When we take a look at cities, there are many factors that go into how it’s designed. That’s why there are many professionals and employees needed to make a city work, from the foundation and upwards. Many times, we see cities that are full of skyscrapers or other buildings. Depending on the world you’re attempting to design, there are many ways a city can be designed and conceptualized.
credits to go Anthony Brault for this amazing concept art
One of the more fun parts about world building is concept art. Concept art is essentially what it sounds like: You have a concept and you develop an art piece to represent it. There are many ways to create proper concept art, which we will explore in this article. Let’s first begin with the idea of developing cities in the first place…
What is a City?
A city is an area that is typically densely populated and is the center of things such as administration, governments, financial sectors, and is a permanent area. For the most part, people who live in cities do not work in the agriculture industry like rural areas, which I’d call a “village” for the purposes of world building.
Cities take a long time to plan and require many employees like architects, civil engineers, construction workers, city planners, etc… and are not simple tasks. However, we’re not here to create extensive blueprints of cities and road maps and all that. We just simply want to design a, well, simple city.
What do you Need in a City?
There are a few things you should consider when designing a city in your world. Firstly, if you read the last article, “What is World Building? Why is it Important?”, you’ll know that there are a lot of pieces and parts to world building; however, there is one thing I want you to refer to in particular when it comes to that article: Earth or not to Earth.
You see, when you try to design your city, the planet and geographic climate is pretty much the biggest factor in how the city will look. For example, if your planet is Earth, then try to look at real cities like New York, Montreal, and more. However, if you’re planet isn’t Earth, then you need to be more creative with this piece.
There are a few basic things you need inside of a city, such as population, the main industry, if it’s a capitol city, etc… Let’s just design a fake city called Cool City for the heck of it and see what we can get. If you understand a basic step-by-step process, you’ll be able to develop your own complicated cities.
Let’s Design Cool City
Okay, so let’s start with the most basic thing: My planet is a desert planet called Sandron and it’s a very, very hot planet. The temperatures are too high for most humans to survive, so the species will be some type of lizard, as many of them can survive in hot climates.
These lizards have a city called Cool City and this is the capitol city of their planet. All government sectors are headquartered there, like a Planetary Bank, Planet Intelligence, etc… This city is fairly wealthy, but there are some run-down areas. This is much like a normal city.
The architecture style will be based off of brutalism, as they’re not a very creative species. They like a lot of conformity, so their architecture will reflect that.
Their buildings are super tall and stretch above the clouds. Think of Burj Khalifa in Dubai type of tall. They also have lots of banks, companies, and more in this city, as it’s a hub for technology.
The Sandrons also have lots of restaurants and coffee shops, as the government workers like their fuel.
You see where I’m getting at here? I’m essentially utilizing a species and then designing the city from there. My main influences in this city would be something like Montreal and Stalingrad or any Post-Soviet country’s main city.
Photo by Pelayo Arbués on Unsplash
So, let me break down exactly what I did just in case you’re still a little lost.
Breakdown of Cool City
As previously mentioned, Cool City is based off of Montreal with a Post-Soviet brutalism mix. Instantly, I have identified the first city that comes to mind when imagining Cool City. As such, I’ve already given my brain a simple idea of what exactly I’m going to be designing for this city.
I also imagined Washington D.C., as it’s the capitol city of the planet. So, I can imagine something like the National Mall for example.
I also decided that the species is tall, so their buildings reflect their tall nature. Therefore, they will have a standard of super tall buildings. This is a differentiation point between humans and the Sandron lizard people.
I also determined that their way of life is like that of Western countries on Earth. So, they have a service-based economy. This allowed me to then determine that lots of companies will choose Cool City for their headquarters. Therefore, I’ve also established the economy.
This city is what I think should be the central location of whatever important things are going on in the story or project. For example, if I were writing a story about an Intelligence Officer working in Cool City, they’d probably spend a majority of the story in Cool City.
Concept Art
When deciding to make concept art, there are a few things you should know about. Number one, you do NOT need to be an artist. Please, do not ever feel that you must be an artist in order to design your city. In fact, you don’t even need to do any art if you use mood boards instead. Don’t worry too much about this if you don’t want to do it. I personally threw it in this guide as a fun project for you to do on the side.
You can decide to use any software or program to make art. Or, you can simply find some images on Google or Pinterest, slap them into a document on Docs, Word, Canva, etc… and say that it represents your city’s aesthetic.
Using Cool City, here’s a “mood board” of what I think its aesthetic would probably be. Just FYI, I used Canva to make this mood board. Right now, if you use my link, you can get Canva Pro for 30 days for FREE! Canva Pro is an amazing way to easily access all sorts of graphic design tools, from ads to mood boards to book covers. I use it for almost anything and everything as both an author and website owner. Sign up today to get started with your amazing new creative tool.
If you do decide to go for a more artistic flair, then I personally would like to point out what I use in this scenario:
I use Adobe Photoshop on my laptop with a Wacom Intuous Medium tablet. It’s a really nice way to develop more professional art, as you can either paint from scratch or use Photobashing (I will make a post soon about this art technique). This is why I think that digital painting/art is a great way to do great concept designs. However, it is by no means necessary or needed. It’s just what I recommend.
There’s also a small version of the Wacom tablet in case you don’t really care to have something that big. (It’s also a great tool to take digital notes on a laptop, so if you don’t want to draw, maybe you want to take notes. That’s cool too. No judgement).
You can use any other software like Procreate for the iPad or Krita. Or you can just put a bunch of pictures together.
Here’s an example Work in Progress I have for a war scene in a city:
Conclusions
In the end, you are totally free to design your city as you like. However, I definitely recommend starting big and going small. Don’t just jump into your city if you really have no idea how to design the bigger picture stuff like your species, culture, etc… This is especially true if you’re still a beginner at this stuff.
If you’re interested, check out my book and see how I take on world building in my SciFi/Dark Fantasy series:
Good luck on your new city design!