Is Negav Too Small?

Recently I've been thinking about the size of Negav and Archmage Bael's past comments that 90 sq. miles isn't very big. I know the map's size isn't all that accurate, at least, I think that's a commonly used excuse I hear for it, but at the same time, I think we commonly use the argument that Felarya is absolutely massive as well, and so I must wonder, is Negav too small?

I looked around wikipedia and many cities in America span well over 100 square miles. I know others cities are much smaller than 90 square miles, but Negav is often emphasized for how big it is. It's even mentioned as busy metropolis, with "All manner of gleaming towers, imposing temples, bustling markets, noisy taverns, mage academies, and exotic shops". But at 90 square miles, that doesn't even come close to what we qualify as a metropolis.

Some say that Negav develops vertically, but I don't know, some of the things described, like the bustling markets, wouldn't be able to develop vertically. So do you think Negav is too small, or that we overestimate how big Felarya really is?

I was always confused by the term 'metropolis' refering to Negav, a metropolis is a captial city right?....and Negav is the capital of...what exactly?

The Negavians don't really own anything outside the city borders. There is no 'Negavian Country' that the city lords over, complete with little towns that extend from it. there's the Chomikai commons but that's really just 'Safer Felarya.' since in that region it seems to be a free for all between the Isolon fist, bandits, adventurers, the creatures living at Motamo docks and possibly other independent settlements. There seems to be no stability there so negavians surely can't really own it, at best their troops have a strategic foothold there.

So it seems Negav city is the capital of...Negav city?

Perhaps only the Magiocrats call negav a metropolis, they seem arrogant enougth to believe they control more than they actually do.

I don't think Negav is actually surposed to be equal to our cities on 21st century earth, it's only "big" in relation to the other settlements in Felarya. In reality it's proberly exactly the size one might expect from a city from the 16th century.

That would be true, if Negav didn't have a Dimensional Gate. Supposedly, there's a big influx of people from other worlds, good being exchanged, and all that, and so 90 square miles seems pretty tiny for a city that, allegedly, has so much traffic.

90 square miles isn't very big, I'll give you that. Vertical developments would have to be a bit of a challenge, too. We can say it was built on rocky hills, which would make building vertically a slight bit easier, but they aren't supposed to be living inside roman insulae or arabian tower blocks either.

On the other hand, the bigger you make Negav, the bigger you gotta consider the Isolon Eye's influence. So there's that, too.

Shady Knight wrote:

So do you think Negav is too small, or that we overestimate how big Felarya really is?

Personally, I think neither.

Negav isn't too small. A city like Houston, Texas can measure 600 square miles while housing 2.000.000 people. Shanghai is 6.400 square miles and 20.000.000 people. On the other hand... Baltimore and Seattle both have around 85 square miles and house 600.000 people. Smaller, yes. But no one in their right mind would call Baltimore or Seattle "small" cities.

Making Negav bigger won't give any credence to Felarya being bigger. The size of Negav is not indicative of the size of Felarya, but rather the difficulty in expanding any further.

If you increase its size to 6500 square miles and 20M people, the size of Shanghai proper, the situation changes, because now we know it's possible to grab and hold to that much land with that kind of manpower. If you instead reduce it to a 3 square miles of fortification bordered with rivers, and 50K people crammed in before counting military personnel, like in SDF Macross, Felarya looks about as forbidding as space (with hostile giants).

Shady Knight wrote:

Supposedly, there's a big influx of people from other worlds, good being exchanged, and all that, and so 90 square miles seems pretty tiny for a city that, allegedly, has so much traffic.

The gate traffic is not gonna be extremely relevant; the area around the gate is gonna be busier than a sandwich made of Indian airports, and distance considered, it's not convenient for it to spill into the walls. It's too far, and there'd be a permanent massive bottleneck at the entrance.

Come to think of it, should the gate have a district of its own around it?

Even with that Icle, I still kind of Agree with shady and archmage that Negav...Kind of looks bigger then it said measurement wise. Singapore would probably be the best city/state to compare with it. Speaking of vertical building. Is negav built on top of an older version of it self which is subterran or it is going from the ground up. This always confuses me with how much people it fits yet for some reason it sounds like it has more room but at the same time it doesn't. I dunno, i just think it could be a bit bigger for what it has, and i could elaborate if I wasn't so out of it. So i'll do some research on both sides and see if it would really make a difference like stab has been saying.

I always just relied on that map Karbo drew several years ago. But yeah, now that it's brought to my attention, I never did think how big it should be, or could be for that matter.

Well you all know my opinion.

Not like I haven't voiced it over and over again. So I suppose whatever I say would be like  beating a dead horse. I say increasing the size to at least 160 sq miles would be better.

Not to mention all the rich folk who supposedly have vast tracts of land within the city borders already?

Well I agree, looking back on the map, we can increase the size of Negav a bit. And the term Metropolis is probably mis-used here indeed ^^;

To put it in perspective, Negav is only slightly bigger than the town I'm currently living in. It's not a small town by any means, but it is a little weird that this heavily fortified city is only a tad bigger than the place I'm living in.

Shady Knight wrote:

To put it in perspective, Negav is only slightly bigger than the town I'm currently living in.  It's not a small town by any means, but it is a little weird that this heavily fortified city is only a tad bigger than the place I'm living in.

Fortified city are not known to be specially big.

Maybe not, but I don't think ye olden fort cities had a warp gate that give you a big influx of off worlders, essentially foreigners, that is used as a big aspect of its economy, or let you do what could be the interdimensional equivalent of international trading. That is, if Negav's economy and influx of travelers works that way of course.

Shady Knight wrote:

Maybe not, but I don't think ye olden fort cities had a warp gate that give you a big influx of off worlders, essentially foreigners, that is used as a big aspect of its economy, or let you do what could be the interdimensional equivalent of international trading.  That is, if Negav's economy and influx of travelers works that way of course.

Many fortified cities were doing international trading and some were ports. I doubt the gate influx even if it allow to travel from a world to another match many of our modern airport or is superior to older trading system. Contrary to the other gate traffics are not regular

Quote :

Fortified city are not known to be specially big

Where is exactly is this information coming from?

I'd imagine you'd say that because its only logical to assume that. Building a massive wall around a massive city requires massive resources and manpower.

So its only logical to further assume that countries and governments would heavily fortify a city that's smaller and has extremely valuable resources, such as metal and metal processing facilities used to further the army or the walls and reliefs used to protect it, and have all the cities that farm and such in the country side behind it, so its harder for the enemy to just "pass" a city.

However, Felarya is a bit different. You cant exactly build a fortress at a choke point between some mountains and put all the farmers and stuff behind it. You're not protecting your society from other humans, you're protecting it from the forces of nature and other giant predators itself, so EVERYONE gathers into that city, and to protect everyone, you need a giant wall. Everyone who comes in through the gate basically goes to negav, or the docks right outside on the other side of the 'moat', still within the eye's range of influence. Simply put, felarya is one massive city which is quite fortified because it has to be.

So, there's quite a number of people - due to the situation, having a city with hundres of thousands - maybe potentially millions (Unregistered people?) the size of 90sq miles is way too small.

Once again we fall into the trap of using the real world as a metaphor/example for explaining how things work in felarya. We've generally established that doesn't <i>entirely</i> work too well in this world we've helped create.

This information is probably coming from Uruk, which held 50.000 to 80.000 people in six square kilometers. That's like 2.5 square miles. Assuming they're overstating it and Uruk held only 25.000 people or so, it'd hold close to 900.000 should we scale it up to 90 square miles. If you want walls that are more Negav-sized, try Derawar Fort. Forty bastions, a 1.1 miles radius (3.8 square miles), and the walls are up to 30 metres high. You have a point, Bael, if we want something more like chinese city walls. Those were built with some expansion in mind, and according to wiki some of them still contain a lot of empty space as of right now.

But I like Negav small, maybe even smaller than 90 square miles (walled-off area at least), because I like it a cramped city with no extensive farms, no enclosed forests, no central park, or anything of the sort. I like it being all city.

Then again you've got a point regarding the city itself... the eye isn't that old. Once upon a time, before Negav built itself a gate and outsourced everything forever, everyone had to eat something. Even if we claim it used to be much, much smaller (20k-25k?), that's still a lot of farming to do. I just don't think you can explain that with bigger walls, those walls had to be built. You can't build a 90 mile wall that's 100 foot tall with a workforce drawn from 20.000 people unless they're magic (or there's titans inside the walls!). Having those same people build an even bigger wall... I'd sooner believe they built a smaller wall.

I'd rather blame the expansion of Negav's population and its relative safety on the advent of the Eye, rather than having a wall keep away basically everything. There may be some horrible beasts from time to time getting through anyway because of magic resistance (such as the ever popular tonorions), but they can be fought with a realistic chance of success. Therefore, I submit that there may be a significant amount of people spread outside any walls, protected only by the Eye, who regularly deal with bandits, horrible giant insects, specially resistant nagas, and other assorted nasties while being as rural as they can.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Where is exactly is this information coming from?

I'd imagine you'd say that because its only logical to assume that. Building a massive wall around a massive city requires massive resources and manpower.

So its only logical to further assume that countries and governments would heavily fortify a city that's smaller and has extremely valuable resources, such as metal and metal processing facilities used to further the army or the walls and reliefs used to protect it, and have all the cities that farm and such in the country side behind it, so its harder for the enemy to just "pass" a city.

However, Felarya is a bit different. You cant exactly build a fortress at a choke point between some mountains and put all the farmers and stuff behind it. You're not protecting your society from other humans, you're protecting it from the forces of nature and other giant predators itself, so EVERYONE gathers into that city, and to protect everyone, you need a giant wall. Everyone who comes in through the gate basically goes to negav, or the docks right outside on the other side of the 'moat', still within the eye's range of influence. Simply put, felarya is one massive city which is quite fortified because it has to be.

So, there's quite a number of people - due to the situation, having a city with hundres of thousands - maybe potentially millions (Unregistered people?) the size of 90sq miles is way too small.

Once again we fall into the trap of using the real world as a metaphor/example for explaining how things work in felarya. We've generally established that doesn't <i>entirely</i> work too well in this world we've helped create.

If you want to know about my sources Stabs gave you a part most come history books and Internet (google fortified cities).

Before to speculate any further about the Negav let's stick to the canon. According to the Chronology Negav's walls were built in 1736 A.U, it was a small neko settlements which started with the discover of the Ascarlin. The city's growth and prosperity is due to the Ascarlin's busisness. No mention to any agricultures and it lives many centuries without any walls in particular. In 1837 The great destruction occur wandering nagas profited to the internal struggles to make a feast and the town became to be known as a all you-eat-buffet to the local predators. In 1840 the magiocrats enter to the scene, later the Vishmintal with their advance technology which I suspect play a role in the construction of the current walls which are covered byXythium before that I guess they were made in stones due to the fact they were destroyed by predators.

Stabs wrote:

This information is probably coming from Uruk, which held 50.000 to 80.000 people in six square kilometers. That's like 2.5 square miles. Assuming they're overstating it and Uruk held only 25.000 people or so, it'd hold close to 900.000 should we scale it up to 90 square miles. If you want walls that are more Negav-sized, try Derawar Fort. Forty bastions, a 1.1 miles radius (3.8 square miles), and the walls are up to 30 metres high. You have a point, Bael, if we want something more like chinese city walls. Those were built with some expansion in mind, and according to wiki some of them still contain a lot of empty space as of right now.

Yeah, I'm aware there's many cities with really dense population...

Stabs wrote:

But I like Negav small, maybe even smaller than 90 square miles (walled-off area at least), because I like it a cramped city with no extensive farms, no enclosed forests, no central park, or anything of the sort. I like it being all city.

Then again you've got a point regarding the city itself... the eye isn't that old. Once upon a time, before Negav built itself a gate and outsourced everything forever, everyone had to eat something. Even if we claim it used to be much, much smaller (20k-25k?), that's still a lot of farming to do. I just don't think you can explain that with bigger walls, those walls had to be built. You can't build a 90 mile wall that's 100 foot tall with a workforce drawn from 20.000 people unless they're magic (or there's titans inside the walls!). Having those same people build an even bigger wall... I'd sooner believe they built a smaller wall.

...but this is one of the directions I was going. The other of course, is that we have a slew of rich people who own land in the city. On the Negav map it looks small, there's an open park on top of that as well. Eladrine Hills and the Golden Spire District take up most of the upper tier - one reason why I think the city should be bigger.

Stabs wrote:

I'd rather blame the expansion of Negav's population and its relative safety on the advent of the Eye, rather than having a wall keep away basically everything. There may be some horrible beasts from time to time getting through anyway because of magic resistance (such as the ever popular tonorions), but they can be fought with a realistic chance of success. Therefore, I submit that there may be a significant amount of people spread outside any walls, protected only by the Eye, who regularly deal with bandits, horrible giant insects, specially resistant nagas, and other assorted nasties while being as rural as they can.

Of course this is an interesting avenue to explore as well. The dangers of living outside the walls. Though I imagine some towns outside would have ways to deal with them. There is a fourth wall-ish as well right at the northern border if we take the map into account.

ok I increased the superficy to 110 SQ miles. I have looked at some cities seen from above at that size and it's more or less what I have in mind for Negav.