Where to Place Cities On Your Map
Placing cities and villages is one of my favorite parts of making a fantasy map. It’s the moment a landscape begins to feel like a world with stories to tell. The relationship between your settlements becomes the backbone of a map that feels realistic and immersive.
Cities and towns don’t pop up by accident. The good news is you don’t need a degree in history or geography to place them well. There are a handful of simple questions you can ask that will not only make your map feel more believable, but naturally spark new story ideas along the way. Here are seven simple questions I ask whenever I’m deciding where a city belongs.
7 Questions to Ask When Placing a City
1: Is there a source of water for drinking and sanitation?
2: How will the city generate enough food to sustain the population? Does it rely more heavily on farming, hunting, or fishing?
3: What natural resource would provide trade and commerce?
4: Is the city in a strategic location which prevents somebody else from obtaining resources?
5: Is the city thriving, declining, or just maintaining? Why?
6: How does the city deal with sanitation to keep the population healthy?
7: What is the relationship between this city and the surrounding settlements?
Now, if it feels intimidating to have to ask all of these questions before you place a city, don’t get overwhelmed. Not every city on your map is equally important to the story you’re telling so you don’t necessarily need to go into this level of detail for every one. But, these kind of questions should be running in the back of your mind to ensure your city placement is on the right track.
Map of The Arthurian Realm
What Resources Does the City Depend Upon?
A city takes a great deal of resources to build and maintain, so there needs be a good reason for people to settle there. Every thriving settlement is built around something valuable, whether that’s water, fertile farmland, rich mineral deposits, or an important trade route. As you decide where your cities belong in your world, start by asking what resource drew people there in the first place.
No Water? No City
It may seem obvious, but if you don’t have water, you can’t have people. Water isn’t just for drinking, it’s essential for sanitation, farming, livestock, industry, and trade. The amount of reliable water available often determines how large a settlement can grow before it reaches capacity. Today, most of us simply turn on a faucet without thinking about it. But, for most of history, access to fresh water was the defining thing that determined where people lived. Rivers, lakes, and natural springs weren’t conveniences, they were the foundation that made a civilization possible.
What We Learn From History
Ancient Egypt is perhaps the clearest example of how water shapes civilization. The annual flooding of the Nile deposited rich soil that supported enormous harvests, allowing cities to flourish where they otherwise couldn’t.
But rivers aren’t the only answer. Ancient Jericho grew around a natural spring, while many towns throughout history depended on wells, lakes, or smaller streams. The important question isn’t whether your city sits on a mighty river. It’s whether the people have a dependable source of fresh water that could realistically support the population.
What Drives the Economy?
Cities obviously need food and water to survive. But simply meeting those basic needs isn’t enough for a village to grow into a city. There must be something valuable that draws people in and keeps trade flowing, whether that’s iron deposits, fine cloth, spices, or the exceptional craftsmanship of producing the finest bells in the realm!
As you look over your map, ask yourself… What would make someone travel here? Once people gather around a valuable resource, merchants, craftsmen, and farmers soon follow. Over time, a thriving economy begins to form. The California Gold Rush is a great example. Towns sprang up almost overnight, but many of the people who became the wealthiest weren’t the miners. They were the merchants selling food, tools, clothing, and supplies to the miners.
Make it a Game
Think of this like a game of Civilization or Settlers of Catan. You have a limited amount of resources, so choosing where to build your next settlement matters. Build near valuable resources and people will come. Build in the wrong place and your settlement may never grow beyond a small village.
Of course, real cities are far more complex than this. But when you’re creating a fantasy map, you don’t need to model an entire economy. Start by asking yourself two simple questions…
How does this city survive?
How does this city thrive?
If you can answer those questions, you’re well on your way to creating a believable city. Better yet, you’ll often discover new stories hiding in the landscape itself. The setting begins to shape the people, the conflicts, and the history, making your world feel far more alive.
