I'm math deficient... help me please?

[magnusmalkus]

If a single medium sized creature needs 1,500 sq ft of living space, and i have a city that can comfortably house 6,000 citizens, the city must be 9,000,000 sq ft.

I've drawn the city out. It takes up 746 squares on the map.

How many ft per square is that?

Edit: the 1500 living space takes into account parks and roads and rivers and marketplaces...

 

[fba827]

(never mind)

 

[theredrobedwizard]

110 feet per side.

-TRRW

 

[Nightson]

I don't know where on earth you got 1,500 sq feet per person but it's way, way to high. That would give you a population density of 16/sq mile. New York City would need to be 450,000 sq miles big if that were the case. New York City actually has a population density of 23,000 people per sq mile.

4,000 sq feet sounds like a perfectly reasonable size for a 6,000 person city.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

4,000 sq feet sounds like a perfectly reasonable size for a 6,000 person city.

So your city of 6000 people is about 100ft by 40ft? That seems... cramped.

-TRRW

 

[pawsplay]

I don't know where on earth you got 1,500 sq feet per person but it's way, way to high. That would give you a population density of 16/sq mile.

I think you mean 18,500/sq mile.

 

[Pinotage]

OK. 9000000 square feet is about 3000 ft x 3000 ft for a rectangular area. If you've got 746 squares, that's roughly 27 squares x 27 squares. So each square would be 110 ft. as somebody else mentioned earlier.

Pinotage

 

[arscott]

Though it's probably easier to just fudge the numbers and say that each square = 100 ft. Rough-but-round estimates usually work better in rpgs.

 

[magnusmalkus]

Thanks for all your help folks!

The 1,500 per person comes from the DMG2 (I don't recall if that was feet or square feet... I don't have the book in front of me). They say that number accounts for open spaces (marketplace, rivers, parks, etc...) and makes for spacious living (meaning not overly crowded). The 1,500 can be reduced to 1,000 or even 600 for more crowded conditions.