Population density in Fantasy Cities
I was just wanting to clarify this, as I can't believe what my figures are showing me. I have always been a bit of a stickler as to how big a town should be given a certain population density. For my reference I have been using Magical Medieval Europe, a neat book for creating towns, cities, and kingdoms. There is a population density chart in the book with varying densities based on the sort of town you want to produce from small town (30-40 adults/acre) all the way to a metropolis (150-200 adults/acre).
Checking my math and using a small town density, 30 adults per acre translates roughly to 19,200 people per square mile (there are 640 acres in 1 square mile, 640 x 30 = 19,200). This would put even a small town density on par with a modern city approximately 1.5 the population density of the city of Chicago.
This didn't really occur to me until I started a modern map and was looking for references as to modern population densities. Am I correct and the population density in this book is completely off or am I making a mistake in my math somewhere?
Muddled and confused,
Nick
Checking my math and using a small town density, 30 adults per acre translates roughly to 19,200 people per square mile (there are 640 acres in 1 square mile, 640 x 30 = 19,200). This would put even a small town density on par with a modern city approximately 1.5 the population density of the city of Chicago.
This didn't really occur to me until I started a modern map and was looking for references as to modern population densities. Am I correct and the population density in this book is completely off or am I making a mistake in my math somewhere?
Muddled and confused,
Nick
Comments
Generally the biggest career field back then was farming, but almost EVERYBODY had to go to town at least once a month for some specific types of provisions, or to conduct business if they sold their crops beyond their own familie's consumptive needs. Typically everybody else who was not a farmer lived in the central hamlet, village, town, or city - and these were the only places that you could aquire certain goods and services, or work at a skill that wasn't farming and get paid for it. Port towns and cities would have been especially big - as fishing and cargo vessels that served the needs of entire communities would need a home base. Wealth was concentrated in the urban zones, and LARGE cities were the absolute only places that you would have found institutions of higher learning (or learning at all) - with the exception of abbies and monasteries, which sometimes offered a free advanced education in return for swearing off sex for the rest of your life, giving up all personal possessions, and taking a vow of silence for a year or two.
Rule of thumb - if you weren't a farmer, then you either lived in town (or close to it) - or a cave, and the more money that you made - the more trips that you would've taken to town.
If you were a merchant, an entertainer, an artisan / craftsman / tradesman, a blacksmith, or a politician - or the only thing that you were good at was slinging tinkers of ale as a professional barkeep or tavern wench, then you lived in town.
If you were a well endowed lady (or more accurately - ANY lady that didn't have "too much" facial hair - or resemble anything more masculine than a longshoreman), that wanted a comfortable living - but that didn't want to soil up your fineries with cow dung and grass stains - then you would take up permanent (or semi-permanent) residence at the local brothel (almost always located in the very heart of town). Your other alternative would have been the local convent, but nuns don't shy away from hard work by a long shot - so unless you wanted to live a regimented life a hundred times harder than being in the army labor wise - then the more delicate (lazy) ladies of leisure would choose the brothel, generally speaking.
Brothels were among the very largest contributors to the local lord's tax coffers, and were especially big business in port cities. If you weren't likely to find a brothel anywhere else - then it was a gauranteed assurity that you would definitely find one in a larger port city or trade hub. Depending upon the culture of the country per se - they were either embraced by the general public as a vital and honorable social institution (orient / far east / China / Japan / Korea), or despised as dens of iniquity and spiritual, moral, and ethical decay (Europe / Middle East region).
Cities were generally larger and more populace if they were situated near bodies of water - or major land routes - that were used to convey trade and freight as a vein of commerce - or moving goods back and forth between surrounding communities, and also because of the nearby presence of some forms of valuable and relatively abundant exploitable resources.
In Ohio where I'm from - long ago, back in the 1800s, we had a canal system where animal drawn canal boats would move goods and people along a system of canals situated next to smaller rivers, that led directly to the Ohio River - which in turn fed into the central / lower Mississippi River. Towns sprung up along these canals like crazy. After the canal boat system died when locomotives became all the rage - a lot of the towns along the canals disappeared - and faded away in memory.
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm
Of course his paper is biased towards a particular geographic location
and window in time, but still a decent read to get some basic numbers
as a starting point.
-bg
There are any number of reliable works on medieval population that can help with the original questions. As a primer, I would suggest starting with the Gies's "Life in a Medieval City" and "Life in a Medieval Village". To give you an idea of a "really big city", London's population in the late 1300s was probably only about 35,000: most towns were under 4,000. At most, 10% of the total population lived in towns.
Marriage was mainly a commercial transaction in the Middle Ages. When primogeniture prevailed, first sons stayed with the family farm (or castle, or craft etc). If primogeniture didn't prevail, holdings quickly fragmented and reconsilidated, causing a lot of problems, to say the least! It should also be remembered that most "lower orders" were tied to the land: they couldn't leave, even if the idea occurred to them (which generally it wouldn't).
As for moving, some folks did, even if the local gentry didn't like it.
The part about brothels is TRUE! For just one of many interesting reads on the "unpopular" aspects of mideival history - read this blog entry:
http://feralkittycatwrites.blogspot.com/2006/06/regulation-of-prostitution-in-medieval.html
OR HOW ABOUT THIS!:
http://www.britannica.com/facts/5/55157/Middle-Ages-as-discussed-in-prostitution
And YADA YADDA YADDA, BLAH BLAH BLAHZEEBLAH! It's called research my friend! You find out a lot of stuff that way...
I would give you more impressive examples - but I just woke up at the time of writing this - and I'm not in the mood right now to write a dissertation on prehistoric hookers.
Whenever I wake up from a state of prolonged partial death - my first concern is regaining the feeling in the right side of my body, and trying to remember all of the steps necessary to effect proper and successful bladder relief with minimal collateral damage Lol.