Understand City Zoning

Previous
Next

Young settlements will have no clear zoning, which is a designation of how the land can be used (residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture, mixed). The longer a place exists and the larger it becomes, the more zoning takes place to handle incompatible land use, such as dirty factories being beside homes. A place advanced enough to have sizeable industry is also advanced enough to have zoned that into separate areas. More mature towns may also have separate housing areas for the wealthy or upper class, but this is not always the case and we can have different classes mixed.

When laying out a settlement, consider whether these zones exist. Unless it’s been rezoned, “old town” will have mixed use, possibly with buildings that are a store on the first floor and a home on the second; this might have been the original purpose, now changed. Upper-class areas might be by the river (upstream) or higher up a mountain, or near another natural resource like a glade or lakeshore, away from industry. Farmlands are obviously farther out from the settlement. Otherwise, we have residential and commercial zones, but they tend to be near each other, just like they are in your town; this sort of zoning is often on a block-by-block basis because no one wants to travel far. For that reason, the wealthiest might live in the center of town.

Previous
Next