Celebrim
Legend
So I'm going to assume you'll be able to recognize how radically different what I'm going to describe is from a medieval environment.
A typical elven city won't look like a city. Indeed, an unobservant traveler could walk through an elven city, and never see an elf or realize he's in a city, and walk out the other side (if not noticed and killed without warning by a wary elf).
Elven communities generally only have 1-2 households per square mile. They generally will not put to plow more than 1-4 acres per household. That means that compared a medieval country side where out of every square mile you have about 512 acres under cultivation and maybe 100 acres of wood, in an elven area you'll probably have 620 acres of wood and less than 20 (and often less than) 10 under traditional cultivation. Elven homes and farms are likewise shaped to appear integral to the natural settings, as if they grew or evolved rather than were made. They are often made by training trees or vines to specific shapes using as little cut lumber or shaped stone as is necessary. In the real world, the living bridges of Meghalaya are an example of construction through this technique. Humans who build in this fashion are building for their grand-children or great-grandchildren. But 60 years is just a season of life to an elf.
The first thing to understand is the typical elf is poor. They live lives of fairly extreme poverty and they own very few things. Those things that they do own are very well made, but they don't own much. A typical elven farm will be 1-4 acres of herbs, root and seasonable vegetables. The majority of their subsistence though is by gathering - typically fruits and nuts. One mark of an elfish wood is the presence of comparatively large amounts of chestnut, hickory, almond, walnut, and oak trees - all of which the elf delights in and finds edible. There will also be large amounts of apple, cherry and other fruit bearing trees. But unlike a human orchard with its small regularly planted and carefully stunted trees, an elf orchard is made of trees that appear to be growing wild and naturally. The elves use their great agility, their slender builds, their comfort with heights, and their friendship with living and growing things to harvest right out of the canopy, modifying their environment only slightly to allow access to the upper branches. They also delight in mushrooms and recognize any edible varieties. Dried fruit and nuts are typical winter provisions, and stereotypical elfin style 'iron rations'. They also cultivate various other crops in wild settings, such as berries, onions, chives, and garlic. The result is a highly distributed 'farm' that can sustain only a very low population density and has not nearly the productivity of human farming techniques, but which to casual observation appears to be natural. This is the elfish ideal of gardening, although they often practice different forms in their temple gardens to celebrate and highlight particular features of nature.
A typical elfish city will be about 7 miles across, yet contain in its near 50 square miles no more than 600 to 2000 individuals. A typical human city might crowd the same amount within a wall enclosing no more than 50 acres, with miles of cleared and cultivated land around it. For elves suitable gap of true wildness is regarded as essential between communities. So a 1000 square mile region might contain at most 10,000 elves, between a 1/3rd and 1/10th the population that the same amount of land would sustain for humans depending on the percentage the humans would find arable. It's pretty easy to see then why elves aren't conquering the world, or why humans might feel that they are settling uninhabited wilderness at the same time the elves feel they are being crowded and invaded.
Elven communities are somewhat loosely ordered. Each household is basically sovereign, and no problem is typically treated as pressing unless it involves someone immediately dying. Government might be best described as "government by whomever cares enough to do something". Most decisions that effect the whole community are supposed to be made collectively, but sometimes it can take years to reach a consensus, and often as not that consensus is, "You know, we should just live and let live; you go your way, and I'll go mine." Leaders are basically expected to smooth over arguments, give advice, serve the community, but not take charge unless its an absolute emergency. In an emergency, a community will generally pull together, especially against any outsider. Afterall, most are probably related to each other by close kinship. You might describe a typical community as somewhere between an Amish community and Galt's Gulch, with a nominal feudal Lord who has almost no real power but is very respected in theory.
Elves are xenophobic, in part because they have to be. They are not a durable race. They aren't known for their fortitude or recuperative powers. They are delicate, and their communities are delicate. Human cities look like huge festering reservoirs of filth and disease, and humans look like disease vectors and rapacious predators. They can't afford a plague. They can't easily recover from disaster. What they build over the course of decades can be wrecked in weeks or days or hours. It takes centuries for elfish populations to recover, and by that time usually some other disaster has happened. Trespassers are usually shot first and then investigated, unless they are obviously and completely helpless (in which case, they are usually enspelled and then investigated). Any friend would know better than to walk in uninvited, and would certainly be speaking elfish or sending animals as messengers on ahead of them. Walk into an elf would, and forget the fact they are probably CG, you'll get attacked - usually by something you can't see unless you are very sharp eyed.
The borders of elf land are almost always enchanted. An elf 'wall' is not a physical one. It's made of spells, protective runes, and magical traps designed to confuse, bewilder, and disorient any trespasser. Suddenly appearing thick mists, spells that cause you to lose a sense of direction and walk in circles, spells that cause you to be overcome with weariness and sleep until nightfall, spells that produce fear and panic, spells of forgetfulness, suggestions that they should leave or return to fulfill some duty that seems suddenly utterly important, illusions of nebulous attackers, distortions that cause the wood to appear frightful, and so forth girdle the edges of elf lands. The well-informed, upon seeing such signs would typically get the hint and try to go back the way they came.
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