Cirdastan fun facts

The Medieval average for population density was apparently about 46 people per acre in cities/towns, ranging from a low of 22 Mexico, 27 in England to 108 in Spanish cities.

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/11311/33041255.pdf?sequence=1


I have to verify the exact acreage, but I believe we have enclosed approx 14 acres of town behind the walls allowing us to hold the 644 people at medieval averages.

at current count and before getting a ruling of how many of our current workers, farmers soldiers have brought family with them we are sitting at a population of about 303. Now I'm sure some of these are living outside the walls in homesteads, and some will leave when construction is over but if sizable portion of immigrants brought their families we are probably quite close to filling our walls before they are even complete.

Population density

List of (modern) cities by population density: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density

Manila is tops with 174.3/acre (111,576/mi²).

Paris is No. 34 with 84.2/acre (53,883/mi²).

NYC: 43.0/acre (27,532/mi²).

Some of our settlers are agricultural workers, no? They probably wouldn't live in town unless it's feasible to travel to and from the fields every day.

We have a small contingent of shepherds and farmers who I suspect live outside the walls. As part of their settlement bonus people were given either a inside the wall building, or an agricultural plot. We never decided size but 10-20 acres sounds reasonable, I doubt we have the farmers required for self sufficiency yet, as by preindustiral standards we would need at least 30% of the pop in agriculture. The new wealth of fishers will certainly help but we certainly do not grow the grain we need yet.

Its also not safe enough yet for huge farms several miles out of town so we have to wait.

My pop. density comparisons are flawed, as the true area of modern cities would include the extensive floor space at levels other than ground; that is, a great deal of the population isn't at ground level at any given moment, and thus, these cities won't seem as crowded compared to pre-industrial urban areas with the same numerical densities.

Its even hard to compare most historical figures for medieval sites because you don't know how much if any commons were inside the town limits.

how advanced was building, all 1 level huts, 1 level with sleeping lofts for fucntional mutli floored buidings.

Rate of trade -being on a travel route increased densisty

Rate of Industry- would both use up living space and demand workers greatly increasing densisty.

My guestimate is not so about saying the town is full or can take another 100-200 people but giving us an idea of how much bussle the town has, by falling within the medieval average we can expect busy street traffic, thriving trades and sucessfull but still limited retail due to pop level. Despite the danger I would suspect that as the average got near or above medieval levels more people would begin to risk living beyond the walls and internal rents grew higher. At this point I would say only farmers and herders would risk it, and some of them might only use primitive/temp shelter during the growing season and spend the off seasons living in town where manual labour jobs with the buidling crews were available.



With regards to modern rates, it has been found in some areas when you factor in footprint for a building, parking, access roads, and green space around vertical suburban dwellings don't have significantly higher densities than down town row housing.

A tower with the elevator core, several stairs, utility rooms, heating plant etc is is probably only 1/2 as dense as you would believe.

More modern condo's with limited parking, small units, no buffer from the street do however drastically spike density on that footprint but the demand for retail and services around such buildings begins to drag it back down again especially in North america where retail space/citizen in many times higher than europe or Austrialia.