one which resources would propel your civilization through an industrial era of sorts and two where would those resources be found maybe some resources have already run out leading to some ghost towns related to this is the idea of railway towns settlements that sprung up around important junctions due to the influx of people like how old towns grew around trade routes this is with people moving around the country into cities a lot more than they did before maybe your world has airships or space stations instead spotting the galaxy but the point remains that when a new technology like this railways or skyships or space stations as people jump between planets across the galaxy cities will grow around those key points of traffic to capitalize on that concentration of people but the more important force in an industrial era is population shift massive numbers of people not only moving from rural areas to cities but where they move changes it's not just about trade or religion but which city's rise in prominence is heavily connected to their industrial capacity for us this was connected to using turbines so cities with rivers became industrial centers but for your world it might be different in adrian tchaikovsky's children of time the spider civilization goes through something of an industrial revolution when they begin to use not even kidding ant colonies as computers trust me it makes sense in the book i swear just you're gonna have to trust me on this one so cities were built over top of them especially since spiders can exist in cities vertically as much as they can horizontally they built them over ant colonies as opposed to something like fuel deposits the city of manchester grew from a small town of 27 000 to nearly 100 000 in just 25 years during our industrial era elevating its status as a major city in the united kingdom naturally the powerful also gravitate towards these new population centers though they might resist it at first in this kind of fantasy world why are these industrial cities emerging and how does that determine where they are and thus where the bigger cities are graham the wizard who likes cats having traveled quite a lot now well he comes from a world where there are these great metal plates in the ground that emanate a kind of energy that you cannot mine you can't use the middle anywhere else but building cities atop of these middle plates allows you to use the energy by plunging these great rods into the earth this town here discovers that it has a deposit beneath it so over a few decades it grows into one of the great powerhouses of the region maybe the capital city changes as well to reflect this as the powerful move towards this city instead wanting to capitalize on that massive growth and wealth part 4 the post-industrial era i have to admit i have had a little trouble finding well-built stories set in this era that in any way explicitly addressed how cities are placed or grow so i'm sorry on that front i suspect it's because we don't really think that anything in the now is particularly cool when it comes to fantasy but following any kind of industrial revolution new reasons for cities to thrive and change arise the first is the highest standards of living where workers once needed to live in the cities where they worked living standards now allow people to live in towns a little apart from the cities the suburbs are often towns that didn't grow up independently but grew as a section of the city's workers became able to commute to work this city in the world of graham the wizardu-lung cat suddenly has a few towns just a wee bit outside of it secondly the cities that thrive in population and wealth are not necessarily industrial cities anymore but it's more to do with well we have a finance industry a stock exchange reputable financial institutions a strong regulatory and legal scheme to protect it and technologically advanced systems and infrastructure this is an evolution in what trade means now so where are these features most likely to pop up in your world maybe the city which has long used a truth serum is the one most likely to have a reputable financial institution and a legal system to protect it throughout the 20th century we also saw a massive concentration in government power and bureaucracy if we view civilization as a story of governments becoming more efficient bigger and more powerful which they generally have i mean the absolute monarchs of colonial europe would look at vladimir putin with absolute envy but though they have happened historically on some scale planned cities on the scale of the soviet union only became possible in this post-industrial world which has huge amounts of wealth and labor and organization available to it these can be started for ideological reasons like that everyone should have a home or economic ones like building a big nuclear power plant or social organization reasons which is a nice way of saying segregation and discrimination against a particular group of people by saying hey you guys have to move here into the middle of the wilderness in this city we built for you and never come back part five the future era [Music] this is really the who knows what could happen if we're building because anything is possible theoretically the internet is a big reason for growing remote self-employment hey look at me but there's nothing to say that it won't expand into something like the big market from valerian in the city of a thousand planets which is a virtual city in the middle of nowhere you can log into it doesn't need any of the geographical things we would usually associate with a city except for an open space and i stand by this i know the story and characters are absolutely terrible like it's it's genuinely an awful film and they seem way too much like siblings to be in love it's it's really really uncomfortable but i do want to see a sequel to that film because the word building ideas are actually kind of genuinely cool fight me in the comments i expect essays in frank herbert's dune the city of arakeen is built around harvesting the spice which is an essential resource for space trade space travel and the power of all of the great houses the city would not exist without it different resources will always come in and out of demand as society changes as new economic political religious social pressures demand different things and that might be a good way to think about your history and about its future which resources are in demand at which point but arakin is also a really good reminder that though this is set in the far far future with great technology we could never even fathom sometimes we never forget those base needs hurricane is built atop an incredibly rare aquifer deep underground one of the few on its desert planet it had to go where it did because otherwise it would not survive sneaky part 6. i know i didn't mention it but evolution i want to emphasize that cities evolve they rise and fall as these different ages demand different things and like the world of graham the wizard who likes cats while new cities can and will grow across time it's often more about which of the older cities adapt there might be somewhere slightly more geographically perfect for a particular thing when the time comes but an already thriving city full of money and people and homes is more likely to succeed at addressing that need and demand because it has so much momentum already so don't just put down new cities and new places when a new demand arises but ask if that role can be filled by somewhere nearby that already has momentum a big part of this is of course map-making it's creating cultures environments religions political systems that all inform where cities go and why how they all work together which you can do with campfire blaze i've talked about campfire pro quite a bit before but this is a slightly different product this is going to be more of a review talking through the differences to help decide which one might be for you but there is a free version so go try it because the best way for you to find out if this is for you is to see if it works for that book or world you are creating for yourself it does many of the same things as campfire pro some even better notably its timeline feature is a little smoother with these sliding event boxes and it allows you to see more information at once which was a problem before and i really appreciate it it is also a browser-based system which i prefer because it's so much easier to access from anywhere and it's got one thing that campfire pro does not have at all a manuscript feature so you can write your story as you will build it in blaze itself which is good i think this is what people like you want though i would like to see some more formatting features in the program for people who are more writers than world builders this is what will set it apart as probably the preferred option a big thing that does make it different though is that it's a subscription-based service which yeah i was really nervous about because i am very wary of the subscription model that has seemingly taken over what feels like everything but campfire blaze is doing something different as i said there is a free version which is great but even if you pay you only pay for the features you would use down to just 50 cents if you want for me for example i would only be paying four dollars per month because i would only really use the character profiles the timeline the relationships and the locations for my current book but alternatively you may only be interested in word building your magic systems species and cultures so you would only pay for those you don't need to pay for the stuff you wouldn't use which again is good and that's good because i think a lot of people are put off by buying a massive program but not really using a lot of it i can see why people would prefer this payment model for a lot of the same features and again the cultures religions and species pages are great for encouraging you to think about your world building including maybe how they inform where your cities go on your map and the way it's laid out is also really good for tabletop role playing it allows you to add stats which is exactly the sort of thing that dm's are looking for because a lot of these programs don't allow for that sort of thing however if you are a world builder then campfire pro is better than blaze the languages section in campfire pro is more comprehensive it has pages for grammar and pragmatics which are really important for those people who are really into conlangs and i personally prefer the interface for some other things like the magic systems page or the species page which to me kind of help better facilitate that world building that you're trying to get people to do with a program like this but as to the topic of this video i have actually found the map building page in campfire blaze to be better than campfire pro and that is mostly because i can pin locations on my map and i can use pins with tons of different icons i mean there's like hundreds of them i didn't even get to see all of them but that is what i would want if i'm doing a dnd game or i'm marking out my world there's a little refining to be done here and there like it'd be good to be able to just fill in a box for a character's profile and some of their attributes rather than using a drop down menu but there's a lot of really good useful stuff that helps me think too bottom line if you are a word builder or a tabletop dungeon master then campfire pro is the better option and if you're more a writer or concerned with price then blaze will be more what you want to go for because of the manuscript and pricing but and i cannot emphasize this enough if you are interested then most importantly go at least check out the free version at this link down below and figure out if it is for you that is the best way to do it absolutely in the meantime stay nerdy and i'll see you in the future you

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 375,187

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, mapmaking, worldbuilding, map, maps, fantasy, world, sci fi, science fiction, cities, history, villages, towns, google, minas tirith, middle earth, tolkien, james sa corey, grr martin, martin, book, author, authortube, booktube

Id: 8sn_6xKotUU

Length: 31min 10sec (1870 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020