OpenGeofiction

Your city seems very similar to were my Uncle lives in Montpellier France. Similar intellectualism and density as their spread mirrors each other almost. They also have similar metropolitan population. I think you should compare yourself with this city more for better results. Is your city as dense as Montpellier, does it have the same amenities? I do this with my cities and it helps me eliminate the unrealistic part of my cities when I map.

As you know I really like Kanton. I like the density and the historic centre and, in particular, I like the street layouts which seem very realistic.

I think there is a definite need for more facilities. I can see there are schools and supermarkets but if you look at somewhere like the inner suburbs of Helsinki you can see that there are more facilities, more shops, more doctors offices and schools.

So you have somewhere like this great little housing estate with just one small supermarket but realistically I think the ground floors of the buildings around The Circle would have a dry cleaners, a coffee shop, a doctor’s office, perhaps a florist or a newsagents.

I think both Junction 4 and 2 of the cross-city motorway need to be remodelled on a larger scale. Taking Helsinki as an example again the motorway junctions are much larger, even in urban areas.

I hope that’s constructive for you. I love Kanton and I think it is especially impressive now it is ‘complete’ and you can zoom out and admire it from a distance.

Adam

I am a huge fan of your work- and Känton looks really good. There are just a few things I would personally change.

• Some of the bus stops are too close to each other. I recommend 250 meters at least.
• The streets are often too narrow. Take St. Clair-mantee, for instance, which I estimate is about 6 meters wide at places, which is just not enough for a primary road.
• I don’t really get the way the buildings are numbered. It seems very random to me.

But otherwise, great job! Keep it up this way!

Beautiful city! And it’s much more complete than last time I saw it, maybe 7 months ago. The population seems about right for an area of that size and the European structure. The elevation is correct too.

I’d like to echo what eklas said about numbering. In Saar, there are buildings with numbers such as 5 across the street from buildings with number 13.

And some of your motorway intersection, like here, should be layered with bridge=yes and layer=1. It is a very well thought out city, keep up the good work!

Thank you all for the helpful feedback. A few responses:

In some countries, occasionally in the UK, house numbers go up one side of the street and back down the other. It’s not the most helpful for finding an address, but it happens. Karolian practice is now the more normal evens on the right, odds on the left, but in these medieval streets the old system remains.

I struggle to get road interchanges a satisfying size. I try to use the longest car length of 5m as a guide but this is only vaguely helpful. Many urban junctions in the UK are cramped and multiple lanes don’t fit the width of modern cars. The L61 isn’t really a motorway anyhow, it is a dual carriageway with a much lower speed limit and frequent turns - think the Totton bypass.

How far to set back buildings from the road is another weakness. JOSM draws roads much thinner than they render on the map so measuring from the lines is inaccurate. I am working on a pavement width of at least 3m as well as the road width. I think many buildings will need adjusting to avoid appearing crowded, and many are too big already.

St clair maantee is a difficult one to judge. It’s a medieval road with historic buildings and no possibility of widening…but it’s also the main surface route across the island and a bus corridor. You can see where the traffic problems come from… I could ban trucks over 3,5t from the island but buses have to run here. Maybe it could be conceivably widened to about 8m, parking prohibited and a light-controlled system to prevent buses meeting at narrow points installed? (further adding to congestion).

Just a quick note about house numbering. There are many places in the real world where building numbers are essentially random. Guatemala, in my recollection of my time there in the 1980’s, numbers on buildings are in the order they’re built. In Korea, historically, buildings are not numbered by the street they’re on but by the block they’re on - so the numbers go around in circles around each block, and it’s possible for two buildings with the same exact number to be across the street from each other. You have to include the block number to get mail to the right address. So please - complaints about building numbering schemes are a bit narrow… I have chosen a Guatemalan scheme for Mahhal and Tárrases - mostly because it makes it quite easy for the geofictician (me). Don’t expect any rationality there.

Other than that, I would only comment on the railroads… they are excellent for passengers but I think there would be more sidings, yards, spurs, etc. to support freight. Remember that in most rail networks in the world, freight is actually more significant than passenger traffic.

Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.