Forum:Valonne/National capital - Development proposals

Forums → Valonne → Valonne/National capital - Development proposals

FR - Ceci est la page forum du projet collaboratif Valonne. Pour la documentation officielle du projet, veuillez visiter la page du projet. EN - This is the forum page for the Valonne collaborative project. For the project's official documentation please visit Collab page.

FR - Cette page concerne la ville capitale de la Valonne - Nemans. EN - This page is concering the capital city of Valonne - Nemans.

FR - La proposition d'utilisateur:Aiki pour le développement historique de la ville a été acceptée (voir ci-dessous pour les détails et la discussion) - veuillez la suivre lors de la cartographie de la ville. La proposition en elle-même est très « minimaliste » et n'est pas très stricte pour les cartographes, ce qui permet une bonne dose d'expression personnelle La cartographie dans la ville est officiellement ouverte. Bonne cartographie ! EN - User:Aiki's proposal for the historical development of the city has been accepted (see below for details and the discussion) - please follow it when mapping in the city. The proposal in itself is very 'barebones' and is not very strict to mappers which allows for a good amount of self-expression. Mapping in the city is officially open. Happy mapping!

Aiki's proposal August 2024 - Accepted

Please find below some thoughts I had about potential developments for Valonne's national capital with some drafts done on a .joz file to help visualise the steps (each step/period is on a separate layer).

Gallo-Roman oppidum

Oppidum gallo-romain

The capital city's formal history starts with the OGF equivalent of a Gallo-Roman oppidum set on a hill next to a meander. The oppidum is walled, endowed with the usual main cardo and decumanus, a forum with the main temple, a single stone bridge and outside the walls, an area/theatre ensemble. The whole site is protected by a castellum located at the highest point of the hill. Some 5km north of the oppidum, as smaller settlement serves as the oppidum's lacustrine harbour. This settlement's name may refer to its location next to an estuary and resemble Genève (e.g. Genèvre, Geneure, Genure...) whose name is based on a Celtic root meaning estuary.

Medieval city

Cité médiévale

Local lords, and later kings, build a castle (loosely based on Château of Blois) enriched with a chapel, on top of the castellum's ruins. The cathedral is build on top of the forum's main temple and the ordered Roman street grid gives way to winding medieval streets. A main fortress, next to the castle, protects the castle while smaller ones protects new bridges that cross the river. The port village is walled and a fortress to protect it is built. Later on, a formal university develops south of the cathedral's square. North east of the city, the king's hunting ground is enriched with a hunting lodge.

Renaissance & pre-modern city

Ville de la Renaissance & pré-moderne - Centre

Ville de la Renaissance & pré-moderne - Environs

The castle morphs into a palace with new wings and Renaissance gardens. Along the lake's shore, some 20km north east of the city, the kings builds a leisure palace that will be modernised to catch up with the latest fashion. The compound may be inspired by the Châteaux of the Loire Valley, Versailles or due to its location, by Peterhof, Drottningholm or Fredensborg for the gardens. Later in the period, the medieval walls are torn down and replaced by tree-lined promenades called boulevards. The city centre merged with its faubourgs. A first pleasure park opens below the king's palace gardens.

19^th century city

Ville à la fin du 19e siècle - Centre

Ville à la fin du 19e siècle - Agglomération

The city is impacted by the Industrial Revolution and new industrial neighbourhoods are developed. Potential locations are next to the lacustrine harbour if it is still active then, or south of the city along the river. Potentially, a dam can be built to generate mechanical power, and a few decades later, electrical power for the nearby workshops and factories. As the urban area expands, the royal hunting ground is turned into a public park and railway terminals are built to serve a growing population. During the last decades, the city experience a large transformation with new avenues, boulevards irrigating the city centre (based on Haussmann's works or similar developments elswhere in France or Europe. Some of those new thoroughfares link old or new buildings lined along them, others create impressive perspectives towards a focal point (square or building). Further out, new promenades lead travellers to their local destination (e.g. Dijon's cours du parc leading from the centre to Parc de la Colombière). Based on similar-located cities such as Geneva or Zurich, it is likely the upper class and upper middle class settles along the lake shores or between the royal palace (or former royal palace) and the leisure palace north east.

Mid-20^th century city

Ville à la fin des années 1950 - Centre

Ville à la fin des années 1950 - Agglomération

During the first half of the century, a first ring of suburbs develops and expands. New commuter lines are opened, some are even electrified while metro tunnels are dug under the city centre's avenues. By 1950/1960, the first housing estates are built further out in the suburbs. The first motorways are built as is a first ring road. A first airport is built some 10/15km south of the city.

Today's city

Ville au début du 21e siècle - Centre

Ville au début du 21e siècle - Agglomération

During the last 60 years, the urban area has reached its current extent, endowed with business parks or malls are elsewhere in Uletha. New ring roads and motorways are added, while a second and third airports are added further out of the urban area. The cope with the growing population and a somehow inadequate metro system, an RER system is developed with new lines and new tunnels under the city centre joining railway terminals network.--Aiki (talk) 15:15, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

I quite like this proposal. I think there should be history-defining events of the city that could spark up some interesting developments, whether its a major (civil) war, some natural disaster, some new development after a colonial boom. So maybe some districts were designed differently and other parts grew in varying speeds. Additionally, I think there could be an emphasis of the medieval growth of the city due to trading. In a plan on the project page I denotated the amount of routes from, not only the rest of Valonne but the entirety of West Uletha, arriving and transferring in Nemans, so the merchant impact on the city would have the be massive which may or may not influence the city's urbanism. ⸺ Bixelkoven (talk) (West Uletha Admin) 18:38, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

I like this proposal too. It gives Paris-like vibes for the city growth history. The way you've addressed the transport development is good and I like it and also the main station location proposals. Sweetykid (talk) 20:38, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

@Sweetykid, the inspiration is indeed Paris, mixed with other major French or European cities. For roads or train stations, the idea was to have a basic framework for the draft, based on the existing surrounding (e.g. existing main roads, nearby cities). It doesn't mean the have to be where they are on the draft or in the same number (e.g. maybe there will be a E, SE and S train terminals instead of just E ans S ones).

@Bixelkoven, I fully agree with you, additional elements should be layered to enrich the context. Civil unrest, civil (or not) wars, or natural disasters may explain why particular areas of the urban area developed at some point. Here are some elements I can think of:

1. "Roman" times: only permanent bridge on the Yse River between Lake Glois and the sea, triggering a development of the oppidum: many Roman roads joined there before crossing the river.
2. Middle Ages:
   1. Merchants chasing the king/local lord away from the city (e.g. tax issues) so that the court resettled in the lake-side district leading to a development of the area as one of the future secondary cores for the urban area.
   2. Religion: medieval ghetto and/or quarters for "Protestants" away from the "Catholics". These may be located in faubourgs across the river and/or at the city gates or outside the city walls. Additionally, the NW village marked "Abbaye Royale" (Royal Abbey) based on St-Denis near Paris, may have also developed as a major pilgrimage goal.
   3. Some locations along the main roads were major inns on the way to and from Nemans (e.g. one day in cart away from the city gates ~20km and/or just at the city gates if they happened to be closed when you arrived).
   4. The above point makes me think that fortresses, convents, monasteries are "needed" at some crucial locations along those roads.
   5. Wars in neighbouring countries/Economical development of Nemans may have attracted foreign merchants, artisans, bankers to settled in specific neighbourhoods (e.g. Paris and Lyons had Lombard bankers who were not always repaid by the king).
   6. Regular floods for centuries in some areas along the river leading to having buildings are roads that are maximum from the late 19th. e.g. the area south of the city hill is too flat/low and was easily flooded before the reservoir was build in the 19^th century. The city hill is a former river island surrounded by former river arms, some of those may have been filled naturally, others intentionally (e.g. the jardins d'agréement may have been built above one of those). In times of major floods, these areas were overflowed.
3. Modern Age:
   1. Tearing down of the walls: development of new neighbourhoods around the old city centre. These could be a mixture of fully planned developments (potential inspirations: 17^th century places royales and promenades) and lighlty-to-not-planned-at-all developments (e.g. medieval winding roads stayed in place and faubourgs grew along them).
   2. 19^th & early 20^th centuries industrial developments: large quarters for factories along the river (e.g. south of the city) + dwellings for workers (mix of semi-detached houses and apartment buildings) nearby.
   3. Haussmann-like developments: new avenues/squares and parks lined with grand bourgeois buildings or townhouses, department stores, headquarters for industrial companies, banks, museums or trains stations. New bridges.... A (civil) war may have been the reason for these developments instead of having a Napoleon III.
   4. Development of villages/towns next to new train lines in the second half of the 19^th century. Train network predating any metro by some 50 years, it should be reasonably extensive. These villages/towns finished by merging into the larger banlieue.
   5. Colonial undertaking may have left the following: remnant of colonial exhibition(s), ethnic neighbourhoods later on.
   6. Housing estates: smaller old one, reasonably close to the city centre and huge modern ones from 10-15km on.
   7. Former industrial neighbourhoods may have been abandoned mid-20th then rediscovered 40 years later and redeveloped in boho apartment buildings and open-plan offices.
      --Aiki (talk) 07:11, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Those are some interesting ideas, some I've never heard about. I will research a bit more about some of them because they seem fascinating (like the Haussmann development).
Otherwise, I think the importance of surrounding towns in the modern day Nemans would be crucial, thanks to the issues you've brought up (the towns acting as inns for travelling merchants, fortresses that would act as an outer layer of defence for the city, probably some issues with cleanliness, sewage and diseases could've prompted many people to move in to those satelitte towns, and later on in the modern era their final population boom with the development of railways). One idea I got is to have a circular system of fortifications around Nemans like various cities in Europe, so some of those forts could've enhanced the development of some of the satelitte towns. Given the imagined size of Nemans, we could have 2 or even 3 outer rings of fortifications circling around the city centre (the third one could be composed of mostly abandoned small forts where only some of them were completed).
Another thing I'd like to think about is the flow of air in the area, so we can determine where to put the industrial and poor neighborhoods while keeping the richer neighborhoods in the other areas (something like 19th century Manchester under the influence of wind directions and how it separated the poor and rich neighborhoods based on air quality and smog).⸺ Bixelkoven (talk) (West Uletha Admin) 11:59, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

It's indeed quite common in Europe to have richer neighbourhoods located west of the city centre for this very reason. Exception can be explained by the topology of the location. For example, rich people may have preferred living along the lake, typically closer to the potential royal residence. Off the top of my head: the royal abbey could also have been a fortress, a hospital, a medieval university competing with the city's. That may add extra buildings to scatter outside the city centre.

I've gathered a few links (mostly Wikipedia) that may inspire for Nemans developments:

1. General links:
   1. Maps of Paris
2. Middle Age:
   1. Cathedrals (usually less famous ones around Paris, for obvious historical/architectural reasons): Laon, Sens
   2. Castles, Fortresses or Keeps: Gisors (reminds me a bit of York's Clifford's Tower), Vincenes
   3. Castles for central royal castle (fortress morphed into a palace): Blois, Amboise.
   4. Large convents/monasteries or ecclesiastic palaces: St-Denis, Reims
3. Modern times:
   1. 17^th century fortifications: Vauban fortifications, e.g. Saarlouis, Lille, Toul.
   2. Urban planning: Grands Boulevards, places royales: Vosges, Victoires, Vendôme, Concorde
   3. Architecture style (to have an idea of how buildings look like): Baroque Val-de-Grâce church linked to a military hospital, Neoclassicism
   4. Major hospitals: Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, Pitié-Salpêtrière (original cloister buildings from 17^th century), Invalides military hospital (at least for the plan)
4. 19^th/20^th century:
   1. 1^st and 2^nd Paris fortification rings: English article, 1^st ring with map, 2^nd ring with map. As a matter of fact, Paris inner ring road was build where the rather useless Thiers Enceinte once stood.
   2. Civil building in Rennes: may be use as a base for one the Parliament house building.
   3. Architecture style (to have an idea of how buildings look like): Beaux-Arts and Second Empire style
   4. Urban planning: Haussmann's transformation (the French article has maps), Eugène Henard.
   5. Typical suburban detached/semi-detached houses/Map example
   6. "Council estates": early 20^th century/map example, early grands ensembles: Etats-Unis (Lyon), typical 50s/60s/70s grands ensembles: Cité des 4000/map example.
5. As a large city that isn't Paris, I feel Bordeaux is very French in terms of buildings and urban planning.
   --Aiki (talk) 05:52, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

This are some great resources. Frankly, I'd say we can start the development of the city with the plans you've presented. I have some additional ideas but they are minor in the grand scheme of the plans, they can be discussed on the road. ⸺ Bixelkoven (talk) (West Uletha Admin) 21:13, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I've come to the realization that the river Yse is actually very long. At Nemans it reaches 1270km in length (out of the total 1810km). Comparably, at that length the river Elbe in Germany is about 350 meters wide, meaning that would roughly be the width of the river in Nemans as well. With that, the result will be a much smaller amount of bridges crossing the river and at that, probably a larger split between the two sides. I think there should be certain river islands that I am making as I am writing this that could act as bridging points between the sides, otherwise, one side of city would be much more developed that the other. ⸺ Bixelkoven (talk) (West Uletha Admin) 13:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess you're right. When you look at European cities crossed by large rivers like Budapest or St St Petersburg, it is quite obvious that bridges are scarce (~ every 1km within the city core?). I suppose this would have enhanced Nemans Roman river crossing's importance, a bit like Trajan's Bridge over the Danube or Londinium Bridge (the Thames was then larger but shallower with marshes on its edges). I had a quick look at some locations where rivers exit reasonably large lakes at about same latitudes: Neva River leaves Lake Ladoga in a single large arm while the St Lawrence exists Lake Ontario via the much larger Thousand Islands area. We may imagine a solution in-between: a couple of extra river arms of different width, some naturally naturally or artificially filled (I imagine the ones to the east may have been partially turned into canals). Thinking of a previous discussion here, I guess some of the hills at the edge of basin may have have served as medieval castles/17-19th century forts' location.--Aiki (talk) 02:57, 7 October 2024 (UTC)