Sketching Cities: Maps of Towns and Metropoli

So you’re out and about in the world - maybe you’re sheltered under the eaves of a dark building as the rain soaks you to your boots, or perhaps you’re stood on the high walls as the wind rushes through your hair and over the roofs and treetops - and you’ve come to a city. It happens to all of us occasionally, but when you’re creating your fantasy world, you may occasionally need a map of that city to aid you and your heroes in your adventures. You need to be sketching cities if you want to stay consistent.

As always, a map is an invaluable tool for the worldbuilder, whether you’re a writer or a game master. But having new tips and tricks, adding different details and fleshing out your understanding of how to build all of these roads and landmarks will only make your world more real, more inviting, and more intriguing. 

Today, we’re talking about sketching cities - creating the towns and metropoli that your heroes will explore and your villains will predate. We’ll go through the details that you need to include, the methods we use to sketch them out, and the insights we have from experience. 

This is a part of this week’s theme, which is Creating Maps of Cities. For the full video, check out our YouTube channel, the Red Quills, or our social media channels for snippets and how-to shorts. 

We have many other guides and maps in our Red Quills Journal, in our other blog posts, so check them out as well if you have other questions. 

Cities and towns are - almost without exception - grown, and not planned. There may be an element of planning here and there, but the decision to create a whole settlement is not generally made by a single person. There may be someone making overall decisions, but coordinating the hundred or thousands of inhabitants is a headache. 

As such, there is an organic component to the creation of settlements. There are several rules about how to achieve this, and if you want to create a city with an inhuman feeling or a technological vibe, then grid patterns or meticulous symmetry is the way to go. In this post, I’ll go through the steps that I take when making a city map, and you can take them or leave them when you make your own. The important part is that you’ve thought about it, not that you’ve agreed with everything that I say. 

The Network, or the Paths of Least Resistance

Nothing sums up the human race like the phrase, “The shortest distance between me and my destination is a straight line. I’m taking it.” Whole cities are built around this phrase, the vast network of global roads adhere to this general rule, with one major caveat: carts and carriages are generally less able to do that. 

However, in all cities, the major form of transportation is the humble foot. Load-bearing transports are still needed to move goods around, but the majority of traffic in cities (with the exception of anything after the 1930s) is by foot. As such, the network of roads that is the lifeblood of the city is always made of strings of shortest distance between high-traffic areas. 

In order to create your city network, take these steps:

Determine the Locations of the Major Landmarks

We’ll go into what these landmarks are in a moment, but they are the major points of interest in a city for its inhabitants. Churches, markets, palaces, arenas, and factories are all high-traffic areas. Their location is dependent on the districts of their surroundings.

I’ve made a video briefly on this topic before, but here’s the rundown: industrial buildings are kept separate from residential areas, commercial buildings are in the centre of residential districts, and cultural buildings are on hills or distinct blocks in high-class areas. Keep this in mind as you plan them out. 

Mark these out on your map, at least 8 to 12 of them. 

Create a Web between these Points

You want it to look something similar to a spider’s web: the centre of the town generally contains the oldest buildings, such as the town hall or the palaces and monuments. They form the centre of the web. The other buildings are scattered around it. 

At this point, it’s also important to take the terrain into account. All cities need water, so where is the bay, the lake, the river, or the spring? High class areas are generally higher up - are there hilltops and valleys? Add a few brief lines and circles over these areas. 

These changes in terrain will tell you where the major bridges will be as you sketch out the web, and where the steepest inclines are. The major roads will be on gentle inclines, for the benefit of vehicles. 

Each landmark should have a line connecting it to between two and four other landmarks. Now you have your web. 

Choose your squares and meeting points

Now you have the major roads, fill out that web a little. Major roads also want to connect to major roads. The people on the ground want the most efficient way of getting from every part of the city to every other part of the city. 

Adding in minor roads between major roads adds accessibility. They don’t travel directly to the landmarks, but where the minor roads and major roads intersect, they form squares and marketplaces. As they grow, more and more roads will connect to those intersections. 

The network is filling out now: the roads don’t have to be straight as they get less and less crucial, but they give the city a shape and start to show you where businesses will set up, where people will travel by and to, and what the flow of the city is. 

Add in the buildings and the blocks

Last step: start sketching in the filling of your city. I tend to add in irregular blocks, with jagged alleyways between them for ducking between the roads. Cities are filled with all manner of secrets and unknown nooks. The more high class the area, the more regular the shapes of the blocks from above. The more industrial an area, the larger the blocks. 

And then you’ve done your sketch! 

Major Landmarks

So what are the major landmarks in your city? Where do the inhabitants spend their time, where do the travellers go when they come to visit? If you’re struggling with filling out your cities, here’s a quick guide to content in your cities. 

When you’re sketching cities, it's important to remember that a city is really just three or more towns squished together, and a town is a three or more villages squished together. They’re small communities that are parts of larger and larger communities. So when you realise that, all you need to do is break up your city into neighbourhoods (villages), districts (towns), and then the main city, and add the appropriate landmarks on each level. 

Like this:

Villages

Villages are quite small, but remember that in a fantasy world, the majority of your population will live in a village. Most of the people in any pre-industrial society will be farmers, so they’ll live out in the sticks, in a village that they will stay in for most of their lives. 

But every place is special to someone. The landmarks in villages will be deeply personal to the people living there. Every village has:

• A Gathering Place. Like a square, a hall, or a clearing. Somewhere for parties and memorials. 
• A Public House. They are called ‘pubs’ for a reason. Taverns and inns are for travellers, pubs are for the locals. 
• A Trader. Everyone needs to buy things they can’t make themselves. It won’t have a very large range of things, but it will have the basics. 
• A Sacred Place. Every community has an area - or more than one - where they feel connected to something larger than themselves. In the forests, this will be an old tree, or a mossy shrine. In a city, it will be a candle-covered hole in the wall. 

Towns

Towns are larger: they are where the trading network really starts, and so they begin to have amenities that specifically cater to travellers and outsiders. More of their population will be industrial or itinerant, but they still need the village landmarks for the several neighbourhoods within their walls. 

Their larger landmarks service the town and the villages nearby. They will have:

• A Town Hall. An older, more distinguished building that serves as an administrative centre and a court for the area.
• A Town Square. An outdoor area for festivals and celebrations for the whole town. They also house any travelling merchants or caravans (if they are welcome). 
• A Marketplace. Instead of one trader here, you have a dozen - all selling different goods from various far-off lands (less than a hundred miles). 
• Inns and Taverns. These are not pubs, which sell booze to the locals and cater for those who cannot be bothered to cook. They have stables and fancy rooms, entertainment in their common halls, and private meeting areas. 
• Churches and Industrial Buildings. The town won’t have more than a handful of these: large stone or brick buildings built to hold more than a hundred people at a time. Each town will generally have a specialty in industry: brick baking, pottery, barrel making, etc. 

Cities

Cities contain the largest industries in the realm, catering to all the lands around it, and have a much wider breadth of goods and services on offer. They will have at least five districts, each containing at least three neighbourhoods. 

• A City Hall, or Council Building. Larger than the town hall, it contains the justice, the lawmakers, the guard administration, and any other official arm of the government. 
• Arenas or Theatres. Smaller villages and towns have travelling entertainers. Cities can afford to host them full-time. 
• Museums and Galleries. There is a large enough conglomeration of the rich to warrant the opening of cultural buildings like these. 
• Cathedrals. Religious buildings on such a grand scale dominate the skyline of even a city. They will host the city’s important weddings and funerals. 

Methods of Drawing

So we have determined what the city contains and what it looks like from the air: the next question is, when you’re sketching it out, how do you stop it from becoming a cluttered mess? Writing names over and over is a surefire way to make it look messy, so here’s a few tips and tricks. 

Determine What Needs to be on a Map

As always, the cartographer has to figure out what it is that the traveller or merchant is going to need. After all, those two are the major market for maps: the locals know the names for everything in their neighbourhood, and the travellers won’t. So eliminating the details that are irrelevant first is key. 

You will definitely need to label:

• The Major Roads, Gates, and Bridges
• The Major Landmarks
• The Districts and Neighbourhoods
• Stations and Markets
• Inns, Taverns, and Pubs
• The Squares, Docks, and Parks

I’ve also grouped these by the colour and nature of the label and symbol that you can use, for ease. 

Make Sure That They are Distinct

No one likes a map that is so complicated you cannot read it, least of all the cartographer that is trying to make an accurate reproduction. Making a map in two colours is easy on the printer and difficult on the eyes, so you need to ensure that your map is quick and simple to read. You’ve eliminated some of the extraneous details, how do you make them distinct? 

The easiest way is by colour and by symbol. You can also distinguish by all-caps labels and lower-case labels.

A handy guide to any map is to think of the distinct temperatures of colour and the ease of reading them:

• Red is very clear, eye-catching, and distinct. It’s used a lot in maps for this reason. It’s for important, often-searched labels: Districts and Neighbourhoods (in all-caps), and Roads, Gates, and Bridges (in lower case). These are the Major Points. 
• Brown is similar to red in temperature, but less eye-catching. Because of its similarity, it can be used to label similar things to the red labels: Squares, Docks, and Parks (in all-caps), and Stations and Markets (in lower case). These are the Marker Points. 
• Black blends into the background of any map, but is very easy to read. For this reason, is the best ink for local landmarks and the smallest details: the Landmarks (in all-caps), and Inns, Taverns, and Pubs (in lower case). These are the Local Points.

Make Visual Shortcuts

You have your labelling methods, but there is still just no room for all of these points. So let’s turn to symbols and shorthand in creating your city map. The most important methods for shorthanding are:

• Symbols. Rather than writing out ‘inn’ every time you mark an inn, or ‘church’ every time you mark a church, a symbol saves space every time. 
• Colour-coding blocks. When you draw out the block from above, you can colour-code the interior for the same purpose as symbols. 
• Font or Caps. We already talked about upper and lower case in your labels, but you can take it further to imply different levels of importance. Italicised fonts can be specifically for economic points, like markets, businesses, or tollways. 

Creating Names for Locations

We’ve got the sketch of the city, we know what it contains, and we know how we’re going to label it. The question arises: what are we going to label everything? If this is a fantasy map, how do you figure out what to name all of your roads, landmarks, and districts? 

A question that I get asked a lot when I label my maps - particularly as one of the services in my commissioned maps is filling out the gaps with names and markers - is how I choose the names for my maps. Here’s a quick guide with the tips and tricks that I’ve learned in how to create convincing and memorable names for your world. 

What is the Cultural Norm? 

In any fantasy map, I always ask myself who the inhabitants are. It’s the standard starting point - there are some basic assumptions in fantasy for how the different races name things, and I find them particularly helpful. Here are some broad trends that I have noticed:

• Comfortable Settings use portmanteaus or adjective-noun descriptors. Like “Dracolt” (Dragons’ Hold) or “Chillbrook” (Chill Brook).
• Exotic Settings use long-form Gaelic- or Celtic-sounding titles, thanks to Tolkien. They have ‘ae’ combinations and hyphens. Like “Guin-en-Falath” (Title-connecting syllable-title) or Alaeryn. 
• Foreboding Settings use block syllables and harsh words. They’ll have more guttural consonants than the elves. Like “Khulbuvand” or “Baruzagond”. 

Please note that all of these just refer to English-speaking fantasy. 

What is the Shorthand? 

Names and words change over time with use: people speaking them to one another over and over will change the tempo and structure to match the rest of their words, or for ease of speaking. When they say a word over centuries, it will naturally simplify itself: the word “Tollingbelltown” will become “Tollbellton”, which in turn will become “Talbot”. 

When you’re writing the names of your locations, you can use this to your advantage. Write out a long description, and just mumble it to yourself and make it shorter and shorter. 

What Does the Name Refer To? 

Names are titles for places, they don’t spring out of the ground fully formed. When a place is named, that name is a descriptor, not a nonsensical title. When you are creating a map and naming your landmarks and areas, it’s important to remember that you aren’t just assigning names, you’re describing the areas. 

For instance: 

• The village of Bootle lies on the banks of the Windleway, in the Vinacre region. 

A very comfortable, inviting kind of area, no doubt. The name ‘Bootle’ of the village could come from a number of things, but in my case I’ll say that it is a shorthand descriptor of the place that bootleggers once ran their operations. The Windleway is a river, which winds lazily through the region, called the Vinacre (vine-acre) because of its wine-growing soil. 

Let’s use one that I did not write myself: 

• The heights of Orodruin look over the ashen plains of Gorgoroth, in the land of Mordor.

This author (guess who?) takes descriptors very seriously. All of these names are elven descriptors: Orodruin (‘mountain of doom’), Gorgoroth (‘land of great despair’), and Mordor (‘black land’). 

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So this was my quick guide to creating your own city maps for your fantasy world. Remember: the best thing that you can do when creating anything is to stop planning and start doing. Enjoy yourself while you create, and what you make will be better for it. 

As always, thank you to all of my supporters! Please leave a comment below if you find this helpful, or if you have any specific question. I come out with a new map, a new tutorial, and a new journal entry every week, so visit me again next week to see what we’re cooking then!