City Street Layout

OldGuy

I ran across this pic today ( http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-shore.html ) and was fascinated.

To me, it looks like the street layout for a city, with the cracks in the "buildings" representing alleyways. Sadly mine never come out as well. Instead, I always fall back to a grid or a wheel-and-spoke layout. I saved the image in hopes that it will inspire me the next time I attempt to layout a city.

I posted it here as I'm sure others will enjoy it as much as I, and see in it what I do.

Happy Mapping!

JimP

I've seen soil do that... birds have to carry a canteen across lands like that.

Barliman

You see fracturing like that a lot in the high desert in SE California. I wonder if a graphic such as this could be traced to form the basis of a city map?

JimP

I saw soil do that in Texas, during a years long drought.

I can see that as a city plan.

jslayton

That particular image looks to be the bottom of a puddle/pond after a flood. At maximum flood, the layer of sand at the bottom was deposited The silt and clays settled out once the water flow slowed. Sand doesn't change a lot in its volume whether it's wet or dry, but clays shrink drastically as their water content reduces. As the clay layers dry out, the surface contracts and a few big cracks form as the tension from shrinking exceeds the strength of the material. It fractures down to the sand layer at the bottom. As each plate continues to contract, friction with the bottom layer of the silt part provides a force that causes the plate to crack further (there is also an effect from the top layers cracking and drying faster than the lower ones). The separate into those wide "roads" that expose the sand because the sand isn't really contracting much at all.

The overall effect is a nice 2D fractal pattern. It's just over a few scales, unlike the computer-generated ones that tend to operate over many scales.

OldGuy

Posted By: jslaytonThe overall effect is a nice 2D fractal pattern. It's just over a few scales, unlike the computer-generated ones that tend to operate over many scales.

Sounds like someone is getting excited about writing a fractal layout addon for City Designer! I'd buy that!

Loopysue

Oh yes! Me too

Lorelei

Well THANKS for this! I have been experiencing a bit of a creative block - and cities are most certainly NOT my thing. So, i used your pic for my street grid at an attempt at a city

Dogtag

LOL, that looks great!  

OldGuy

Awesome!

ScottA

Lol Lorelei! I was thinking exactly the same thing, and saved the original cracked clay image to trace later to use as a city street layout! I HATE doing city maps and am never happy with them, so this might help.

Tonnichiwa

I'm not very good at doing City maps either but I need to start practicing. I think you did a great job of making city roads with this. Now to add city walls to it and the buildings.

[Deleted User]

We should have a friendly competition for the best town based on this street layout - prize, a big pat on the back. But could generate lots of towns for the Atlas as well. What do people think?

Tonnichiwa

Lol, well, I would make one based on this anyway. It is just too good not to. I'm not against doing it but Cities take quite a while to build so we would have to make the competition last for a long time. You could bust a city out in a very short amount of time if you wanted to just use pre made buildings but I prefer making my own as I can then make them look as interesting as I want.

So what is it about making a City that people hate doing anyway? I find them fascinating.

[Deleted User]

Well, let's give it a 6 month run that way, I can enter when I get back from UK)

LordEntrails

Excellent inspiration. It appears amazingly like a city to me. Thanks for sharing.

Barliman

Posted By: LoreleiWell THANKS for this! I have been experiencing a bit of a creative block - and cities are most certainly NOT my thing. So, i used your pic for my street grid at an attempt at a city

I knew if anyone could do it, Lorelei could.

OldGuy

Posted By: TonnichiwaSo what is it about making a City that people hate doing anyway? I find them fascinating.

I don't *hate* doing city street layouts. It's just that I am unhappy with the results that I've been able to achieve thus far. That's why this image fascinated me so much. I hope that by using this as inspiration, I'll be able to produce more organic designs in the future.

taustinoc

Say this today, an article about street layouts in quite a few cities, with "visualizations":

Square-Mile Street Network Visualization

Bit of inspiration if you're working on modern city maps.