Estimating a city's population by the size of the map

Though this may be backward, I'm creating the city map first, then deciding on its population, demographics, leadership, et cetera. I wanted the look of the map to guide me in that part of the creative process. When I'm finished, I'm going to have a very large late medieval-fantasy city, which is all well and good, except I have no way of guessing how many folk might comfortably live in a place this size. 5000? 50,000?

What is the best rule of thumb, based on the number of homes, to estimate the total population? Three or four individuals per household multiplied by the total number of houses? Or should I just not worry about it and pick a number that feels right?

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