Population vs. Housing

vstraydogstrutv

Hey all. I've been trying to figure out reasonable formulas to figure how many physical homes (residences) would be in a settlement so when I'm drawing my maps I can have a grasp of the scope and size of a settlement. This, mind you, is a direct result of my need to micromanage my campaigns because I'm crazy and apparently like to do waaaaay too much work on my campaigns. So here's my line of thought, and I appreciate anyone who can weigh in with good opinions:

The setting is medieval fantasy, D&D 3.5 to be specific.

Thorps, hamlets, and even small villages are usually agricultural centers that have large familial units who work to plant, cultivate, farm, ranch, and harvest goods for themselves and larger portions of whatever kingdoms they're a part of. Once we get into larger villages, towns, cities, and metropolii(?metropolises?metropodopoliseses?) the familial units taper down in scale - on average.

What I've come up with:

A thorp will have at least 20 people as designated by the DM's Guide. Divide the population by the average familial unit which could contain between, say, 5-10 persons. To keep it simple, let's say 7 on average. This means that the thorp will have approximately 3 homes (not necessarily including businesses, churches, etc.)

Hamlet at least 81 population, 6 in home per average, 14 homes total.

Village 401, 5 in home per average, 80 homes.

Small town 901 pop, 4 in home p/aver, 225 homes.

Large town 2001 pop, 4 in home p/a, 500 homes.

Small city 5001 pop, 3 in home p/a, 1667 homes.

Large city 12001 pop, 3 in home p/a, 4000 homes.

Metropolis 25001 pop, 3 in home p/a, 8334 homes.

These all seem relatively plausible to me, but again, any further insight or suggestion is welcome! Thanks!

vstraydogstrutv

I also want to point out that I'm aware that as far as etymology is concerned, a thorp is merely another word for hamlet or even village, I'm just running numbers off of what the DM's Guide provides.

arsheesh

Great question vstray, and I think your estimates are pretty good. There have actually been a few discussion on this question over at the Cartographers Guild, most recently in "this thread":http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?15575-Merridia, might be worth checking into.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

vstraydogstrutv

Thanks arsheesh. You are always wonderful for information. I just recently started an account over there since I've been trying to learn map making techniques, but I haven't had much time to dig deep into it.
________________________________________________________________________________

"Shared Creations":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shared-creations

GamingMegaverse

Here is vstray's campaign
"Shared Creations":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shared-creations
I agree, the estimates seem really good to me.
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/a-god-rebuilt

vstraydogstrutv

Thanks killer. (That's what I get for posting my tag on my tablet. Stupid automatic space insertions >.

vstraydogstrutv

That's definitely some enlightening stuff, Arsheesh. It seems that they put a lot of emphasis on population per acre, which scares me a bit because I haven't really learned how to visualize how big something is in relation to miles/meters. Such is the folly of a person learning how to make maps, I suppose. They also had some interesting points on how the poor districts would be very condensed and would likely have a lot of people living in a residence, which in essence means that you could theoretically include fewer homes than the formula supposes. Just something I would have to keep in mind. Fortunately, the region I'm building now consists of nothing bigger than a large village, so I won't have to worry too much.

If you have some tips on how to define sizes of acres and such they'd be much appreciated! My knowledge of spacing goes as far as 5 ft squares on a 1 inch battlemat, so any help on grasping scope would rock.

Baalshamon

I have worked in Land Surveying and Civil Engineering. I got to say that the numbers you have are a great start. When it comes to figuring out numbers of houses compared to people you need to consider lifestyle. In poor districts you will always see more people per home as you will see on farms with large families. The wealthier the area the bigger the houses and quite often the numbers drop dramatically.

If you look at the US today we see and average of 2.4 people per home. Now look at the worst areas of LA and you see and average of 7.8 people per home. Move to china and the houses get alot smaller along with the numbers of people per home rising to 8.3.

Also remember a home could be an appartment building with dozens of homes under one structure.


Ultimately I think your numbers will work for a good fantasy setting but if you want to break it down to even more detail then consider the neigborhoods and culture of the people. This will mean modifying those numbers to fit each community based on the community needs.

In America we meansure population per square mile. That is a little harder to picture as you dont know number of structures per square mile.

As for Acres. an acre is 660 feet x 60 feet
640 square acres per square mile or in mapping terms a Section
500 people per square mile in a small city/town is common
5000 people per square mile in a large city is common
Rural areas tend to drop to less than 50 people per square mile with huge areas a farmland/forest dropping the numbers down to less than 10.

Hope the numbers help.


Final note. Always leave 8-12% of building abandoned or unoccupied. This represents the ebbs and flows of population centers. If you look at France for example. when a home is left unoccupied for more than a month, squatters can legally move in until the owner returns. Throughout Europe it was not uncommon for squatters to pop into an abandoned home or one in which the owner was off traveling or fighting a war.

Good luck
Steve

"Star Trek Late Night":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/star-trek-late-night

Baalshamon

I forgot to mention.

You need to look at how populated you want your world to be. 25,000 for a metropolis is about the same levels as we saw during the Sumerian Empire. Very low numbers indeed.

Most cities throughout Renaissance Europe had a population in excess of 100,000 with Rome and Paris closer to 250,000.

Just some food for thought

vstraydogstrutv

Awesome information, Steve, thanks a lot!

Beaumains

I too was reminded of what Stephen more-or-less pointed out. I figure you can estimate that well enought with your original suppositions Stray: for poor districts, take your 3/home avg, but stack your homes on top of each other, so you effectively have 6-9 people per building. Similarly for the super wealthy, assume that their homes are worth at least 2-3 average homes, so that space-wise, their places have only 1-2 ppl/home. Assuming a bell curve or double bell curve in your population economy you can effecively estimate the overall space of a community directly from your formula. If your population is wealthier or poorer than average, you can inflate or deflate your city's overall size by a comparable amount. For example, if you know that your city will take up 1 million sq ft, and that ~60% of the population is below the average income, that creates a simplistic wealth difference of (wealthy% - poor%) = 40% - 60% = -20%; so you can plausibly make your city ~20% smaller by size than the average (1 million) at 800k sq ft. At your discretion you can opt that economic distribution isn't _that_ influetial, and cut the simplistic wealth difference in half, which in this case would be 10%; or you can rule that it gets cut for positive differences, and not (or exaggerated) for negative ones.

Someone call me out if this sounds completely left field here.

BTW: yoink!

-Beaumains

P.S. completely with you on the "crazy and apparently like to do waaaaay too much work on my campaigns" bit.

Beaumains

Also, thanks Stephen for shedding light on some of those more historical population figures.