Politician Archive

I've been visiting a lot of player cites on Eclipse and Wanderhome. There are several definable styles of urban planning that I've seen, and we in Utopia on Eclipse have our own plan as well. I thought it might be interesting to discuss some of the urban planning ideals we've all come to after the first few weeks of player cities.

One thing I've noticed is that the overwhelming majority of cities try and arrange their structures in streets. I think that this is a good idea, but have revised our city plan based on my observations of the shortcomings of street building in other cities.

Alleys, lanes, streets, avenues:

When creating your layout, it's important to remember that there is how it looks 'on paper' and how it looks in practice. It's apparent to me that a great number of player cities were planned out of game. The streets are very neatly aligned but very narrow. In SWG, all houses of the same style and size are identical. There are no identifying marks on the outside to distinguish one small tatooine house from another. That being the case, the only way to tell what it is you are looking at is by the sign. Streets that are too narrow make it more difficult to get a good view of where you are at. Making the streets broader is helpful to players who are trying to navigate through your city.

Avenues give a city a sense of organization, and make it look good in the ctrl+m map. However, you cannot expect people to always follow these streets in a player city. Leaving a small amount of room for passing between houses let's players find their own fastest route from point a to point b. If they want to run between the houses to get from the shuttle to the cantina, a good mayor will let them do so by planning appropriately.

Grid vs. Chaos:

Player cities have a tendency to go from one extreme to the other. In some the layout seems completely without design, while in others it's clearly laid out in a very boring and strict grid arrangment. Theoretically, the former is in order to allow unrestricted building by the citizens, the latter to ensure the maximum population density.

The primary problem with the chaos structure is that there is no guarantee at any time that you will have more room for additional residents, even if you need those residents for advancement. The secondary problem is that a city laid out in chaos has no definable quality of 'city-ness'. It doesn't feel like a community. Even cities that want to allow unrestricted building can establish a central design feel. Simply have the urban planners or mayor place a few buildings of the type desired in a particular location. It's been my experience that most players wanting to join your city will also want to make it look good. If they see ten small houses in a single location, and no small houses anywhere else, it's likely they'll try and build their small house with the others. You can encourage a degree of uniformity while still maintaining your city's ideal of freedom.

The problems with the strict grid structure are harder for some to see. In the first place, the grid is usually too dense and close, hitting the same problems discussed in the avenues section above. In the second place, they are, to be frank, boring. A grid is an efficient design, but it's not an attractive one. To compromise, block off sections of your grid for counter-directional houses and other geometric shapes. In utopia, our market street is shaped like a tear drop. This works right into any gridded residential streets. There are ways to break up the outline of the grid while still following a strict structure. The added advantage of such design is that, in cases where the grid must work around a terrain feature, that section will not seem out of place from the rest of the town. Bottom line, loosen up if you want to look good.

Plazas, town squares, decorations:

Most of the cities I've seen have given a nod to the idea of plazas. They'll have a section of the city where there is a wide square with some decorations, ie, statues and parks, in the center. There is plenty of room allowed in the city sizes at all levels to have many more such plazas and squares. Use this not only as eye-candy, but with function. For instance, I visited a city that had a trainer's square. This plaza was a rectangular shape surrounded by small houses on all sides. In the center was a fountain and some streetlamps. Evenly around the perimeter they had profession trainers of all kinds, and around the decorations in the center they had several mission terminals. It was a nice looking area and there was a purpose to it.

Plazas dont have to be squares and rectangles all the time either. It's possible to create open areas of a variety of geometric shapes, even circles. It's not hard to stagger the placement of structures to form almost any shape, given proper planning and cooperation. As I said, we managed to design a teardrop. Give your city a thematic design by naming these various plazas and dropping decorations in accordance with that design. Have some fun!

Breathing room for major structures/further growth:

You can safely assume that over time there will be additional features, decorations, and structures available for player cities. Planning in advance can save you a headache in the future. It's not hard to plan ahead if you can figure out some underlying principles to guide you.

For instance, you may not know if there will ever be bazaar terminals for your city, but it's pretty safe to assume there will be some type of public interest access points added to the player cities in the future. Leaving a wide no-build zone around critical structures is a doubly beneficial plan to implement. Not only does it leave room for future additions, it creates a nice wide open area of visiblity for congregation etc. Most NPC cities have a lot of empty space in front of starports and shuttleports. This leaves plenty of room for people milling about and emphasizes the structure as a city benefit. It only makes sense to apply this principle in player cities as well. Don't jam your shuttleport right up against your city hall. People like to see the game, not just one wall of it.

These are some of the thoughts I've had regarding city building as we've gone through the learning process of the first few weeks. Please add your own urban planning thoughts as well.

Thanks!

Neo

Yes Neo, Free Haven on Valcyn is guilty of outside game planning.

We do have the grid system, as wel as a large rectangular town square. As we have well over 120 buildings now it has become somewhat ofuniform grid pattern We did leave room on our streets for random parks etc...but on a whole the central town square is meant to be the hub of the city... all civic structues are placed there to allow for easy access.

The square is quite large (8x25 build squares I believe) with the 4 Guild halls serving as the corner of square. The city hall/ militia buildingsis located between two PA and opposite the cantina and shuttleport. Merchant tents are located inthe narrowarea to the south, while med-center and cloning are mimic the plan,to the north.

I think the draw of this style of planning is a result of the random-like quality of NPC cities. We all recoginze the inconvience of running across half the town to reach a cantina or to get from there to the med-center...

I also feel many cities we planned according to the know limit of city radius... ie we needed to get as many voting citizens insidethe initial small radiusas we can if were going to have a shuttleport. That I believe helped lead to a "block" like city structure.

Varnax Despin

Free Haven, Naboo----Valcyn

I think you want a little bit of a mix. I want things to be organized, but I want them to be somewhat organic too. I personally feel having all of the same types of houses in rows is ugly and bad. Yes it makes it tougher to have streets and straight lines if you mix small med and lrg, but if looks better in the long run.

What we are hoping to achive is a city with 2 main corridors for travel. One east west, one north south. The City hall is the focal point in the middle, with a ring of open space around it. Off of these corridors have people form 2 or 3 secondar streets that parallel the main street. Then in the 4 quadrants allow a more free flowing layout. Have squares or clusters of friends houses. Have PA enclaves....

As mayor I don't want to dictate to people where their house is, or exactly how the city should be. I reserve the right to dictate the 4 main avenues, but other than that I give suggestions.

One main point of contention in my city was the centralized vs distributed model for the city. Should all services buildings be together or distributed through the city. Centralized is convenient, but can lead to lag, and does not promote any travel through the city. Distributed can cause people to get lost, or not easily find what they want.

We went with a hybrid. Things are centralized on the 2 streets, but distributed along their length.

I think there is a third plan, which is organized but not on a grid. Symmetrical layouts are easy to plan, but for some people they can lead to location confusion almost as easily as the chaotic. Because of this I attempted to use unique terrain features to help orient players and to provide a sense of organization. On Dantooine this was facilitated by utilizing the unique “road” depression that traverses the planet in combination with a few hills, a river, and a series of lakes to make an organic east-coast town feel.

Kosatsu Falls’ city hall sits on a hill, surrounded on three sides by Naboo style homes. The third side, too steep for most construction, is left empty, forming a natural park. At the base of the hill on the park side a large flat area allowed for a nice alignment of the cloning station, cantina, and hospital. The flat is also crossed by the natural road, which was lined with houses except where it came closest to the civic buildings, where merchant tents replace the houses. The shuttleport sits adjacent to the road surface in a location that allows those exiting to get a mixed view of both the merchant area and the civic structures. Three of the four PA halls in the city have waterfront locations some distance from the city center. The Fourth has a road-front orientation where there is a sharp turn in the natural road. Each is surrounded by homes for those who don’t need or desire homes closer to the commercial area of town. Each feels like a separate neighborhood in a sense, but all are close enough to the city center and to each other that they don’t feel extremely isolated.

I consider Kosatsu Falls to be organized, yet totally non-grid based. I invite anyone interested in a trip to our city to contact me if you’re coming from off-server so that I can forward you the cost of the shuttle tickets.

The third one is exactly my point. My urban plan is a mix between grid and chaotic as described above. As you said, it's the best of both worlds. That's what I was hoping to get across with my own post.

Thanks!

well neo i'll try to come up with some fresh ideas (already doing it know )

Utopia has to be one of the standards on eclypse even if it's the last thing i do

for all the people who are interested please visit us on lok. atm we still like the chaos way, but the big move i coming ... soon ...

ow and my kingdom for the person who can tell me what size a theatre has. is it 7x7 ?