Small towns are uniquely interesting. Sure, they might not have a Hears Tower or a
Seagram Building, but their careful residential-commercial balance, streets sided with filled and empty lots, and impact on the surrounding area gives someone replicating them very little room for error. I have developed many small towns, but my newest town, Terrace, is mapped down to every building, shop, tree, and shed. While I already had a hydrology and topography drawn out before making the town, I began it with a strictly gridded layout, adding detail and alleyways until I had a fairly realistic final layout. I first added buildings, going out from the downtown, and then added other important features. Here's the result:
Explore:
https://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/-39.3636/142.0608
Most of the elements that I used in this map should be fairly easily recognizable. A lot of thought went into the density and size of buildings and the types of shops necessary to serve the area.
Terrace, Aquilia has 604 buildings, about 30 of which are non-residential and 3 of which are apartments (countable as 5 houses each). Using the US' small town vacancy percentage (~18%), 102 houses are uninhabited and 469 are. In South Dakota, there are 2.46 people per household, meaning about 1,154 people live in the town. Adding some normal variation, I say that the town's population is 1,099 (and declining). Outside of the town proper, there is a general aviation airport, a meadow for visitors including its neighboring non-rendering apiary, and a laboratory with the purpose of creating a domesticated perennial grain. Terrace gets its electricity from a coal-fired power plant in nearby Simons, which I'll cover in a later blog post. Other than that, fields and farmland stretch out for many miles, and I'll also cover those in a later blog post.
Here is the downtown part of Terrace. The image shows 20 shops, 7 of which are restaurants, which are usually the most common shop. Other than that, there are only duplicates of banks, barber shops, and cafes. Not pictured here is the Pinpoint department store to the right, by which you can find Dennison's Dentist, Bakdep Subs & Pho, and a Camille's clothing store. Also not pictured is the green grocer to the north, named "John's Oasis" in reference to
food deserts and a regular grocery store. Scattered around the town are a pet groomer, another dentist, two more restaurants, a community center, a synagogue, and many churches. Noticeably missing is a bar or a liquor store, because Old County, in which Terrace is the county seat, is very traditional and is a dry county.
Thanks for reading
