Transportation in a tree house city

Hello again guys! I was wondering if I could have some suggestions on how to get around a forest city. I'll start with what I have so far:

There is a sentient race in my world who live and move about in the trees, eventually building shelters there. The race can maneuver through just fine but I had trouble figuring out how groups, elderly, or other terrestrial races would get around.

So far I've thought of a cable car transit system running on the branches but haven't given that too much though. What I ask for help with is:

• People on land more or less started with horse drawn carriages then used combustion engine automobiles, is there a way I do a simple but logical progression like that for this setting?

• similar to bikes and cars and motorcycles, what are some personal transportations that would be local in the treetops (Note these are huge trees and branches, the technologies definitely don't have to be real).

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv

Uhm, cable cars might be a little high tech for a tree top town. Not to mention heavy considering they're made of metal and various other bits that some trees are probably unable to support. But in any case, there's people in South America who travel down mountains using a system of... I dunno what you'd call them, those cables where you can hook one or two people on at a time and just slide the way down. And if the trees are close together it makes more sense to just build wood bridges rather than cable cars. Which is what happens in the actual tree top dwellings that actually exist. And would make a more realistic but smaller town than you're thinking, I think.

Well yes, I'm aware of rope bridges ala Fortree City from Pokemon, I even seen some real world socities live on trees big enough to simply use overlapping branches as bridges. I was thinking about mass transit and personal vechicles in a tree city.

Zipline? Also good point with the heaviness of metal cable cars, I guess in my mind I imaginged the car itself to be a lighter material like timber.

Also I should mention the ideas in this thread need not be limited by power source as the society eventually gains the steam engine then electric motor. Also Im not against magic as a power source as long as the tech is semi-plausible.

edited 9th Jul '14 11:24:57 AM by JDTcreates

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv

Looking back there are a few more points about the background that might help:

• The "Progression of transportation in a treetop city" might have been a more accurate title for the thread. The sentient species/race that first inhabited the area were perfectly content to simply climbing around the humongous trees and making simple huts as shelters between branches. As other species of this land came to together to form peace treaties to prevent future violence. Part of this provisions would be that major cities of nations would accommodate most species including treetop ones. Ergo transit and personal vehicles that stuck as they also helped members of the treetop species who couldn't climb around.
• As for tech levels, this is where progression comes in. I am looking for ideas at various levels of technology since my story will be able to look this civilization, throughout the ages, from the steam engine equivalent, to the modern, or even post cyber/magic punk.
• With that I'd there to be a discussion of various tech that would be kinda plausible to move people in a treetop city. The energy demands are less important as they can simply be built in a age where magic energy can be used as a power source if need be. I much rather look at the design ideas of what type of vehicles would naturally come into being in this type of setting

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv

Zip-lines could work if moored around sufficiently strong branches, the only problem being that the line can only go in one direction at a time, unlike bridges.

That can be fixed easily enough, with ziplines going both ways and simple rope-and-pulley elevators to get to the starting height.

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

Apparently canopy tours where routes through woodlands and mountains make use of ziplines to have people travel so that could be early or small time transit.

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv

The lines have to be offset by at least the width of a zipline platform mind you.

Well, obviously :P.

But a network of such zip-lanes would work very well for "pedestrian" traffic and would at least significantly simplify the logistics of transporting goods. Not enough to keep your tree city from being a logistical nightmare, of course, that's going to be a major thing no matter what you do.

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

Poking holes in your ideas, hopefully helping:

What's stopping them from using the ground? Can't they just have a system of elevator -> ground transport -> elevator? It may sound more complicated, but we already do a variant of that with the New York Subway, among others.

Why are they stuck in trees in the first place? Do they have some special muscles that work better when hanging vs standing? Can they stand? (If they can stand, they can walk on solid ground.)

How will these people do cross-continental travel? The plains have very few trees. I imagine if transportation is tree-based, the plains would be like crossing an ocean for us. Same for mountains, ice sheets, deserts, and (of course) oceans.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

Maybe they're like chimpanzees, they can go about on the ground, but not very fast, and they feel safer in the trees, I mean, if your option of danger for the women and kids was the occasional leopard or a pack of lions or hyenas, which would you choose?

edited 10th Jul '14 1:23:39 PM by MattII

If the trees are sufficiently large and strong (I'm presuming values beyond most Earth trees), I could see simple cable cars working, I think.

Otherwise, what about some sort of moving walkway (once they have the technology for it, of course): motors drive systems of belts and gears, which in turn run large, flat belts—perhaps of some woven material—on which people can stand and be transported along, with rails on either side and stations along the way. The result might be something like a cross between a highway and an open-air subway.

Supporting such a system might be an issue, but they don't seem to lack for wood, so they might well be able to engineer appropriate support.

My Games & Writing

Well as for the race who invented these treetop cities...they're a species of human(the only major one in this setting, the planet Kaf) that adapted to an arboreal lifestyle. Thanks to the theme park version of convergent evolution, they developed sentience and shelter building but kept them in the trees because that's where they are comfortable. I based them a lot of on Ardi the possible human ancestor who like the race, had a divergent prehensile big toe to climb in trees but could also walk upright on the ground if they needed to.

As for traveling to other places to increase their territory, my idea was this. Normally the idea of regular humans expanding their range typically invokes images of tree being cut down but for Kaf humans its really the reverse as they breed (fantasy) species of trees beyond the forest where they settle.

edited 10th Jul '14 8:24:35 PM by jdtcreates

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv

If they're building forests, it'll take years (decades, maybe) to grow trees that are strong enough to support a human-sized animal. So you'll have to take that into account.

And again, keep climate in mind: Trees won't survive everywhere, and the best place to plant trees where there aren't any might be the plains (the best example I can think of is trees planted around farms), but that would be a waste of perfectly good farmland. Mountains might work too, but only in some parts where the slopes aren't too steep. (And I imagine rainforests will have the biggest urban-like sprawls. But watch out for the dry season! That'll be disastrous and annual, on the level of flooding along some major rivers or drought in California.)

Also, you'll have to think about the different kinds of trees. Here on Earth we have big trees, small trees, wide trees, narrow trees, evergreens, leafy trees, trees with needles... And that just scratches the surface. The Other Wiki is your friend in this case. Same for Google.

Of course all this is just to support your transportation! Basically, "Learn everything you can."

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

To me this just doesn't make much sense. The only reason our ancestors lived in trees was because of the safety from predators it offered. When your culture reaches the point where they can protect themselves from wild animals, living in trees only prevents your culture from growing.

In one of the posts you said that you'd like to take the technology of this culture as far as to modern times and beyond. To reach this point they need to do stuff like 1. cultivate land (large, stable settlements require stable source of food), 2. mine resources for industry (you need materials to build stuff + fuel for vehicles and other machines), 3. a working transportation/logistics system.

All of the above requirements are much more difficult to achieve if your settlements are built up in trees. The amount of weight the trees can support sets additional limits to stuff like architecture and transportation so there needs to be a really good reason why these people haven't just started to build on ground—especially if they go as far as growing trees beforehand in the territories they want to expand to. This, by the way, adds yet another limitation to the development of their culture, since humans can typically survive in very harsh environments, but giant trees, I'd imagine, need a lot more specific conditions to thrive.

I can see a small-scale Tree Top Town working just fine but if you want a fully functional city, you're going to have to do some serious handwaving. In fantasy A Wizard Did It is of course always an option, though there still needs to be a reason why these people still live in trees even though it makes everything so much more complicated.

edited 10th Jul '14 6:23:55 PM by Paradisesnake

I've added an arboreal civilization into one of my settings too, so I've spent some time considering these things :P.

My arboreals (lizard people) live in the trees because their homeland is a giant, near-endless magical mangrove swamp. Aside from the trees, there's only water, mud, muddy water and occasional patches of quicksand (and leeches. Big ones.). So living on ground level was pretty much out from the start for the lizardkin. They're also pretty well adapted for climbing, so sheltering in the trees came natural to them. They managed to go from hunter-gatherers to an actual civilization only when they developed magical means of shaping the trees they live in, causing branches to extend and form bridges between adjacent trees, or to widen and act as platforms for further construction. As a result, they are a fairly advanced culture that has not only never developed metalworking...they never even got to pottery (the wood-shaping magic is so common among them that it's a lot easier to magic something into the proper form than to set up a kiln up in a potentially flammable treehouse). So basically, a whole civilization running on Bamboo Technology and doing pretty well with it.

Now the thing is...this only works and avoids massive logical holes because, well, A Wizard Did It. Or more to the point, because magic is used to fill in the gaps.

Without the benefit of magic to bend or break the rules a bit, things get kinda tricky :P.

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

• Kaf humans are smaller than Earth humans, roughly 3'4 /102cm to 4'6 /137cm and weigh 97-132lbs/44-60kg

• As a fantasy world(with a little scifi here and there)there are multiple reasons I made up to circumvent the tree problem. Kaf humans lived with trees so long they've been selectively breeding new amazing species. Not to mention being a woodland creature is great when you know wood faye or dyrads whose spellcraft is made for this kind of stuff when breeding hits a rockblock. In short, if structural support is a problem, genetic engineering, alien biology, or magic, other speculative settings get away with worse.

• One great thing about Okamiden is Yakushi Village that has cliff faced and high up houses that totally fit the setting. Mix that with real life tree houses and mansions and urban gardens, you have plausible agriculture for the species on humongous trees. Also nothing says they can't take jobs as miners or trade with land based species once they advance enough.

• Humans can live in harsh environments but most do not want to, ergo why India, China, and New York City are almost filled to the brim while Upper Canada and Russia have barely anybody even though there's plenty of space. Not to mention Kaf Humans live in a world with other sentients, cliff walls are a viable alternative in certain places, and fantasy tree afore mentioned.

• Advanced Tree top cities aren't really more complicated, just need a different mind set. So far cable cars are viable, we just need some analog to bikes. I mean if need another sentient beings vehicle, like the faye's hovercraft would become popular but why not speculate about what the tree top city would come up with before that?

• I just wanted it to be clear that the big versions of these cities would have various levels from canopy to understory to even the ground.

• Like Matt's aboreals this culture takes Bamboo tech to its logical conclusion while integrating local beings magic and their technology.

• So for those who say magic, handwaves...well let's think up some handwaves, I think earlier I said that magic powered devices were fine, so that implies traditional spell craft if its creative enough! For example, if fuel cells or a generator could be powered by mana, then you have a energy source for tree top city that can't have a power grid for whatever reason. Let's get the ball rolling with some imagination.

• Even though I brought up a lot of counter arguments, I am glad that people have thought about the possible holes in my idea. Its just that since real tree top cities are interesting, I see no reason why speculative setting should be limited by realism, just that it should get extra point if it manages to agree with it on something.

edited 10th Jul '14 10:10:53 PM by jdtcreates

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv

I'm sure I'll come up with something to suggest for your other points, but for now I'm gonna focus on your last one:

I see no reason why [a] speculative setting should be limited by realism.

Because Most Writers Are Human and, by extension, Most Readers Are Human. So the more grounded your story is in realistic fact, the easier it'll be for your fellow (real-world) humans to swallow.

It's not that you should be limited by realism, per se; more that you should have one foot in the realistic so your readers aren't lost. See also: Tropes Are Tools.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

I do agree with this statement, I only suggested that it can be applied even in fantastic settings and can work with a handwave if need be like soft sci fi. An ice dragon is easy an idea to get across but a dragon that breathes spores of ice nucleating bacteria spores has the same effect and might introduce the audience to ice bacteria in real life. With a fantastic tree top city, they might get interested in real tree houses and in the future one could be inspired to make a working version or something.

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv

So here's what we have so far: Par the course for Tree top towns, Kaf humans live in tree houses, some in cliff wall suspended huts. Rope bridges and ladders connect to each other and to ground levels. Of course they don't all stick strictly to Bamboo technology.

The bigger megacities of this nature (aka Tree Top New York City) with huge trees bigger than anything on Earth, they are able to employ cable cars(not necessarily metal)for fast/large transport. The natives can also simply climb with ease or use personal grappling hook pistols for even faster travel. I love the moving walkway ideas for busy streets and zip-lines. What i'll be thiking about now is besides grapple guns, I wonder what other personal vechiles, like a bike or car that could travel on branches the size and strength on concrete streets on trees the size and with of skyscrapers.

P.S. Also I think I finally gave a decent description of the otherworldly setting I was trying to convey in this post.

All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv