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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clavis" data-source="post: 4328861" data-attributes="member: 31898">Medieval population densities for urban areas tended towards about 20,000 to 30,000 per square mile. Yes, 20,000 to 30,000 per square mile. People lived on top of each other, and whole families lived in one room. The density of the towns was due to many factors, including the ease of defending narrow streets versus wide ones (medieval streets could be as little as 5 feet wide), the limited land that was granted to cities by their charters, the inefficiency of pre-industrial transportation, and the fact that medieval people actually liked living close to each other in large extended families.A medieval town of 3,000 could easily fit into a space about 600 x 600 feet. The streets will always be clogged with people during the day, and it will be unbelievably noisy and filthy by modern standards.Also, remember that however big you make a pre-industrial urban population, you need 7-9 times that amount of farmers to feed it, preferably within 1 day's travel by wagon. A town will be surrounded by farmland, and those farmers will expect to be able to take refuge in the city (or nearby castles) if they are attacked. There should be a village of about 300 people or so every mile. To make it easy, I surround major cities with villages and farmland out to about 20 miles, smaller cities with 10 miles of farmland, and towns with about 5 miles.</blockquote>