Rethinking Pre-Modern Cities

[ColGray]

Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City

This week and next, we’re going to look at an issue not of battles, but of settings: pre-modern cities – particularly the trope of the city, town or castle set out all alone in the midd…

acoup.blog

A friend shared this and I found it fascinating.

It is a study of the role, look and connectedness of cities in pre-modern societies and how they are depicted versus how they were actually organized.

There’s a certain look that castles and cities in either historical dramas or fantasy settings set in the ancient or medieval world seem to have: the great walls of the city or castle rise up, majestically, from a vast, empty sea of grassland.

 

[BAYLOR]

Have you ever seen of or heard about the city of Arcosanti ?

 

[Montero]

That is very interesting thanks. I've done 17th century English re-enactment so was aware of the market garden area around cities - in fact several battles were fought through market gardens including Barnet that back then was on the edge of London, so basically a lot of scrapping in allotments and everything divided up by hedges so NOT big manouverings of large groups of foot and horse. There was likewise a battle near Newbury, through the market garden areas, and these days it is all big grazing fields - so for a change a historic battlefield is massively more open than it was at the time of the battle. I've not ever heard of anyone trying to replicate the hedges and gardens for a really accurate re-enactment.

 

[Brian G Turner]

That's a very long article to just effectively say that castles should be surrounded by fields and settlements!

 

[Pyan]

Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City

This week and next, we’re going to look at an issue not of battles, but of settings: pre-modern cities – particularly the trope of the city, town or castle set out all alone in the midd…

acoup.blog

A friend shared this and I found it fascinating.

It is a study of the role, look and connectedness of cities in pre-modern societies and how they are depicted versus how they were actually organized.

But that image is a good example of Peter Jackson going for his own ideas rather than actually reading the damn book. In the novel, Minas Tirith is surrounded by farms (the Pelennor Fields), "suburbs," and even a giant wall called the Rammas Echor encircling the city as a form of protection.

The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards, and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green from the highlands down to Anduin

Pippin could see all the Pelennor laid out before him, dotted into the distance with farmsteads and little walls, barns and byres,

RotK, Book 5, Ch I, Minas Tirith.

Ted Naismith got it far more accurately.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

Interesting. I had not particularly noticed that fantasy cities were sometimes depicted without the surrounding agriculture, particularly on screen, but I see no reason to dispute it.
In my own fantasy novels, I have sometimes sketched in allotments and the like surrounding a city. And in the countryside I usually mention cultivation and agriculture that my characters pass while making a journey.

 

[Pyan]

Have you ever seen of or heard about the city of Arcosanti ?

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote at least two books based in arcologies - Oath of Fealty, and Dream Park 3 - the Californian Voodoo Game. Both a little dated, but if you like classic sf, I'd recommend them both (but read the Dream Parks 1&2 bfore DP3)

 

[Montero]

But that image is a good example of Peter Jackson going for his own ideas rather than actually reading the damn book. In the novel, Minas Tirith is surrounded by farms (the Pelennor Fields), "suburbs," and even a giant wall called the Rammas Echor encircling the city as a form of protection.


RotK, Book 5, Ch I, Minas Tirith.

Ted Naismith got it far more accurately.

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hhm. Thinking defensively, having it snuggled up to a mountain like that is asking for someone to stand on top of the mountain and drop a big rock on you....