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I see a discrepancy with the size of Absalom between "Guide to Absalom" and "Pathfinder Society Field Guide".
According to "Guide to Absalom" Absalom is 23,00 feet (or 4.35 miles) (Eastgate to Westgate) and 20,700 feet (or 3.92 miles) (Docks to Azlanti Keep). So ruffly 4 miles by 4 miles, not counting the outlying towns. That's a ruffly 50 square miles.
Now in "Pathfinder Society Field Guide" things get a little wonky. Absalom is 2,400 feet (or 0.45 miles) (Eastgate to Westgate) and 2,000 feet (or 0.37 miles) (Docks to Azlanti Keep). So ruffly 0.40 miles by 0.40 miles, not counting the outlying towns. That's a ruffly 1 square mile.
Sorry, but there's no way you get fit 300,000 people into a 1 square mile radius. No way. I assume that the "Guide to Absalom" scaling is correct. I couldn't find a thread talking about this blatant mistake, so I made this one. What says everyone? If the "Pathfinder Society Field Guide" is wrong it should get fixed in the next print run (if it will even get one), especially for what is supposed to be a "beginners" book for the Pathfinder Society.
Map of London, with some future plans, just prior to the great fire.
Roughly estimating, I'd say it's 2 sq miles (a 1x1 section, then much thinner areas stretched along the river) and it had a population of 350,000 (the Great Fire is estimated to have killed 100,000).
Medieval cities don't sprawl much. Transporting goods is a pain, people need to be able to walk to all the places they need to go during the course of the day and if lots of things are 2+ miles apart, it just isn't going to happen. You spend all day walking and not getting as much business done.
Second, infrastructure is expensive. It's easier to build 4-5 story buildings than a network or roads. Ancient Rome had a problem with collapsing buildings, building 6 story multi-family housing, but they were trying to do it on the cheap as well.
Dirt roads can function for a while, but heavy traffic destroys them pretty quickly and makes them difficult to use.
The 1 sq mile is a little low, but the 50 sq miles is way too high.
An excerpt from a book describing how Rome was built to house people. It had roughly 1 million people, but was 1/16 the size of modern Paris. Paris is 41 sq miles, so that would mean the Aventine wall covered about 2.5 sq miles. Which is about 400,000 pop/sq mile.
The two (non-disaster) limiting factors to population density are:
How high you can build
How far you can ship food
Edit: The 400,000/sq mile does seem high, and I think that's the top end of that kind of estimate. A lot of modern cities will be around 50,000-80,000, but that's partly because transportation is cheaper and faster, so sprawl is often more economical than stacking.
For major medieval cities, I think 100,000/sq mile is reasonable, but this requires a pretty large population/area to support that city. If you look at Europe, they were able to support several cities like that. China was able to sprout quite a few as well.
Doing a little digging, Beijing circa 1500, was roughly 13.8 sq miles and had a population of 680,000. But this area includes the Imperial City and the Forbidden Palace, which are fairly lightly populated compared to the rest of the city. So excluding those areas, you still get a population density of 60,000/sq mile, but they didn't build tall buildings to house people.
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They do talk about the problems of distance in the "Guide to Absalom" book. Things like how important mounts are to do business in the city. How employers have elephants sent out to pick up their workers. Second of all as joriandrake mentions in a world were magic is prevalent some of the issues of distance are nullified. Also, don't forget that Absalom is really like a dozen cities that all happen to be connected. Many people live, work and play all in the same district.
I still think the statistics in the "Pathfinder Society Field Guide" are too low.
I agree, but I think they're off by a factor of 2-3, not a factor of 50.
Sorry, but there's no way you get fit 300,000 people into a 1 square mile radius. No way.
*Sewer Dragons of Absalom*
I tend to go by the information from Cities' from Chaosium. They not that based on medieval and reninissance yield, it takes 3-5 acres of farmland to feed 1 person and that usually 1/3 of farmland was left fallow each season as well. This means 1 sq mi/640 acres can support 80-130 people. So a 5x5 mile square (25 sq mi) could support ~2800 people. Obviously, an island/trade city like Absalom would have a sea-based economy as well and probably uses the other islands as farm sources.
The book further notes that, in general, the actual density of pre-industrial cities varied between 100-400 people/hectare, depending on the culture and economic level and other factors.
Given all of that and the fact that Absalom is an island complex, even with magic involved, I'd go for the larger size.
The book further notes that, in general, the actual density of pre-industrial cities varied between 100-400 people/hectare, depending on the culture and economic level and other factors.
A hectare is 100m x 100m. Which equals .01 sq km, which comes to 100,000-400,000 people per sq km. 1 sq mile = 2.6 sq km, so you're saying that 260,000 to 900,000 people per sq km was normal. I think that might be a bit high.
Pre-industrial cities were smaller, not just in population, but also size. Both Rome and Beijing were more crowded than modern day Mumbai, which has the highest population density in the world right now (at around 77,000 per sq mile).
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I'd go with the Guide to Absalom calculation mainly because in both books Absalom is explained to be the size of several ordinary cities put together. One square mile seems a little small, and so do two. Sixteen square miles? Now that's getting somewhere. I'm sure its just some weird error, but I'd go with the Guide to book's calculation, even though its less recent.
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Perhaps... but I'm really not a fan of using "it's magic!" as an excuse to cover up sloppy world design. I'd rather save the "It's magic!" comments for actually magical things like ancient ruins that haven't eroded over 10,000 years, or a one-mile-tall tower, than use it to explain away things that on the surface might look correct to someone who doesn't understand the way things work, such as rivers flowing apart or uphill, or tiny cities with hundreds of thousands of citizens.
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BTW when I developed Guide to Absalom, I actually looked at historical maps of Paris and data on its population over several centuries, and used that information to determine the scale of the Absalom map based on its population.
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Creative Director
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BTW when I developed Guide to Absalom, I actually looked at historical maps of Paris and data on its population over several centuries, and used that information to determine the scale of the Absalom map based on its population.
Also a great reason to go with that book's size for the city, as it turns out! :)
I see a discrepancy with the size of Absalom between "Guide to Absalom" and "Pathfinder Society Field Guide".
According to "Guide to Absalom" Absalom is 23,00 feet (or 4.35 miles) (Eastgate to Westgate) and 20,700 feet (or 3.92 miles) (Docks to Azlanti Keep). So ruffly 4 miles by 4 miles, not counting the outlying towns. That's a ruffly 50 square miles.
Er, no. That's roughly 16 square miles.
Er, no. That's roughly 16 square miles.
I could swear that was pointed out a few days ago...
Oh, it was:
First off, 4x4 is 16 sq miles not 50.
Please be kind to your fellow posters and read the complete thread!
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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BTW when I developed Guide to Absalom, I actually looked at historical maps of Paris and data on its population over several centuries, and used that information to determine the scale of the Absalom map based on its population.
Seeing that post made me happy. I like to see thought put into a game world. Congrats once again to the Paizo crew on the great work creating a world that has substance and verisimiltude.