OK. To start, GO TO THE LIBRARY IMMEDIATELY AND GET ITALO CALVINO'S INVISIBLE CITIES! It is exactly what you need. I am not kidding.
Here are some excerpts from the book:
Important Excerpts from Invisible Cities:
"...you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden
that crows each morning on a tower..."
"...four aluminum towers rise from its walls flanking seven gates with spring-operated drawbridges that span thee moat whose water feeds four green canals which cross the city, dividing it into nine quarters, each with three hundred houses and seven hundred chimneys..."
"...the goods that each family holds in monopoly -- bergamot, sturgeon roe, astrolabes, amethysts..."
"I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades' curves and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs..."
"...Anastasia, a city with concentric canals watering it and kites flying over it. I should now list the wares that can profitably be bought here: agate, onyx, chrysoprase, and other varieties of chalcedony. I should praise the flesh of the golden pheasant cooked here over fires of seasoned cherry wood and sprinkled with much sweet marjoram..."
"...turkey feathers in turbans..."
"...a girl walking a puma on a leash."
"...fried squash and flowers..."
"You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer's house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer's. Statues and shields depict lions, dolphins, towers, stars: a sign that someting has as its sign a dolphin or a tower or a star. Other signals warn of what is forbidden in a given place (to enter the alley with wagons, to urinate behind the kiosk, to fish with your pole from the bridge) and what is allowed (watering zebras, playing bowls, burning relatives' corpses)."
"...the embroidered headband stands for extravagence; the gilded palanquin, power, the volumes of Averroes, learning; the ankle bracelet, voluptuousness..."
"Outside, the land stretches empty to the horizon; teh sky opens, with speeding clouds. In the shape that chance and wind give the clouds, you are already intent on recognizing fihures: a sailing ship, a hand, an elephant..."
"Beyond six rivers and three mountain ranges rises Zora..."
"...and he remembers the order by which the copper clock follows the barber's striped awning, then the fountain with the nine jets, the astronomer's glass tower, the melon vendor's kiosk, the statue of the hermit and the lion..."
"...he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him... toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees' jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half hidden by their veils and half-revealed..."
As for my own pathetic cities, here are a few from my campaign:
Veldrek: Moving city of the Veld. After the rainy season each year, Veldrek moves to a different part of the Veld; over the year, the tent city shifts locations to accomodate the different maize harvests.
Chun: The city of candlefish
Phage: City of Mines, centre of the Rainless Coast
Mlton: The Valley of Mills
