OpenGeofiction
Hey there, I’d like to use this post to present to you my very first “finished”* area in Kojo :D
(*“Finished”, as in, there are still tons of options for more details to be added, the wiki article to be completed etc. But overall the city is mapped to the maximum level of detail that I would consider feasible for my mapping style to be applied to the very last corner of the map)
The wiki article about Rō is not very elaborate yet, and right now I lack inspiration to write the history part for example. I will probably get to it in the future. However some other important aspects are written on the wiki page; I always have a hard time estimating how many users actually read the wiki articles about countries that are not their own, for my part I do so very frequently. Do you find it interesting to read through other people’s wiki pages, or do you do so rather rarely?
The tram and street network is finished, and I would appreciate some feedback on that as well. Another thing that I would appreciate some feedback on is the zoning, and just the mapping style in general. I hope you like Rō and enjoy browsing through the map a bit. Any thoughts and comments are welcome :)
Cheers, Leo
Discussion
Comment from PortCal on 24 May 2016 at 15:36
That’s some impressive work you’ve done in Rō! In general, it looks very good. The tram and train networks looks great and the road network looks very realistic. The city center is already very detailed and I like all the green around the city borders.
I read wiki pages very often as I find it very interesting to read about cultures, cities, habits, languages etc, and especially the wiki pages of other countries. It really gives an extra dimension to the map, so you get a better picture overall.
Although there is some improvement for details like shops, important places and buildings outside the city center, street names, and the wiki, I would really want to visit Rō.
-PortCal
Comment from Sarepava on 24 May 2016 at 16:34
First of all well done on completing the street grid. A whole city takes time if it is to be realistic. Adding buildings will help the city make even more sense.
The political boundaries might be better aligned with the actual limits of the built-up areas.
I think some more green land - gardens, parks, squares, sports grounds - would be appropriate as you describe it as mostly not high-density and having a gardening culture. Any stadiums in the city?
Transport: Consider adding some terminating platforms at the central station - there are likely to be special tourist services from Pyingshum at busy times which will require extra stabling space to avoid disrupting the main through routes. I like the railway loop in Ōnō-Pang depot but don’t quite understand its function.
At least another tram depot is needed in the north, probably a big central facility for major services and rebuilding. You have long tram lines and so a lot of vehicles are needed for services.
The usual touting for ‘business’; Karolia builds lots of railway vehicles, we can make them standard gauge…
Comment from Luciano on 24 May 2016 at 21:30
I really like the concept of the city - the hill in the center and the “town green.” I think your street patterns are realistic and interesting, too. I think you did an excellent job with rails and trams.
I agree with Sarepava that the city needs more green space - small parks abound in most cities, little half-block areas scattered in every neighborhood. Also, with a city with a clear “pre-modern” historical aspect, there would be many small squares and plazas, former market areas. Think about schools, too - there are a huge number of schools in cities, and each has several buildings, a recreation ground of some kind, a playground.
Also, I think you need more religious buildings (or social equivalent). I think after commercial establishments, religious buildings are one of the most common types. If you’re wanting to create a more secular society, then those religious buildings might mostly be converted structures (old churches as pubs or cultural centers, in Europe, for example) or artefacts of an earlier era, but they’re still there.
You might also consider that all the various agricultural and rural land surrounding would have their own tracks and minor streets - My rule is there should be a rural street or track permitting access to each separate land-use “lot.” My experience is that in “pre Agribusiness era” agricultural land, road and street density is quite high, because lot-size is small… although generally it’s just a matter or single-lane tracks and service roads. In Korea, for example, there is typically a one-lane track (often paved!) between each individual rice-paddy.
My biggest reaction, however, is the lack of naming. Most minor streets are unnamed. Many small businesses appear to be unnamed. For me, this makes the map profoundly “incomplete” and even unrealistic - after all, in real maps, basically everything is named, unless someone has made a mistake. Indeed, I have been thinking about trying to develop measures of “name density” which could be calculated for both OSM map extracts and OGF map extracts, which could serve as a measure of “completeness” and as a way to compare our map work to the real-world map work we are trying to emulate.
In my own work, I generally don’t allow myself to build something (street, building, river, etc.) unless I have a name for it. It might be true that this can slow things down, and it might explain why I almost never “finish” anything, but I think it makes for a more realistic map. I think one of the reasons we all admire Khaiwoon so much is because it is one of the few places in our world where name density seems to approach that of the real world, and without our completely realizing it, this contributes to its deep verisimilitude.
Rule of thumb: minimum one locality name per 100 inhabitants (this type of number is possibly borne out by anthropological research). So for a city of 190,000 inhabitants, there should be at least 1900 named localities. Named localities can include street names, of course, but also parks, plazas, formal neighborhood divisions, transit stations, religious buildings, shopping centers, schools, housing developments, apartment blocks, etc.
Having said all that, NAMING is HARD - especially if you’re trying to use a well-developed conlang. And perhaps it’s true, not everyone cares about names. So take my comments with some salt. They’re just my own thoughts.
Anyway, it’s a great-looking city, and much more complete than anything I’ve done, at such a scale. Kudos!
Comment from Thunderbird on 25 May 2016 at 01:05
The city looks great! It’s mapped to a satisfying level of detail. I will echo Luciano’s comment as far as naming minor streets, I also have the problem of not being able to build a street without naming it.
The fact that you were able to build a small to medium size city without any “highway = motorway” tags is impressive. Great job! Lord knows my city is filled with ugly interstates.
I am also intrigued by your suburbs (i.e. Koshil, Pulhaim) great job with those as well. The tram system is also beautifully done.
Overall I’d say it could benefit from more names, but other than that it feels complete!
Comment from Leowezy on 25 May 2016 at 09:26
Thank you all so much for your amazing feedback :) I’ll definitely take away much from it;
@Magor, Luciano, Thunderbird, I will try to incorporate much more naming. I think my goal is to at least name all tertiary, secondary and primary roads, and some unclassified roads in the town centre as well. Shops etc I will try to name as well; maybe a look at some wiki pages about globally operating chains will help. I’ll take time, but I think you’re right that it’s needed to give the city a realistic feel.
@Sarepava, I think I might go back and tweak some administrative boundaries. One one hand I think it adds to the realism that the border does not follow the street layout all the time, but at the moment it looks a bit too arbitrary, you’re right. Also, I think it’s funny that you propose a terminating track at the station; in the beginning I actually had one of these there, however then I decided to just connect it back to the other end since I extended the IC line to not terminate in the town but instead continue south. But I like the idea of special holiday trains; maybe I will add an extra terminating track to the north of the station, like a modern expansion, on top of the Henkya takyoe and the streets there. It wouldn’t be very comfortable for travelers, but realistically it’s the only place to expand the station without demolishing existing buildings. If you would like the Ro public transport authority to be a purchaser of Karolian tram carriages, feel free to add that fact to any wiki article of yours or mine, where appropriate :) I will also build some more depots. (The length of the tram platforms is 60 m)
@Luciano, Sarepava, Again you’re right; more green space is needed. I kinda neglected it because I thought “well, in a small city of under 200k people can just take a walk on the farms”, but I guess the city is in fact to big for that. I will add more, smaller green spaces in the city in addition to the large representative park in the centre (from where you have a stunning view of the hill side and Díkwi Nekeze ;). And yeah, the city really needs some sporting facilities very badly o.O Completely missed those.
@Luciano, I will definitely add more Nekezes (I tent to translate that as “temples”, but I think they are rather like “shrines”?) and market places in the very old and not-so-old part of the city. Especially on the steep hill side that could make for some interesting layouts. I think if there is one city in Kojo where I can dare to keep them all to religious use only, then it’s Ro xD But considering that Ro is the religious centre of Symvanism, there really need to be more little Nekezes. About schools, hospitals, etc… the thing with these is, that I find it hard to estimate the exact number of schools needed. Of course I don’t need to specify how many students study at a given school, but still. I have this sense in me that if I map individual amenities, then they have to be thought out very well, perhaps better than I’m able to do currently. That’s why I held back on adding too many supermarkets as well, I just have a hard time estimating how many would make sense. Also, because I consider the positioning of schools rather “boring” and not telling (as in they appear to be more or less randomly placed in residential suburbs), placing them on the map doesn’t tell me anything about the city’s overall history or structure (with some exceptions, like the one on Pulhaim and the university). Marking retail areas on the other hand can for example indicate centres of former localities or the modern centre of neighbourhoods. I agree with you in that schools etc. definitely add to the realism and feel of the city, however for now the “time : gain ratio” of mapping them was rather unfavourable to me. However I might come back later on with much time at hand and do a “schooling” session, a “supermarket” session etc. to really “complete” the city.
@Thunderbird, the trunk highway is a fully grade separated motorway with probably two or three lanes, so the city obviously is still very car reliant. I found one thing with a lot of medium sized cities; when mapping them, I tend to already have some motorway connections that connect the city to the rest of the region, and then I have to watch out that I don’t build the city around the motorway, but instead build the city core up to let’s say the 1970’s, and then think about where the motorways could have realistically been built. I’m always surprised when looking at German cities like Aachen, Dresden or anything between 200k and 500k that the Autobahnen usually don’t penetrate the urban core at all. In this particular sense I try to make my cities quite “European”, and Ro’s motorway comparatively is actually penetrating the city quite deeply (no pun intended).
So again, thank you all for your very helpful advices, I hop I get them all implemented over time :)
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 25 May 2016 at 09:37
I absolutely agree with those comments above, the city looks lovely, but the mapping is a little incomplete. Some individual ‘buildings of interest’, some green spaces/different types of landuse and more names would help add that extra level of detail.
The problem of not being able to use the conlang’s own alphabet for naming - aside from just the making up of names - is one I share. I don’t know how we get this into OGF, since it’s OSM uses unicode, and its not going to be easy to add conlangs to unicode! But there are some unicode scripts that can be run together to make ‘novel combinations’ so it might be possible to work around this. But not if you already have the alphabet, as with Kojolese.
But on the city - adding some detail on the Nekeze hill might help, as that’s the natural focus when you first look at the map. For example, what is the peak ‘PH’ - and would there be a path to it? Would there be scrub and woods and grassland around the cliffs on the hillslopes? (you don’t usually see cliffs in landuse=residential?). So a bit more diversity in the zoning would add interest.
Its also very nice to see a city that isn’t built on a river or coastline but has some logic to where it is located - a hill above the farmland area. The whole gives an impression of a very well ordered society, with a long history and a modern urban focus - hopefully this is what you were after!
Comment from isleño on 25 May 2016 at 10:01
I think it looks great!
My main suggestion would be this: in a city with so much history, I’d expect to find more ‘points of interest’ in the central area, like, places you’d visit as a tourist there. These could include more public squares or more religious sites (as mentioned in some of the other comments), but also other stuff like fortresses, towers, walls, gates, bridges, tombs, palaces, pavilions, monuments, statues, fountains, museums, libraries, markets, locations of historical importance, specially preserved architecture, sites related to traditional arts, famous gardens open to the public, etc, etc. For example, check out all the stuff to explore in a city like Kyoto, which is only slightly larger than Rō.
Comment from Leowezy on 25 May 2016 at 13:00
@Ūdilugbulgidħū firstly, thank you so much for your last sentence; before I read it i didn’t even know how to put my “vision” into words, you hit the point just right.
I will take your advice to my heart and diversify the land usage, especially on the hillside. In my head the topography and land usage is all clear, but I realise now that to create that picture in other viewers’ minds I have to be more detailed with mapping.
@isleño, thank you :) I guess I will save your advise next to Luciano’s, and diversify the amounts of points of interests in general. I like your example with Kyoto, and I definitely thought about that city while coming up with Ro. Although I’d say Kyoto is still an order of magnitude higher up there when it comes to cultural density and tourism, I will take some inspiration from your map in regards to what types of cultural venues would be applicable to Ro as well :)
Comment from Demuth on 25 May 2016 at 14:25
As others have said, I really like how you’ve created the hill in the center, it looks great and it makes a smart focal point for the city. I’m also impressed with the non-grid structure, I’m trying to get away from grids myself but for some reason it’s a real challenge, maybe it’s the American in me? And the tramlines and rails also look great, the detail is really wonderful there!
My main concern was what Sarapeva and Luciano pointed out, which was I think there should be a lot more green space in the city for it to be more realistic. Especially since you mentioned the culture of the population that includes a balanced kind of living that includes gardens.
Then I had a question: Are you going to build out the suburbs more or keep them as is? That’s another one of my big challenges and I’m curious to see how other people solve the problem.
Finally, on reading the Wiki: I like to read the articles there although I’m not very systematic about it. And not just the texts, I particularly love the various pictures and graphics - money, subway maps, doctored photos of trains with OGF logos on them - that people have created. But, my method of consumption is mostly looking at all the recent changes and clicking on what people have written there, rather than looking at the map and then finding corresponding Wikipedia articles. And I guess then it’s no surprise that the Wikipedia articles are mostly what get me looking at what different people have mapped, rather than any random looking at the map.
Comment from Leowezy on 25 May 2016 at 15:17
@Demuth, I don’t really know about how to avoid grids, but I guess I often look at some street patterns in European suburbs and try to mimic der scale and layout as much as I can. I’m surprised though that I keep getting positive remarks on my “detailed” railway network, I consider it rather basic and most stations aren’t even named xD
The very reason I decided to showcase the city now is that I consider it’s suburbs to be finished. I usually start off with thinking about how large a new city should be population wise, then figure out the population density of the built up area and then roughly sketch the outline of the suburbs, which I then fill in. That process is finished now, so no, I won’t add any more suburbs (adjacent towns and villages might be still altered and expanded however).
The way you read wiki articles seems pretty similar to mine actually :) Although I sometimes randomly browse the map, I for the most part keep an eye on the recent changes page as well.
Comment from tparigo on 25 May 2016 at 15:58
I agree with most of the comments that have been made about Ro. The structure of the city seems complete (and realistic !).
What I find very interesting in your mapping are the two detailed areas (with buildings) near the train station and in the south. The building structure of a city gives many information about its history and cultural background. It is what i am working on for my “may mappers challenge”.
Congrats.