size of cities...

Find a real-world city of similar size, then look it up on Wiki. For instance, New York City is:

In your world, is the capital about the size of Washington, DC or is it closer in size to Austin, TX?

You can mostly ignore the "Urban" and "Metro" numbers above. They represent urban- and suburban-sprawl, a mostly modern concept. In a more agrarian society, those areas would be mostly covered in crops and forest. Most people would live in the city as defense against raiders.

Depending on the level of technology in your world, these figures may be helpful:

New York in 1860 (American Civil War / Industrial Revolution in America) had just under a million people. In 1910 (WW-I) it had almost 5 million. By WW-II (1940) there were about 8 million. Since then, the population has only trickled upward--about 9 million, today.

Remember that horses may be the main form of transport for your characters, but it was likely most people could not afford them and were traveling on foot. From what I remember from my town planning course, 8 miles is a distance people can walk and therefore many small towns were 8 miles apart and cities no wider than 8 miles.

There are a whole lot of resources on the internet to help you design your city, I googled medieval city design, although I didn't find proof of my 8 mile fact.

‘all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact are imagined’ Benedict Anderson

One of the factors in how long it would take to cross the city would be the density of the town. If it is set in a medieval type setting, then the cities would be very dense - the area might not be very large but there are a lot of buildings and people crammed into it, and narrow streets, which would slow a horse and rider unless it was during the night.

I think if you are talking horses and horse drawn carriages, it might be better to try London than an american city - There are books in the library and sites on line that show castles and baileys and the towns that grow up around them. I'm guessing this might be nearer to what you are looking for. Pick a year 1066, 1500, 1800 and take a look at Windsor, London, Paris.

Linda :)

Sorry - not very technical, but that's what I would do.

I would say "How big do you want your cities to be?" I don't know about other countries, but here in the UK a place is a city because it possesses a Charter declaring it to be a city. Likewise, a town will possess a charter declaring it to be a town (due to having the charter, the place gets certain rights & responsibilities). A short contrast of places that I know about & have visited which you can look up about:
St David's in Pembrokeshire is a city;
Llanfyllin in Powys is a town;
Corbridge in Northumberland is a village.

As the above posters have said, though, your best way of figuring out information like this is to find some places you think are 'about right' and look up information about them - both current and historical data.

Tigg, or Tiggothy for long

I thought it was only called a city if it had a cathedral?

Annie Elizabeth has it right! In Medieval Europe, the presence of a Cathedral is what elevated it to the status of city.

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I'm not sure but I have a feeling this might still stand in the UK or at least did 20 years ago, because Reading in Berkshire applied for City status some years back and was refused because it doesn't have a cathedral.

Another factor is how the city-people make their living.

If many of them are (commuting) farmers or in closely related ways of life, the distance from the city to their fields would have a bit of an influence, probably no more than an hour or so to get there. This could limit city size or increase city density depending on how rich the area is.

If the city is based on trade, it will be on or along a trade route--road, river, bay, mountain pass--and the terrain and amount of trade is likely to influence the size. Also, the proximity to trading centers--especially for those in the wholesale industry--would limit how far across the city is.

If the city is based on manufacturing, the size would be similar to a trade city but areas might be more spread out if the manufacturing process either requires it or is not friendly to be around.

Most likely, you would have a hybrid city. So, consider your economy, people's ways of life, and transportation routes to and from. These and the initial terrain--like Scottish cities placed along ridges--might dictate your city dimensions...

At the time of the novel I should have been working on recently, set in the 16th century, London was about three miles across, with, I think, over 200,000 people, one of the largest cities in the world.
Although, at the height of the empire, Rome had around a million people, non-pedestrian traffic was banned within the city during daytime and many people lived in towering apartment blocks.
Another interesting point I found is that people used to rent horses if they couldn't afford to own one, though traditionally streets in a medieval city were very narrow and crowded.

[clever, funny and inspiring quote goes here]

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Yes, the States had cities before cars existed.

I'm in Philadelphia, which was a fairly major city in the pre-car era (it was the capital for while).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Map_of_Philadelphia_and_Parts_Adjace...

That's a map of Philly from the end of the colonial era. It's a little hard to see, but that grid in the middle? That's pretty much all there was of the actual city. All the little spots around it were surrounding towns and settlements. They've all been incorporated into the city as neighborhoods today, but back then there would basically be farmland all around them. That little grid in the center still has the same basic layout today (today goes from Front St., which is basically 1st to about 20th). I can walk from one side to the other in maybe a little over half an hour and that's with red lights (Seriously, Center City is pretty compact). By the time this map was made, Philly was considered a city. Places like Independence Hall and Christchurch had been built, the streets were paved, etc. The standard for Europe was whether there was a cathedral, but for the colonies it was more a matter of how developed it was. Things like paved streets, a theatre, schools, etc. would qualify it as a city.

As for population, by 1800 the city had just shy of 50,000 people. Might not seem like much today, but at the time it was the 2nd largest city in the US. Going back to the time of the map, it was more like 15 or 20k. A small town by today's standards, but for the time and place that made it a major population center.

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

ML for Philadelphia

We have a city with only 300 inhabitants, and not far from the place a medieval mining town that had about 20000 inhabitants around 1500 and never got city status because of the lack of city walls. So, here a city didn't need to have a cathedral but city walls to be considered a proper city. Medieval cities were never really large. Google cities like Carcassonne, for example, to see how large they are / used to be and take an average.

BTW, there'd be a difference between "city" (as in "inside the city walls") and suburbs, outside the city walls. Only what was inside the walls was considered part of the city. Only later the suburbian villages became incorporated in the cities (for example, the first Viennese district covers an area of roughly 3 square kilometres, and is the area of the medieval city - inside the walls).

I think traditionally, it had to be an anglican cathedral (catholic ones don't count), but there are plenty of cities that don't have one. Leeds and Nottingham have catholic but not anglican cathedrals, and I'm pretty sure Hull, Cambridge and Stoke don't have one at all. Hull gained city status on Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, so the cathedral rule has been out of effect for some time.

Also, since the thing about anglican cathedrals came in with the English Reformation, I think this was generally only an English thing, and didn't apply in the rest of Europe, as someone above suggested.

There has never been a cathedral "rule" per se, rather the presence of a cathedral was a historical rule of thumb.

From wikipedia

"In the United Kingdom a city is a town which has been known as a city since time immemorial, or which has received city status by letters patent—which is normally granted on the basis of size, importance or royal connection (the traditional test was whether the town had a cathedral) to gain city status. For example the small town of Ripon was granted city status in 1836 to coincide with the creation of the Diocese of Ripon, but also in recognition of its long-standing role as a supplier of spurs to royalty."

Thank you!

This is very helpful, and while I may be going back to the old Divination standby I still appreciate this...