Questions tagged [cities]
For questions about cities, their systems and evolution.
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Urban Planning on a Tidally Locked World
I'm in the early stages of a project involving a habitable tidally locked world, this one a fairly Earth-like (large ocean) around a K-class orange dwarf. And using this study for reference, where the ...
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Weapon damage assessment, or What hell have I unleashed?
In Weaponizing the return-energy channel of a one-way portal, I describe the function of a hermes portal, which are magical devices that, when activated by some command, create a connection to a ...
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City planning underwater
In my world, there is a race of fish people and merfolk. For a brief description: They are a mix of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Luca. For pictures and extra description: What conditions ...
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Would foot weapons be viable in a street fight? [closed]
There are several weapons that are used to enhance a person's punches. These include brass knuckles, caestus, boxing tape, etc. These weapons are often used in disorganized conflict like bar brawls ...
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How to build a giant city in a harsh environment?
In my world, there is a magic civilization. They are on a far away continent, but it is harsh and snowy. In the current time, they have now giant cities, the main ones being a mix of both steam and ...
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How could a nomadic society establish a stable civilization?
In my world, there is an entire nomad-based society. While they have some influence based on gypsies, they are mainly based on Mongolian Horsemen. At some point in my fictional history (ca. 12th-13th ...
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How early can the point of departure for 2022 to resemble the great cities of Annibale Siconolfi?
Some time ago, I came across the artwork of the Italian artist Annibale Sicionolfi, and I am quite drawn to them, especially on how ecology and architecture are tied together. Art gallery in this link....
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How can intelligent insects defend themselves from the cold?
The world is an icy wasteland, populated only with dark fungi burrowing through the irradiated earth. The last plant life in this desert is cultivated in great cities of ants and honeybees. A few ...
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What city/town layout would best be suited for combating isolation/atomization?
I have a small modern nation that has many ideals rooted in the idea of community. Notions of civic duty, caring for neighbors, mandatory community service, mandatory voting etc. are the moral bedrock ...
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How to protect cities from vampirism
A certain part of the continent is currently dealing with a plague of undeath. It takes many forms, with corpses rising from their graves, strange creatures roaming in the night, seemingly driven by ...
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How large a territory would be needed to self sustain (not just food) a village of 500 people? [duplicate]
Updated to add more clarification.
Given the following data, how large a territory would be needed to sustain a village of 500 people that has no outside contact?
Population: 500 humans (approx. 400 ...
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Could a merchant city survive not having an military?
Picture a city set in the renaissance times (circa 1350, for example), a city surrounded by vast rich soil at the lip of a large bay. Given the city's close proximity to larger ally kingdoms (kingdoms ...
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Where in the American West Would a New City Arise? [closed]
It's been 20 years since a global pandemic wiped out over 99% of the world population, and America was not spared. Of the 330 million people in the country (give or take a few million), only about 1.5 ...
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What obvious technologies would this early 20th century analog have? [closed]
I have a city-state, bound to protect the evil, and the souls of the inhabitants are used to power that, and no one who enters the city can leave, so the outside world supplies it with food and ...
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How to Feed a City with a Subarctic Climate?
The city of Civitas Sykofantia sits on the shore of Lake Sykofantia, a high-elevation salt lake the size of Lake Superior in the US. The lake is located on the Great Pagomenos Plateau, a huge ...
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How could I logically place cities and towns on my map?
The setting is a medieval fantasy, think general dnd or LotR. I have already created a map and it’s existed for a while now but I desperately want to know where cities and towns might logically pop up....
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What is the best strategic location for a fortification/city in this region?
Let's say you were the purple nation and wanted to most effectively control both the gap between the mountains and the sea, as well as the lands to the south between the mountains and the river.
Where ...
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Where is the best place to trick a vampire into "crossing open water"?
Vampires in my modern-day urban fantasy setting, to varying degrees, have a weakness to both sunlight and open water. The celestial energies Earth radiates out from its core take on different ...
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How would warfare change if everyone were concentrated into giant cities?
Due to environmental concerns (very cold winters) humans are concentrated into a few large cities all around the world; smaller isolated settlements die out quickly. These cities would form the basis ...
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Skyscrapers in colder climates
Basically the world I am designing gets really cold in the winter (coldest month of the year averages -75C in some inhabited areas). Because of this people dont really like to build small more ...
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Viability of Domed Communities for Defence Against Biological Warfare/Severe Weather Events
I’m currently working on a setting idea, and want to get some feedback on whether or not it is at all sound.
In brief, a corporation had been tasked by the government to establish and test potential ...
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Why would a settlement set up shop INSIDE a supermassive creature's mouth?
In a story idea I have, there is a massive, stationary beast, with teeth the size of houses, a body as large as a continent, and an unfathomably large mouth (don't ask how it sustains itself, nobody ...
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What could cause a city to be buried underground but still remain relatively intact?
I am taking inspiration from games like Dark Souls (Dark Souls 1: Lost Izalith, Dark Souls 2: Shulva - Sanctum City, Dark Souls 3: Profaned Capital) and Elden Ring (Eternal Cities - yes it is ...
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How long would it take to build an underground city?
In my fantasy world, there is a race of ghouls. They are a knit-tit community, and while they built underground cities, including reforming abandoned mines as living places, they eventually kept ...
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How to Supply a City on top of a Vertical Cliff?
In my fantasy series, there’s this city called Pharcos situated on top of nearly vertical 3,500ish foot high sandstone cliffs above the river it uses for water.
This river, called the Clazelis, along ...
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Where are villages usually placed?
Do villages always live next to or near mountains? I live in a country where villages are still around, however the only ones I know off are placed near mountains. My intention is to:
Write a village ...
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Can a civilization develop Urban Centers without Agriculture?
Say I wanted to create a civilization of people who, in accordance with a vow to never harm plants, refuse to practice agriculture or animal husbandry, instead relying hunting and fishing for all of ...
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How would mapmakers deal with moving cities?
Imagine a city on treads; if you've seen or read Mortal Engines, imagine that instead.
beep beep losers here I come
They're constantly moving, and have decent populations. Don't worry about how it ...
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How could a tobacco/nicotine prohibition be efficient?
In The Dictatrix and the Navigator (a live-action feature film I am writing, I want to direct myself, and I would like to play some characters within it) (I want to play both the Dictatrix and the ...
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On the best arch types for underground cities [closed]
I am working on a civilization that often digs into mountains, and I am wondering what form of arch would work best to hold up all the mass from the mountain above the halls. I know many arch types ...
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Is it possible for a facility, building, or an area/city in a nation to be out of the grasp of the government?
I'm trying to make a place that is a part of a nation but not under its government's rule, specifically a mental institution. It has dark secrets within its walls.
I want to write a mystery story ...
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What geometry would an artificial sun take in a domed city?
My alien world has advanced to living in domed cities powered mostly by wind. They need to emulate a diurnal sunlight cycle and get the maximum full-visible-spectrum sunlight to the largest portion of ...
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How would winged mounts affect the architecture and layout of cities? [duplicate]
So, the setting I am building for a story has gryphons, which are used as the primary mounts by the people of the main country. I am trying to figure out the implications of this, and how it would ...
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How many years until cities become either a flatland or forests? [closed]
To be clear, I'm talking about apocalyptic events that cause devastating long-term effects, such as:
An asteroid impact (lets say about 4.5km wide)
A hyper-eruption from a super volcano (lets say it ...
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How would an entire static city that floats on the water be designed? [duplicate]
I'm writing a sci-fi story which includes what I'm naming "buoyant cities". They're cities that can house about 150,000 people, with fully functioning electricity, plumbing, waste management,...
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What would need to change to make living comfortable in a world with limited cars?
My world is a futuristic soft sci fi with humans but not set on Earth (though planet is earthlike). In it, the world has been ravaged by a monster driven apocalypse multiple times. It has been 400 ...
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Could this city stand?
The Divine City is a truly massive piece of architecture in the shape of a cube
It is over 2000km on each edge, and has 4 sturdy walls, a thick base, and a light roof
It is densely populated, with ...
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Are hexagonal based tiling cities still possible?
I’m glad I could find some other people on the internet that have these kind of ideas as well. I am also in no way qualified within the field of civil engineering just interested in this specific ...
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What would a post-apocalyptic underground city be like after 1,000 years?
The city is modern/futuristic and is fairly large. It was designed to be self-contained, and has been sealed shut for a thousand years. All human residents died, so there has been no maintenance. ...
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What roles would the hierachy of a private army play in defending a town's sovereignty?
I have a town where a small private army of about 100 men (breakdown below) looks after its defense and is consulted on any major decisions concerning the town by other local groups that reside in the ...
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How realistic would a city of over ten million people in an area of less than 100 square kilometres be?
I have been playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my PS4 and Night City in the game has almost 7 million people and an area of just 75 km2. It is very dense with suspended streets and highways and giant buildings ...
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How can a massive walled city be viable?
I'm working on a small story, and in it I'm wanting to include a city surrounded by multiple layers of walls. The walls themselves are colossal, but were created/held up by sorcery. I would go into ...
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Transit for an advanced aquatic species?
I'm designing an aquatic, fish-like species for a sci-fi setting and I've had trouble deciding on methods of transit, particularly mass transit, that would be viable for them. I've considered a few ...
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What would cause city walls to return?
Essentially, what would, in a modern (21st century) society, cause city walls to return?
I don't necessarily mean stone walls; steel, titanium, and aluminum walls are perfectly acceptable.
This ...
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Why would a more technologically advanced society continue to build many buildings out of stone rather than glass and metal?
Architecture in the Western world used stone as the primary building material until the late 19th century.
Modern architecture uses much more glass and metal in construction compared to the ...
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How do I design a city to be habitable under a constant barrage of low-yield nukes?
In this setting, international treaties restrict the yield of legally usable nuclear weapons to under the equivalent of 1,000 metric tons of TNT (one kiloton). If an entity detonates nuclear warheads ...
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How big would a city of crops need to be to minimise all agricultural land use?
I made these sketches to envision a world where food is grown in buildings and people can live in forests covered lands instead of the land being used for agriculture. But how big would such a city ...
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How long does it take for town, villages and cities to be built in a medieval setting?
Basically I just want to know for timeline reasons. I'm setting up the timeline for a young kingdom, and I want to know what would be a realistic time period between the moment the settlers find a ...
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Equipment, logistics and resupply of a team detecting hidden explosives in a warzone area?
I have a team (size can vary depending the answer to this question) that makes ends meet by sneaking through a warzone area and trying to detect a large amount of explosives hidden in for example a ...
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What population size is reasonable for a moving, steam powered, predatory city?
For a DnD campaign, I'm designing a setting with steampunkish tech level, as well as magic used to explain tech accomplishments not possible with real world physics. Almost all settlements in this ...
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