Did you draw maps of fictional cities when you were 8 years old? If so, you and I are part of a near-invisible, uncounted minority.
If that's you, I dare you not to be interested in this! Even if you just enjoy maps of other cities, here's a chance to study a city you've never seen before.
For the transit planning course that I'm developing, I've created a fictional city that's designed to present a range of major transit issues, while also being an interesting place. I considered using a real city, but in my experience, planning for a real city slides too quickly to details that obscure the big picture of how a good network works.
My introduction to the fictional city is here: Download Game Newport intro (.doc)
A rich set of map layers, created in Excel, is here: Download Game data backsave (.xls)
Both documents are covered by the assertion of copyright that covers all of this blog's material.
I'd love feedback, especially about these questions:
- Is the city realistic? Does it contravene what you perceive to be "facts" of geology, hydrology, urban economics, bird psychology, or post-1800 urban history?
- Have I omitted information that seems relevant to the basic task of designing a transit network? Note that I'm not asking "have I omitted anything that might be interesting?" The austere novelist and dominatrix who sells rare Asian herbs out of her Craftsman basement at 3315 W 43rd St while also being the invisible brains behind a top eco-fashion label is extremely interesting, but I only had a day to put this together.
Have fun! The premiere of the transit planning course is in Surrey, British Columbia near Vancouver on June 9-10. Last I checked there were a few places left. Details here.
UPDATES:
- Please do not try to comment based only on the illustration above. I'm getting many comments that indicate you've only looked at that image. You would need to download the files and look at the whole thing.
- Apologies to those who had trouble with the .docx and .xlsx versions; these old formats should be more widely compatible and convertible.
- The newest version now has layers for income and existing rail infrastructure.
Finally, I'm surprised at early comments that I don't have enough freeways! It's not a freeway dependent city, by choice. (See the .doc file above for more on the freeway wars.) But freeways that run only on the periphery and don't connect into the core are common enough in cities of this size class. See:
- Victoria, British Columbia, metro pop 330k. Two small shreds of freeway, created only as traffic required.
- Halifax, Nova Scotia, metro pop 372k. Fragments of an outer ring freeway, nothing into the city.
- Christchurch, New Zealand, metro pop 390k at least before February's earthquake. One 5-km shred of freeway approaching from the north (Kaiapoi to Belfast), but it's really just an extended bridge.
- Palm Springs-Indio, California, metro pop 365k. The area is bypassed on the north by Interstate 10, far from most of the urban cores.
- Gold Coast, Queensland, metro pop 591k. A massive highrise hotel/retail core (30-60 storeys) at Surfers Paradise, a highrise business core in adjacent Southport, but the only freeway bypasses 7 km to the west.
The last two of these are not, by any stretch, leftist car-hating enclaves. In fact, they're exceptionally car-dependent. Still, no freeways near the core. It's possible!