Building The City

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It begins!

First things first - where is our city, roughly?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, as far as that kind of thing goes I like the idea of mixing docks with other heavy industry. But what should the language of this city be?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually, I nominate Pittsburgh circa 1950.  Certainly the on of the greatest experiments, and to date failures, of urban renewal... assuming you guys are still going that route, I have been out of the loop for a very long time.

You guys should probably just design your own city, though.  I think that idea had merit.

Well the plan (this time round ) is to design a rough outline of a city, and then incorporate a degree of real detail into specific areas - if this is to be a city historically dependent on heavy industry, then parts of Pittsburgh would work fine.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So Le Havre for the basic outline of the city, mixed heavy industrial base (the docks, yes, but also other industries often found near the coast - steelworks, say. Maybe chemical factories. And I think we can work in some incorporated mining villages on the fringes of the city (btw, presuming industrial surrounds for the city makes it easy to concentrate the bourgeois parts of the city - which seems to be one of the attracts of Le Havre). This gives us a pretty diverse city in some respects. I think we could also give it an older centre, perhaps with a cathedral. It should also have a university - late 19th century probably). Anyway. I'll post a couple of test maps this afternoon.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Outline of the City (presuming it has city status) at the beginning of the game.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Am about to try a fairly basic landuse map - commercial, residential, industrial, parks-woods-etc. Though it's worth pointing out that, if we assume this is an English speaking city (as seems to have been agreed), then people will be living in some of the industrial areas (which I don't think is the case with Le Havre) and to a lesser extent in the commericial core.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As for the letters...

C: Cathedral
T: Town Hall
U: University
FS: Football Stadium
SW: Steelworks
PS: Power Station
M: Mine

White represents open ground and etc.

Edit: shipbuilding goes on in the far south of the main industrial-port area.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh yes, we need a name for the city.

After that the fun stuff starts - dividing the city into bits and then... but we need a name first.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Modesty forbids

Think it should have "by" on the end. Because Vikings are cool and we nicked the outline for this city from somewhere in Normandy

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Stovesby? That has a nice sound to it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Please note that the areas shown are not wards. Wards will be subject to change and will have some relationship to population. They are, rather, recognised districts of the city, areas with a lot in common even if not united for electoral purposes. The colours are those of an extremely crude class pattern - the assumption is that the game will start in about 1955 or so.

And they are also a good way of getting this to work out well.

What you do now is simple - declare an interest in a couple of districts. And then once we've sorted all that out, write stuff up (quite detailed if thou like) about them. Some notes (in part just to save you the bother of trying to stick one map on top of the other) to help out:

I contains the commercial core of the city, as well as the Cathedral, the Town Hall and various cultural amenities. It's also the only area I'll make a class note on - while it's a middle class area at the start of the game, it won't remain one unless some very strange things happen with urban planning. So don't go overboard wi' that.

Talking of cultural amenities, IX includes the main football ground.

III contains the University and, obviously, most of city's students. The main railway station is in IV.
 
XIII looks to be commuter villages overrun by suburban developments. VII is probably filthy rich.

I think you can all work out for yourselves where the docks are, even without checking the other map , but steelworks be found in IX,X and XXII. XV includes a coal power station (marked on the map) and chemical works (not marked), amongst other things (maybe refinaries and stuff. You get the picture). Outside the main industrial zones (ie; around the port and the old mining towns), there is an industrial estate in XX, which you might have missed.

XX and XXI are, quite obviously, large interwar council estates. XXII is a collection of mining towns and industrial areas recently added to the city, while XVII is a mining village overrun with overspill estates.

And finally, hardly anyone lives in XIX right now. This is intentional. It's a pretty obvious target for some of those delightful new tower blocks, but we aren't there yet.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is II like?

The idea is for it to be a working class area squeezed between the higher ground and the city centre. Ie; a working class area because of flooding and being on the wrong side of the old town walls, rather than because of docks and industry. Either largely early 19th century slumland or by-law housing (by-law housing = the straight rows of terraced cottages stereotypically associated as being "typical" traditional English/Welsh working class housing and largely built after local authorities started to demand a few minimum standards for housing (late 19th century). Proper slum housing looked very different), though likely a mixture of the two. Probably a lot of the orginal population lives in XX by 1955.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What's the second-richest region after VII? I obviously want a right-wing wealthyland area.

Up to you

But I'd have guessed VI from where it is. Maybe VIII. The other outer-blues are probably more in the way of standard middle class interwar suburbia. In the early 20th century the richest would have been III, obviously, but urban decay in such places had already set in by the '50's.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'd love to do this, I'm just afraid I don't know that much about culture/politics/society in the time period in question.

Oh, don't worry about that. I know more about it than is exactly healthy, and the same goes for a couple of other people. And all will happily share information, I'm sure.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'd like XIII on the condition that it's also wealthy. If not, then I.

If you want it to be wealthy, it certainly can be. You can also incorporate features from anywhere you like, so long as they fit in with what's already been established.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So how many wards will there be in the city - and roughly how many wards per district?

Don't know yet

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just in case this all seems a little intimidating I'll do IV to give an example of how 'tis done, etc.

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IV - St Jude's

East of the old city walls and west of the inner port, St Jude's is a densely populated working class district and a minor industrial area. It was largely built before the onset of by-law housing and is home to Stoveby's worst slums, some of which were cleared by bombing in the War. Housing in St Jude's, beyond being largely unsuitable for human habitation, is noted for its unusual architecture and (according to public health officials) dangerous high stairs originally built for flood protection:



Employment is dominated by various small workshops in the district, by the port and railways, and by low order public sector and service jobs in the city centre. The population of the district has been falling since the council house construction boom that followed the Wheatley Act, but the area remains overcrowded, a situation not improved by the destruction of parts of the district during the war. St Jude's also includes the city's main railway station.
St Jude's has been a Socialist stronghold since the early 1920's and the area is regarded as dangerous one by activists for other parties - reports of canvassers being thrown down the district's characteristic long stairs, while never confirmed, have entered the political folklore of Stovesby.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'll call VI.  My idea for VI is that it sits at a crossroads for the city as a kind of "second business district" where a number of wealthy merchants and such live in a combination of modest mansions and townhouses, next to their businesses, or at least transportation to their businesses, if they happen to be downtown or in the manufacturing districts.  Does that mesh with your conception?

Yeah, having it as an early (ie; late 19th century) "villa suburb" makes a great deal of sense. Good idea.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Still fighting over whether to take XIII and I... both are appealing!

You can do both if you want

Btw, if you want some examples of British civic architecture (which you'll need if you're doing I) then I can find a lot very quickly. There's a lot of variety as cities sort of competed against each other for the fanciest town hall in the second half of the 19th century. Actually, I'll send a few now. Though the name of I is probably very dull - maybe just City or something like that - feel free to choose a French name for XIII; there was a fashion for French stuff with early suburban developers. And the translations were often very bad.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Glasgow City Chamber ftw on that one I was there at the weekend; i'll need to upload pictures.

True (and I forgot about that one in the PM I sent him - must have been distracted by the self-loving horror that is Cardiff City Hall ).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, if I can take both, I'll happily do so!

Indeed you can, indeed you can.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bump!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For VIII, I'm thinking it's probably sort of two in one. The half to three-quarters closest the city is upper-middle class, professionals who work in the city, are quite well off but can't afford to live in VII, and therefore live slightly further out, commuting daily. The outer half/quarter is more recent development, still middle to upper-middle class, but been built more recently and more resembles suburbia. The closer part is made up of larger older houses and is considered "leafy" (I assume you use the same adjective in the UK?).

Am I on the right track?

Yes, I think you certainly are.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not sure if posh flats overlooking the old harbour is exactly "period", but the rest is good. And in parts excellent.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not sure if posh flats overlooking the old harbour is exactly "period", but the rest is good. And in parts excellent.

Well, newer posh flats overlooking a recently transformed harbour (from old, small and early industrial harbour to a yacht/wealthy people's boats harbour with touristy areas), but I understand that may not be post-War fitting, and is possibly more 80s-90s.

Thanks, btw.

Yeah, it's something that'll probably happen at some point if the game gets that far. I'll be doing a few other districts when I get back from my work in a few hours, btw. If we can crack on now, we might be close to starting next week or so.