Designing a "real life" town/city?

So, I have this story built on the likes of Tokusatsu shows. It isn't supposed to be a Deconstruction, so I don't plan to explore the real life consequences of monsters attacking people and guys in super powered suits fighting them.

I tend to read a thing or two about the cities I lived and am even thinking about driving through the town I live now in the order to get an idea of how the buildings are disposed between each other; where each store is and things like that. I also thought cheking the phone list was a good idea too. What do you guys think?

Streetview is your friend here.

Playing some Sim City might also help. You'll usually have residential areas concentrated in one part, with a smattering of commercial areas within and around the residential, and industrial is off on its own, either far away from the residential or insulated from it by a layer of commercial in-between. Any residential next to industrial is probably gonna be what's typically thought of as "the bad part of town".

I've never lived in or been to a city that has residential areas concentrated in one part.

It helps to understand not only how real-life cities are laid out, but also how they got that way. To develop Georgeport and its suburbs, I considered how cities in the Mid-Atlantic United States were typically laid out when founded and how they changed in response to things like industrialization, domestic and international migrations, municipal mergers, changing fashions in urban development, the freeway revolts, and deindustrialization. The chicanery of municipal officials and their cronies comes up at one point.

Drwhom—can you link us to some of the resources you used?

If you want resources check out "City: a Guide For The Urban Age" by P.D. Smith. It has some neat stuff on how cities came to be, and its drawbacks.

1. Edit: The book may not specify on relevant location.

Edited by Hermes on Sep 12th 2018 at 9:00:53 AM