Giving a fictional city its own flavor.

so i've been designing a city for quite a few months now, off the coast of maine in the southeast.

now, a common obstacle i find is making it have its own flavor and character. most iconic cities have their unique blend of living, whether in chicago or new york. and yet a lot of times i find myself turning this fictional city into what i call "new bosticago"

i find, personally, the best way to avoid this is to make the history of the city in-depth. that way, it's easier to explain what unique habits it has in that context and to conceptualize it in that personal sphere. just my thoughts though.

i'm interested in hearing what you would do in making your city unique. or even, any kind of residential area in general. i know a lot of places are just generic placeholders for adventure, but i'm of the camp that it deserves to be treated like its own character.

then again, just me.

Gangs are a big one. Make a few gangs with some unique ideologies, and it will make the city feel radically different. The problem is that generally that's only important if you're in the city. Unless they're really, really strong, no outsider is going to know anything about them.

Oh, and weather.

I try to start with the people and families that live there—maybe what's unique or even typical about them, who they are, how they came to live there, what facilities they may need, what socioeconomic class they may belong in...

But actually, it took me over a year to get even an inkling of the aesthetic for my fictional city/state, and I'm still working on it. But the characters came first.

From what little experience I have from worldbuilding like this, one way to do it to focus on the buildings. What quirky areas are there that would provide interesting and dyamatic backdrops for scenes? Any local cusine? Yearly celebrations? Landmarks?

Read Invisible Cities and blow reader's minds.

Give the city a quick history, from start to present. Make a questionnaire to fill out and put some depth into it.

When was the city founded? Who founded it? How was the city able to live through all these years, and develop the way it did? Take note of the world around the town; rivers, mountains, forests, wildlife - how did this affect its development?

What kind of people came to the town and for what reasons? America has a huge, deep history of immigrants, so it's very possible to have a mixed town. Does the town, because of any big immigration, "divide" itself by race at all? Is the south part of town dramatically different than the north?

Is the economy good and growing, bad and shrinking, or balanced and stable? What jobs are open there? Is it mostly family businesses, or have corporations made their way in? Think of the economy of the time period you're setting yourself in, as well.

Is the town notable for any achievements? Is it a city that stands on its own merit, or does it rely more on a bigger, nearby city? What cities are nearby that you could compare it to, and what makes it different from those cities?

Using all that information, you can then really decide what the city even looks like. Do they cherish their history? If so, they might have statues of their founder or some kind of landmark to establish that. Does its geographical location affect the layout that much? Where does traffic flow the most? Are houses intertwined with buildings and shops, or are they clearly separated? Is it going to be a small town where you can easily walk to-and-from locations, or is it bigger than that?

When I think about what makes cities unique, I think about those things I notice about the cities I've been in. Which are, primarily: Climate, Geography, and Places. Climate is fairly straightforward. Geography can be a number of different things—how dense are the buildings? How close are people to nature? What's the layout of the land? But it can also be specific things, like San Francisco's notoriously steep hills, or how in my college town, Flagstaff, the roads being build with the mountain meant they often had a "can't get there from here" layout.

But places are what I really remember. What are the little, tucked-away restaurants with amazing food? Where are the art museums? What about the tiny parks of a few trees and a flat expanse of grass in a busy urban center? Where would you take someone who'd never been to that city before? What are the statues? What are the small businesses? What are the events? That sort of thing.

I believe there is infinitely much more to a city's "impression" than just the sum of its culture, cuisine, "where art the art museums?" and the what-not. It is also the unseen attitude that drives these details. Like Paris for example I find romantic; it exudes self-expression and pride in the unique culture and architecture, in its very air. The few days I have been there have more than made its feelings in my memories, and I'd love to go back someday. A piece of music sometimes reminds me; the Blue Danube.

I shall elaborate on this, after I get some beauty sleep.

edited 12th Jan '12 9:37:15 PM by QQQQQ

I find that weather is pretty important in setting the mood of a city. Victorian London's known for its fog, Tokyo for its windswept cherry blossoms, South Park for its year-round snow. Pay attention to the weather in your city, and try to make it match the sort of mood you are aiming for.

I'm used to doing fantasy cities with glorious set-pieces, so I'm not really all that much use here...

Well... you could focus on how geography has shaped the city. That's always important in real life...

remember it's the people that separate a city from a ruin. The sorts of people a city attracts and where they come from a going to affect a city. Chicago has it's connection to Organised Crime, Las Vegas with it's Gamblers and Entertainers and New Orleans is, prior to Hurricane Katrina, synonymous with Jazz Musicians.

Think about the economics.

How do they make their money? What do they trade in? Who makes these things? How powerful are they? Are they unionized? Are they monolithic corporations with dissatisfied workers? What ethnic groups tend to make these things?

Food. Never underestimate the role food plays in an area's culture. The feedback loop between the two? Vital! Think of something you'd only get in that climate - then add something you can only get via trade. Mix with an immigrant population culture: serve!

edited 13th Jan '12 5:41:54 AM by Euodiachloris

Blargle. I fail at this horrendously. =.=

Think of your city as a character or a living thing. What kind of person are they? What sort of beast?

That sounds obtuse, but I mean it.

Take a trip to Maine and go to various towns.

I wouldn't. A city is too large and too complex a thing to have a single distinctive character. Cities divide themselves. Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Korea. Boroughs. Districts. Downtown and uptown. The bad part and the good part.

Trying to ascribe character to anything larger than a single functional object, a building, a ship, an aircraft, something contiguous of design and construction, is an exercise in poor generalization.

edited 14th Jan '12 5:53:41 PM by Night

Hey, novels are divided into chapters but everyone agrees that there's a general feel to them no matter how much time the plot spans.

OP, don't make it drastically different in character from other cities in the area. Know the demographics, their roots, when which group emigrated and what they brought to the table, who owns what, what religious denominations are the most prevalent, whether there are major universities, what the art scene is like, etc. How big a city are you looking at?

Are gang ideologies really unique in any instance? As far as I know, they're all about making as much money as possible with least exposure possible.

@Night: No one said it had to have a single trait. The fact that some cities have huge splinters or divisions within its population could even be considered a trait in and of itself: it suggests a backstory, a history of movement, it could lead to conflict with the story or among characters, etc.

edited 14th Jan '12 8:32:26 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

I'd also note a good number of novels where it's clear the general feel is based on a few passages rather than an understanding of the whole. I do believe Upton Sinclair lamented that fact once. Simply because we have bad habits doesn't make them valid.

@Betsy: Perhaps, but if you loosen up the argument like that you can also start saying that all cities are pretty much the same, because they all have to fulfill similar needs and must do so in similar ways. There's really not much difference in the buildings in Chinatown and the rest of NYC or San Fran.

Hm. Such as?

@Night: But I wouldn't say that, because all cities are not the same. Yes, they all have the same or similar functions, but a city in Greece is different from one in the Czech Republic because of what JHM and the others are referring to: character, culture, history, industry, architecture, flavor.

Although, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

edited 14th Jan '12 10:19:28 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

first off, i wasn't expecting this kind of feedback! so hey, i'd have to thank you guys on that one! it's actually not for me, as i've already been on the trail of developing this city for some time now, but i was curious to see how you would go on this path of development yourselves. and of course, how you would help others.

that said, there was some good advice here and i think it wouldn't be too out of line to take it

as for night, i actually agree with you. to make a city one thing would be betrayal to real cities, of which i belong to one. it's more of many different things, coming together to make one beautiful thing. even in manhattan, there's a big difference between harlem and soho. or little italy, or greenwich village.

my city isn't one homogenous object, it's separated into various socioeconomic and cultural basis. up north you have the upper crust who send their children to the famous new england colleges of privilege, with their sweeping architecture and mainly protestant background. the most southeast area is the more industrial areas, focused on the shipping and trade routes the port city brings in. it's not particularly beautiful and has been in need a touch up for some time now, but it brings in the majority of money for the city. their diet is, unsurprisingly, well founded in seafood. because of immigration factors, the majority of people working here usually have irish or italian descent. they are also, unsurprisingly, more catholic than up north.

that's just the start of it really. i could go on, but then i'be writing walls upon walls about the city's differing structures. for reference, the character lives slightly north the infamous southeastern borough. due to economic factors in the past, and the unhealthy influence of ancient demonic activity, it's become a hotbed for organized crime and aggressive crime after aggressive crime. the poor are sent there to live, as they have little else to go, and then eventually fall apart. one district in particular, blue moon hill, is sworn up and down to be "cursed"; one should cross themselves in the area, lest they become tainted. its history is...ugly. and violent.

this does wonders for the people living there, you can imagine.

and so on, and so forth. alas, i'm not sure if i can get it to levels of a real city's divisiveness. but goddammit, i'm trying.

edited 15th Jan '12 6:52:44 AM by IBLiS

"Hm. Such as?"

I already cited The Jungle. I'd toss in most of Tom Clancy's works as well. We call them thrillers, but, Executive Orders, The Bear and The Dragon, The Sum of All Fears, they're really not thrillers so much as three hundred or more pages of setup for the hundred pages of thriller material at the end. (This isn't a bad description of the genre in general, to be honest, but at least Patriot Games and some of Clancy's other work spread the action about. Rainbow Six is two completely separate novels, maybe three, which really only merge in the last hundred pages.) I can probably come up with other authors and other works but frankly it's midnight, ask me tomorrow.

@Betsy: They're different, but they're also very much the same. They house people and people live and work in them and there are only so many ways for such a thing to be done. Streets and alleys. Buildings composed of right angles. Rectangular doorways. Two hinges on the doors. We will use bedrooms as living space, but we don't like to. We tend not to want to live in the same spaces we work in. The commonalities are on a deeper and more fundamental level than the differences.