OpenGeofiction
Yoyomi - slightly new mapping approach (for me....)
Posted by Leowezy on 5 April 2016 in English. Last updated on 6 April 2016.Hey fellow mappers; in the last days I’ve started on yet another city in Kojo; the city of Yoyomi and its immediate surroundings.
The city’s development is slightly inspired by the historic development of my home town, Cologne. There are a few parallels visible I think, but it is on no way supposed to be a clone of any kind. I’ve placed some mock-place-names in German, which I associate with certain types of neighbourhoods from here, but they will definitely change since they are only small notes for me; so don’t worry about them for now please ;)
With this mapping approach I, as I do with Ro, thought about the vague history of the city and the order in which its neighbourhoods grew. But more importantly I started mapping upwards down, that means I only mapped general landuse for now and the absolute core infrastructure; neighbourhood development will only take place when I finished the overall layout. That might seem obvious, but is actually quite a step forward for me since I sometimes even used to start working on little neighbourhoods before having thought about how big the city is even supposed to be xD
Some core info since I haven’t set up a wiki page yet; Yoyomi has 920,000 inhabitants on I think about 320km² so pop density lies around 2800/km². However there’s still some room in the outskirts of the city that are used for farming. The next neighbouring city to the north east has 75,000 inhabitants.
The transportation network will comprise (besides buses) of 3 S-Bahn lines (Ésubān in Kojolese, the system and name is supposed to be imported from Kalm) and a special light rail system; while technically still light rail and not fully grade separated, it will run on own tracks for the most part without direct contact to street traffic, and in the inner city it will be run underground for very large parts as well. About the frequency of the S-Bahn network; the satellite city in the north-west is supposed to be built quite densely, so I think the frequency is justified).
I hope I could get some feedback, especially on the rail layout (how are my inter city, regional, S-Bahn and freight trains adequately separated and are the stations well spaced?).
And of course, any additional thoughts and recommendations are welcome as usual ;)
EDIT:
Discussion
Comment from kingfries on 6 April 2016 at 11:24
Looks good so far. The Frequency of the trains seems alright too, altough I would put the KC Train stop at the northern side of the city center one stop to the right. You want the KC trains to be like Regional Express trains in real life right? and they dont stop that often. As youre from cologne you know the RE 1 trains that go to düsseldorf, duisburg etc right?. Once the train left cologne it ggoes all the way to leverkusen before it stops so the KC stop is too close to the main station. I really like the layout of the city btw looks good with the dense urban core, then the normal suburban houses and at the edge some high-rises. Keep us informed of any further progress. -kingfries
Comment from Leowezy on 6 April 2016 at 14:02
Thanks kingfries :) Yes the KC trains are supposed to be somewhat similar to regional trains, but I’d put them rather in between the Regional Express and regular regional trains. To stay with the example, as far as I’m aware the RE1 has at least 4 stops in Cologne (Ehrenfeld, Hbf, Deutz, Mühlheim); but I’m still considering moving the regional halt one to the east as you proposed, the only downside would be that it will have access to only 2 Stadtbahn lines (I need to build up the Kojolese vocab xD) instead of 3, and I feel like people using the regional trains are much more likely to head to the inner city instead of wanting to get off in an almost already suburban area; but I’ll see how the city develops ^-^
Having said that, I will update the article now with a Stadtbahn concept, I’l love if you have a look at it ;D
Comment from tparigo on 6 April 2016 at 15:01
It looks very good so far as well as the rest of Kojo ! I like the idea of drawing the general landuse first so we already have an idea of the whole city.
I’d have just two comments : - Is there a river or some natural feature that would explain the development of a city at this location ? - The core and the first/second “boulevard” rings seem maybe a bit too circular.
Thomas
Comment from Leowezy on 6 April 2016 at 18:29
The missing river is indeed a concern to me, especially since I want the city to look back on a prosperous time in the middle ages; I came up with the idea that the whole (inner) city sits on a very large elevated plateau, or very gentle but large hill. That way they would’ve built the fortification at this strategic location because of 360° round-sight, local king settled down, capital of a large principality yadayadayada…
The roundness of the boulevards kinda connect to that as well: how would a city in the medieval ages expand their city wall? To be honest, if the city was and is located on a very wide rising, and the city would majorly expand its fortification, i think a round layout is the most efficient. But now I think will just move the old castle/fortress slightly to the side, so that it creates a bump in the inner ring and have the medieval city develop only on one side of it. That should make the inner ring road much less circle-like. The outer boulevard and green belt I’s like to stay round however, since I imagine this part to be at least partially planned by city developers during industrialisation.
Comment from Leowezy on 6 April 2016 at 20:20
I’ve reworked the medieval part completely, it should show up on the map soon.