Looking for advice on the size of a city

[Asmor]

I'm working on fleshing out an area of my campaign setting, because I'm actually going to end up using it soon... New campaign!

Right now, I'm working on a city called Arbok's Rest. It's located at a large oasis in a dangerous, but heavily trafficked, desert. Originally it was just a supply point where caravans could stop and resupply, but it's evolved into a destination in its own right and a bustling trade center.

So I'm looking at coming up with specifics from the advice and guidelines given in the DMG and DMG2. My first instinct was to call it a small city, so I rolled some dice and decided on a population of 8,000 people, and thus an area of about .4 square miles (which I rounded up to half a square mile).

Now, my problem is that while it is centered on an oasis, there just isn't a lot of arable land there to support this population. Of course, the caravans would mitigate this somewhat, but nonetheless this is an unusual city that defies the standards.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I'm curious how large you'd think this city should be (going by the definitions on the table on page 137 of the DMG). Large town? Small city? Large city? Something else?

 

[blargney the second]

16000 people per square mile is actually very dense by modern standards! Check it out.
-blarg

 

[S'mon]

16,000/sq m is unusually sparse by medieval standards! Typical was more like 50,000 /sq m, twice that in the densest slums.

To OP, I think a town of 8,000 is plausible, esp if there's some scrub land where goats can graze, fig trees can grow, et al.

 

[phindar]

How many acres of farmland per person is necessary to be sustainable? (The only figure I found online was 1.2 acres, but that's to maintain current American dietary standards.)

 

[helium3]

I like how S'mon and Blargney directly contradict each other in sequential posts.

I think it doesn't need arable land. It's a trading city built up around a valuable oasis. People come to engage in business and the city surives on taxes and revenue generated by middle-men. Perhaps there was arable land way back in the past, but none of that is cultivated any longer as it's all been used for buildings.

Of course, the city would be in serious trouble if it were isolated for some reason.

 

[awayfarer]

It's not unfeasible that there's water underground and that folks could be using that for irrigation. Failing that, is the area near any mountains? If its not too late to drop a river nearby, you could argue that there is a short growing season when the river floods due to snowmelt off the mountains. Thats basically what the deal is with the Nile in Egypt.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

16000 people per square mile is actually very dense by modern standards! Check it out.
-blarg

Modern cities, especially Western ones and American ones first and foremost, are incredibly wasteful with their space when compared to medieval cities. Vast streets for all those cars to drive on, spatious houses with gardens for single families, buildings for working being distinct for buildings to live in, and so forth. Medieval cities had few of those luxuries, and thus a much higher population density.

 

[Kris]

I found this webpage a while back:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

I don't know how useful it will be (or how historically accurate it is), but it might be of interest.

 

[Asmor]

The size estimate was based off a figure in the DMG2... It suggests each citizen should take up 1,500 sq ft. A little multiplication and conversion from there and I arrived at my figure.

Helium, they didn't contradict eachother at all. They just pointed out the difference between modern and midieval settings.

Thanks for the advice guys, I guess I'll just stick with the 8,000 figure.

 

[Nyeshet]

That site is actually rather good for this, as it is based upon tax documents from a high middle ages french city. I'm not sure if it was Paris or another city.

One of the first things you will notice is the huge number of shoemakers and priests. The second could be modified down a bit (unless, of course, religion is as major a part of your campaign world as it was for middle ages Europe). Shoemaking, it seems, was the middle ages equivalent of burger flipping. It was a ready but poor source of money as its product was always in demand but rather common (both in quantity and quality).