* Similarly, the scale of things is often all wrong. Size, functions, and variety are correlated you see. Though it would make sense in a village, being in a supposed metropolis and telling the players to go to the one book shop just doesn’t feel right. And all it needs to get this fixed are a few words. Do not tell them to go to the butcher, but to John’s — the best place to grab meat in all the city. Or direct them to the only open place at this time at night in the butcher’s district. It’s OK for Thimbleweed Park to have a single factory, but it wouldn’t be OK for GTA Vice City to sport a single bar.

Other commonly forgotten elements include:

* the evidence of functioning infrastructure

* public spaces

* street furniture including benches, signs, dumpsters, lights, etc

* and class and land use divisions in space, and realistically mapped land uses

* Dynamism and history. Particularly irritating is the incredibly common lack of buildings under construction. It would be nice see a palace or a cathedral still under construction — these things took centuries to complete. Also, cranes and building sites are too common a sight in each and every contemporary city, and can help provide a virtual place with a sense of history in the making.

And where are the wells or aqueducts in our medieval fantasy cities? They were super important social spaces back in the Middle Ages, and we all still do need water, but I do believe that even the amazing urban centers of Witcher 3 missed those. And if they do not exist, shouldn’t we have substitutes? Magical water catchers perhaps? Or merchants monopolizing the water trade? Regardless of the way it is done, being able to sustain the life of its inhabitants is a core urban function.

Then again, Thimbleweed Park, which I adored, actually did away with the whole urban function of residence. So, yes, games do miss the concept of urban functions — of the core things that cities are meant to do, allow or provide with — mainly because they don’t have them in mind, and this is the source of many of their problems.

This of course leads us to the very basics of imaginary city building and geography, which have a lot in common with the very basics of urban planning and real life city geography. For, as already mentioned, things in virtual space have to make sense even if conforming to the most alien of internal logics.

The very basics of imaginary (and actual) city building:

* First of all, we have the crucial subject of urban functions. The functions that are the reasons cities exist, the functions that differentiate a village from a city, the absolute core of urbanism and city geography. Cities are built to facilitate and support said functions and in turn evolve as those functions themselves evolve.

To give you an example… Contemporary urban functions, core urban functions, would be commerce, production, consumption, human reproduction, transportation, culture, ideology, the circulation of capital, and housing. Reproduction itself would include further functions that an urban area has to provide such as health services, shelter, entertainment, schools, and access to food and water.

Functions do of course change, and dialectically evolve throughout history. Religion for example would be at the absolute center of a holy city, shelter via walls would be important during the medieval era, and a modern metropolis, an essentially new urban formation type, has variety as an essential new function. Obviously it incorporates many more functions than a village. In a nutshell, functions are what a city does.

* To start building an imaginary city though we have to first ask (and answer) three questions: where, when, and how big? Answering these defines a set of central functions, and also helps us approach crucial elements, like topography, history, and economy. You don’t obviously have to answer the questions in this order, but keep in mind that what you choose to ask and answer first, is probably what you find to be the most important thing in your city. For example: let’s do something in an ancient town or let’s do a huge sci-fi metropolis.

Obviously if climate and topography are to define your settlement, then you’ll have to start with where. And this where can and will influence local attitudes towards the sea, nature, and even the building materials used.

* On to the production and dialectics of space. Always keep in mind that space produces and is produced. Space for example is produced when we plan and build a road from the city to the airport, and then this produced space in turn produces its own space by attracting malls and gas stations around it.

* Everything in every city, town, or settlement of any size has been put in its place for a purpose. That is, everything has in a way been planned. Even if not by a central authority, or in recent years, everything that exists has been put there by someone for a purpose. That is why we expect spatial elements to have been designed, and why certain spaces in games work even better when their function is instantly recognizable and understood. When buildings, public spaces, or street furniture lack a sense of function, they fail to convey a meaningful sense of civic illusion, and believability suffers.

* The biggest and most prominent buildings can and should emphasize the dominant urban ideology. Are they cathedrals? Corporate HQs? Military installations? The Parliament? The halls of the People’s Assembly? We have to show them off.

*Cities are always works in progress, always dynamic. Created by hugely complicated histories, they are the battlegrounds of classes and social groups, and the places of countless human interactions . This dynamism has to be reflected on the built environment too. Mix old and new buildings, have your majestic central temple be under construction, remember the majority of buildings in New York don’t get to be 25 years old, that factories open, go bankrupt, and are reused as art spaces, and that even a square might radically change itself for a carnival or the Sunday market.