Imaginary City

Charlie_mta

Charlie_mta

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 15, 2006
Messages
4,067
Reaction score
5,290
I posted a city design and mapping that I did from scratch on Flickr. It took several years to do, and is a work in progress.

I've always been interested in city planning, transit and freeways. All of this map is entirely original by me, no copying from other maps or cities.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/97144142@N07/8999608969/sizes/l/

Thought you might find it interesting. The map legend is on the lower left of the map.
 
Last edited:
Wow, Charlie.

Definitely an American city. I get a strong sense of DC here, actually. The inner loop of highways gives me a bit of a Tulsa, OK feel. Little hints of Paris here and there and really like the Bloomsbury-esque park squares.

Downtown seems to be located in an unlikely place - but I'll go with it.

What's with the curvy grid to the southeast of downtown, is that lower-density suburban style development or does that reflect the topology?

Hard to comment here without knowing whether there's any normative ideology behind this - i.e. is this is your version of an "ideal" city, or more like an interesting thought experiment?

Whatever the case, I will say that it is very very convincing and from my untrained eye extremely well done technically - it definitely would have fooled me if you told me it was a real map (and I could have spent hours trying to guess the city!)
 
Awesome work! As Shep said, if you hadn't told us, I'd be wondering what actual city this is. Though, the interstate numbers give it away as fictitious.

Looks great as far as my map-obsessed eyes are concerned! My highway meter is registering elevated levels, though. ;)
 
Thanks folks for the feedback.

In answer to some questions, this is not an ideal city in my mind, but a better than average one with a comprehensive rail transit and freeway system, though a bit heavy on the freeways. I also approach this as an artistic work wherein I want to balance the composition of the shapes and elements. Really it's just a fun thing.

I'm a civil engineer by profession and basically a road designer, and ever since I was a kid have really loved freeway and transit design and layout, so I've basically just done this as a way to play with those things.

The more curvilinear street areas reflect hilly topography. I'd really like to do a 3D CAD version of this when I get time, after retirement in a few years, adding topographical relief and cad levels for light rail lines and some other things.

I'm in Nome Alaska this week for my job, looking out at the Bering Sea as I type this. Still some small icebergs floating around in the sea.
 
I wish.

There has been some discussion about a Chunnel type passage connecting Russia and Alaska by way of the Diomede Islands.

No, I'm up here for a village community streets reconstruction project. Nome and the surrounding area is astoundingly beautiful, though Nome itself has a really bad dust problem due to a lot of unpaved streets and ATV's racing around on them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top