To follow up with city structuring (organization) I am now going to discuss city functions/hooks. Again, keeping content very broad to start with the first few articles.



A city is a permanent, self-sustaining concentration of people, services, and government. They can serve as single purpose or stand as a massive hub and melting pot for a variety of industry, government, religion, philosophy, education, etc. Most realistically though, major cities have only a few core ‘hooks.’

A hook is your city’s main draw, or allure. It is the feature that pulls people in. It is the primary function the city serves, the resources it primarily provides. It is the very purpose of the city’s existence! And thus, every city needs to have one–otherwise its existence wouldn’t be logical.

Being able to identify and classify cities by their functions and primary resources is really useful when it comes to then understanding different infrastructural, service, and lifestyle requirements your city must additionally fulfill. It will help you identify what your major occupations are, who has the most power, who gets the prime real-estate, and so forth.

So, to help you figure out what your city hook is, here is a non-definitive list of different types of city hooks for you to use to jump into design.

Different Types of Cities

The Government Center

Often times your capital city, where your heart and hub centers around the government. Think Washington DC. The architecture is grand, space is ample, and the upper class ever present. Publicity, Ceremony, and Security define much of what you lay design. All classes can and will be there though, providing to all human interests… and vices, including prostitution, drugs, gambling.

These cities will have numerous, prominent public plazas for gathering. There will be a single, very clear location for public speeches given by your leaders. Auditoriums and theaters inevitably will also sprout, as well as banquet halls, parks, entertainment, and massive public works. Housing for the upper class will be adjacent to these places of convening. Housing for the lower class will be required as well, for they will be the suppliers of the services consumed by the politicians & elite (hotels, restaurants, etc)

A government city is often used as the face of a country, and thus is often the cleanest and most grand.

The Commercial City

Hear the buzz? This is the market city, a place where businesses, craftsmen, and merchants thrive, where the banks establish exchanges akin to Wall Street, where consumers gorge on the wide variety of retail and merchandise for sale. Non stop, always loudly bustling, even at night, when the underground markets thrive.

You need major public plazas for gathering and exchange, as well as platforms for speakers and auctions. Warehouses for the storage of goods should also take up a chunk of space, as well banking institutions (formal and informal). Stock exchanges, money lenders, book keepers, personal shoppers, storefront commerce, advertisement, newspapers all should be considered. People need information, people need money, people need more time!

The Manufacturing / Industrial City

Take a deep breath–that’s smoke and smog you’re inhaling! The industrial city exists to produce, produce, produce! Whether it is processing raw materials or polishing off finished goods for shipment to the far corners of the globe, the Industrial City is a 24-hour, work-force driven city. Textiles, metallurgy, machining, glass making, mining–you name it, they’re handling it.

You probably are going to encounter low-income housing and slums, child labor, labor unions, overcrowding, filth, and more. The upper class most likely would live out in the country, venturing in only if they had to. Buildings will be closely spaced apart, to optimize the amount of $$ per square foot the landlords are pulling in, or the amount of manufacturing to be done. Again, warehouses are in abundance, as are major factories and shipping ports/outlets. If a quick, cheap, and efficient transportation system isn’t in place, housing has to be adjacent and available near all the factories.

Check out the suggested reading & references on wiki

See: Industrial-Age London & Paris

The Cultural / Tourist Destination

Get out your camera! Or your drawing pad, if you are a scholar on the Grand Tour. This city offers insight into the grandeur of the human race (or elves, or dwarves, or…?), bound to a great history, even if it falls short of any greatness in present conduct.

The dominating industries tend to be restaurants, hotels, antique stores, and tour guides offering an authentic experience. More importantly, these cities usually are home to non religious sites of cultural or historical significance, (such as the Pantheon, the Colosseum, or the Roman Forum).

A Cultural City also tends to intermix with the ruins of the city ancestors (preserved or otherwise), has beautiful classical architecture (classical in your worlds sense), embraces travelers, and often has a very small permanent population.

See: Venice, Italy

The Shipping Hub

This of this one as a jumping off point, the critical point of an entire mercantile web. It can be a port city that then connects to all the major roads networking out across your continent. It could be on a land bridge, linking your many continents together! Wherever you choose, the primary function of this city is to receive goods from far off places and to distribute goods to other far off places.

Warehouses, processing plants, extensive docking and parking, toll booths, and probably money lenders. You’d also have a vast array of builders and repair shops. Ancient Byzantium/Constantinople, or any of the other cities along the great Silk Road, can easily qualify as a transit city.

The Cross-Roads City

This city lives and breathes off its roads, tracks, and waters. Very similar to a shipping hub, it often stands at the intersection of several different transportation networks and thrives off the constant flux of merchants, traders, and travelers. But, unlike the shipping hub, it relies much more heavily on commerce and trade.

This city is your rest stop, your trade post, your port, your shipping, and your storefront all in one. You would see a wide range of cultures mixing, as well as classes, and it tends to be more liberal in nature. There inevitably would be informal districts of ethnicity or races, grouping together.

See: Milan, France

The Recreation Destination

Ok, so the Hanging Gardens of Babylon doesn’t exactly qualify as a city, but I think if we conceptually start there, we’ll end up in the right place. Cities of Recreation can go two ways.

First, it can stand as your modern day resort city, where spas, food services, hot springs, gardens, and relaxation dominate.

Alternatively, it can be a city that celebrates and indulges in sport. For example, the city of Rome under the Roman Emperor Titus, when he Colosseum was inaugurated with 100+ days of games and was used to quell the population. Or, any of the many Olympic villages that pop up (and eerily decay after) around the Olympic games! This sport-oriented city may see a huge economy in the slave, prostitution, and animal trade, as well as typical tourist services.

Transportation in and out of the city needs to be excellent. And, inevitably, there is probably an ‘on season’ and an ‘off season’. The city is extremely busy certain parts of the year and much less so.

See: Dubai, Olympic Villages

The Holy City

All bow down! The Holy City serves as a point of moral power in your world, but the strength of that power is up to you. When the roman papacy was establish, it really was just a title. It was only with time, manipulation, a little money, and the grace of god, did they gain the historical prominence and power now attributed. Holy cities are sites of extreme religious significance. The throne of the leader of your religion may lie there, the birthplace or death of your god or prophet, etc.

A whole city can pop up around this, with services including book and candle making, relic dealing, religious governing, and so forth. Sites of worship would be throughout the city, ritual perhaps built into city form (major boulevards for processionals? No building taller than the church spire?)

The city can be small, or large, it can hold land, or just the keys to the city, or even just a building your larger city of something else! If designing, definitely worth looking into the city of the Vatican, Jerusalem, or Mecca.

See: The Vatican, Kyoto, Jerusalem, Mecca

The University City

Aristotle and Plato would be pleased to know that there are whole cities founded around education. Perhaps less so of the complete lack of self control when it comes to drinking. But college cities aren’t a modern invention. Whole cities have thrived around universities for quite some time, with Cambridge and Oxford in England pumping out students since the 1200s.

These cities, where education is such a dominating force, usually attract well-educated citizens, as well as money. You will often have research labs, grounds for experimentation and demonstration, publishing houses, libraries and archives, public forums, and a limited commercial area. Depending if the university specializes, you can have nearly anything popping up here. You also would have a lot of public space, open parkland, and places for social gatherings.

See: Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton

Military Bases

Military cities come in so many different forms, that it is hard to surmise simply. They can exist to house soldiers, officers, and equipment, as well as to conduct research, military drills, and act as a command center. They can be small forts or huge complexes. They can serve as strongholds, where refugees can see protection, or manufacturing and docking grounds for ships and airplanes.

At the very least, however, a military city tends to be lodged up against a supporting series of satellite towns that can provide the food, water, and recreation much needed by the soldiers. Examples range from the Military base at Pearl Harbor to Area 51.

The Penal Colony

Penal colonies aren’t a thing of fantasy and science fiction. The British Empire used penal colonies (here’s looking at you Georgia, USA and Australia!) as a way to get rid of their unwanted in late 1700s-early 1800s.

Though these colonies often start in a semi-feudal state, with prisoners tilling land & enduring hard manual labor under a watchful guardian, eventually these small settlements grow, take on new leaders, and establish a unique way of life.

Punitive cities, in fiction, can be taken to a whole new levels. They can act as a supply source for illegal products, a haven for black market activity, and a grounds for experimentation in governments. As to city structure, it could be interesting to draw upon the ideology of the Penopticon–central authority, big brother seeing all.

See: Treason by Orsen Scott Card. Serious a must read for anyone interested in penal worlds, experimental government, and general all around awesomeness that is typical of a Card novel.

The Service Specific Community

Mining, Technology, Retirement, Agricultural, Water



There are a lot of other directions and hooks a city can tap into. Mining / Underground cities, complete with forges, blacksmithers, craftsmen, builders, architects, etc is completely viable, as are Technology cities, such as Silicon Valley, that thrive off digital assets, providing a wide range of professional services, recreation, and more.

Each would also probably have a unique infrastructure system. Obviously in a Mining city you need a rich network of tracks and tunnels, whereas with your Tech City, maybe its all about providing quality outdoor space–for the rare occasion one gets away from the computer (Or no outdoor space if everyone has essentially migrated to virtual reality!)

See: Silicon Valley, US Mining Towns

Abandoned / Decaying Cities

Even the abandoned cities have life to them. Usually subversive, perhaps post-apocalyptic. Usually physically they will resemble the previous use, government will be fractured and weak if existent, and most likely commerce will exist on bartering and exchange.

If a community does choose to pop up, they often will be concentrated in a single location, around the best kept roads or the most secure from invaders. The services that rise first will be those most critical to human functioning and will eventually be supplemented by luxury services–first providing of food and water, to as far as the scavenger styled merchant providing ye old lost technology.

See: Chernobyl, Detroit

“Insert Resource Here” Cities

Cities can assume any resource, so long as there is a serious demand for what they’re making. Whats the point to having a city that is providing coal when everyone runs off of gas? We’ve seen the impacts of that–the rise and fall of mining cities in modern earth era. So what you do pick to give rise and purpose to a city, make sure it actually has purpose.

Also, to just give a few examples of where you can take this… Wind Cities that harvest wind while floating in the sky, water/fish cities that exist underwater or floating that thrive on water-based commerce, food cities that are self contained biospheres that supply consumables to space colonies–I mean, the permutations are endless, but these dream cities really show that once you identify your city hook, you can really link it to your city structure.

See: Laputa, Castle in the Sky or The Eden Project in England, or Waterworld the Movie.

Combo / Metropolis Cities

In reality, most major cities are multifaceted. They perform many of the above functions at once. They have government, as well as commerce and industry. There are military sectors perhaps, as well as shipping hubs, manufacturing grounds, and religious centers. The major cities in your world should be larger and more complex than any of those listed above.

If thoughtfully designed, Metropolis cities create some really interesting spacial conversations between different groups of people. Further, how you choose to spacially lay out these different functions and supporting services across a city can speak to their cultural or societal value.

For Example: The way religion and government are treated in a city can really speak to their relative importance to the people–a church set on the hill, that you cant build any building higher than, not even the king, suggests the power of the church over state (See St. Pauls Cathedral & protected views). Or, if the market becomes the core of your city, with there being more banks than chapels, it suggests that money is your God.

See: Ancient & Modern Rome, Constantinople, Modern New York, Modern London, Modern Paris

Questions to Help you Build:

First, I highly recommend looking at the previous post about City Models, which provides an indepth set of questions that are linked to this discussion.

1.What re the primary and secondary services my city provides/serves?

2. What are the major imports and exports of my city?

3. What major industries are required to provide those exports and to handle those imports? Additionally, what services are needed to support those services?

Background Reading & Sources

1. Gallion, Arthur B., and Simon Eisner. The Urban Pattern; City Planning and Design,. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1982. Print.

2. J. V.Henderson. The Sizes and Types of Cities

The American Economic Review

Vol. 64, No. 4 (Sep., 1974), pp. 640-656

Published by: American Economic Association

Click to access qed_wp_75.pdf

3. Treason by Orsen Scott Card