[World Building] City population question

[Kafana]

Now, I'm having a hard time dealing with the population number of cities. The main thing is that I like to draw maps for my players, detailing the districts, services and so on.

The only problem is that I can't seem to realistically get the number of houses needed. Often I'll "round" up a house to have ten people living there (5 on the first floor, and 5 on the second), but that can't be right simply because you can (and I say usually do) have a whole house occupied by only one couple, or even one person.

That being said, I've looked at the official maps of towns (from cityscape, for example) and they don't do the numbers justice either.

And I just recently discovered (though I'm not sure if that's true), that those numbers in the DMG account for adults only.

Now, my question is: Does the city population count only the buildings "inside the walls" (even though some cities don't have walls), or do they also count the dozens of hamlets and thorps in the very near vicinity of the city? Sure, those might add only a thousand or two, but it's still something.

[Brookshw]

.
that those numbers in the DMG account for adults only.
.

True, children aren't people!

You're correct that few if any maps capture an appropriate amount of housing unless were talking multilevel houses with various families and even then....

By the RAW the cities the city and surrounding communities are their own beast (hamlets & thorpes having their own numbers). However there's no definition of "city proper" (inside the walls) that exists so your free to make up the city and place a few suburbs as you like. If it works for you go for it. I'd chalk up the maps to human effort and that no one really concerned themselves with that level of detail as much as they wanted something you could point to and say "see, city".

[Gildedragon]

Take note that (assuming a brick or stone city) the city buildings are probably 2-5 stories tall; generally with services on the ground and housing above, people probably live pretty cramped outside of the high class districts (more like 10 people per building floor)

[Coidzor]

You can generally get away with an abstraction of X districts that have housing in them for Y population without having to figure out exactly where all the houses are, especially with the prevalence of 2nd and 3rd story housing above businesses and tenements.

[jedipotter]

The only problem is that I can't seem to realistically get the number of houses needed. Often I'll "round" up a house to have ten people living there (5 on the first floor, and 5 on the second), but that can't be right simply because you can (and I say usually do) have a whole house occupied by only one couple, or even one person.




This is a good example of Western 21st thinking. Sure in most of the US and Europe you might find ''one person or one family'' per house. But not so for the rest of the world, or the others in the US or Europe. It is common enough for something like four generations to all live together in one house, something like two or three couples, two or three single adults and several kids.

And it was even more common before the 20th century. And not only would you find a dozen or so family members in one house, but you would also find half that many guests, live-in workers, apprentices, renters and even slaves.

So ten people in a house is easy.


Take Don and Sarah. They have eight kids, two are adults as they are 20 and 18. The 20 year old works with dad, but the 18 year old just does odd day labor. Don, as a blacksmith, has two apprentices both young teens age 19 and 18. There is a live in caregiver for the younger kids. Don's mother. Sarah's brother and aunt. And a young man age 20 who rents the room upstairs. That is 11 people (''adults'') all in the same house.......

[Synvallius]

'Twould depend upon the population density and culture of the city. If the city is a metropolis it could still be a fairly spread out urban area (suburbs or just sprawl induced by regulations prohibiting multiple stories [which would be realistic, seeing as how the higher the building the more people will die in the event of fire]), thus each building could have a fairly small amount of people living there, as few as one or two, or as many as thirty or perhaps even more (depending on culture, see what Jedipotter says above). If the city is more confined, then the population within buildings will be more concentrated, giving you multiple families sharing the same building, the same story, or even the same rooms. This would lead to an enormous (think around 50 or more people per building) population density within the city.
On culture, the people who value family over independence will tend to (like most people in the third world) have their extended family live with them, whereas an individual driven culture will tend to have smaller groups occupying the same building. So, if the culture of the city tends towards the family side of thing, population density (in regards to building habitation) will be higher, but if the culture tends towards individualism, the population density (in regards to building habitation [but I'm sure you already knew that]) will be much lower. So you just need to ask yourself which group this particular city falls into, and thus go on from there.

[Tvtyrant]

When I make cities I generally aim on 10 houses per important building. A village with a smith and town hall has about 20 houses and a palisade for instance.