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I joined OGF late in 2017. Since acquiring my own territory of New Austland, I have been working primarily on its capital city, Myola.

During research for this project I had a look around the rest of the OGF world at existing settlements and countries. There are many examples of great work by dedicated users. However, there are also many examples of otherwise well-designed projects that are let down by their transport network design and layout - in particular roads.

Others have written good content about this before so I won’t repeat everything, but I do feel that I can add to this existing information by focusing specifically on roads.

This has motivated me to write a summary of my recommendations and tips on the subject. I hope that this post can serve as a guide to help people develop networks of roads, streets and highways that reflect a more realistic depiction of the ‘real world’.

Who do you think you are??

Before beginning I feel that I should briefly explain my background. In my day job, I work to understand, fix and improve cities. Dealing with transport networks and systems is a large part of my daily work and ongoing projects.

This may or may not make it more likely that you will heed my advice, but just putting it out there for now!

Principles

Consider the overarching vision of OGF - ‘Verisimilitude’ (like real). The recommended way to achieve this is to look at existing ‘real world’ settlements and study their layouts. There is an excellent guide on this subject which may be found here.

The same principles should be applied to road networks.

… See full entry

Having recently acquired my own land in OGF, I have started work on the capital city of Myola. But first, a brief introduction to the basis of this country.

Background

New Austland is intended to reflect Australia and New Zealand (as suggested by its catchy name). The attributes of New Austland, both natural and artificial, should seem reasonably familiar if one has lived or travelled in either country.

For example, the WIP capital city of Myola is located slightly inland from a river mouth and a large bay. Every Australian state and territory capital (except Canberra) is located in a similar position. This was due to the early European settlers deliberately choosing these locations for practical reasons (i.e. trade, agriculture and transport).

Objectives

I am aiming to create New Austland as an ‘improved version’ of an Australian/New Zealand city. Those who are Australians or Kiwis may recognise some key features already in Myola that are characteristics of cities from these two countries.

What constitutes a ‘better’ country or city is obviously subjective. To me, there are many issues present in Australian cities that can be addressed. This is, in fact, my day job. So I do have some experience and knowledge in this area. I might go into some specific measures in later posts. For now, have a quick look at what I have done so far in Myola if you would like a general idea of what I am talking about.

New Austland will not be built as a fully-planned country. Instead, settlements will show patterns of historical organic growth followed by retrofitting of improvements in the recent past.

As such, I hope to use this as a project to show what can be achieved in real life throughout similar cities. It is very possible to make better habitats for humans and geofiction can be a useful tool to showcase the potential of creativity and imagination.

Hello

Having dabbled in geofiction for many years, I was surprised to find this website the other day. It never occurred to me that geofictional projects could be presented and amalgamated in such a way.

By way of background, I am a regular OpenStreetMap contributer. My edits to OpenGeoFiction will almost certainly reflect my experience in OSM.

The town of Pantalis

My eyes were drawn to the location marked ‘Pantalis’ upon selecting this region through the user introduction screen. Located between two apparently major railway junctions, this existing station in the middle of nowhere seemed like a good place to start.

I have designed the town in the style of a small country town. It is primarily sustained by its local agriculture (particularly wineries) and some associated tourism. The railway station provides a vital passenger and freight link to the outside world. I have not yet built the freight yards, but that is next on my list.

Being a relatively flat area, the streets are quite linear and meet at 90 degree angles. The shopping street has been pedestrianised and is very attractive for shoppers.

I am now working on a larger township (Cazoon) further to the south where I hope to expend my horizons a little further and am very excited about the possibilities that OpenGeoFiction presents!