5 Lore Driven Steps to Design a Believable Fantasy City

In this episode of Worldbuilding Blueprints Season 2, we'll discuss fantasy city layouts, the impact of the environment, fantasy species, infrastructure and lore!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Giving Your City a Spark
• 0:48 Foundation of Layout
• 6:37 Demographics and Districts
• 11:29 Governance and Infrastructure
• 14:11 Historical Scars & Triumphs
• 17:07 Finishing Touches

Transcript

Is your fantasy city lacking that essential spark? Does it feel more like a generic adventure backdrop than a living, breathing place? This happens when the lore of your city is disconnected from the layout of your city.

Today, we’re going to fix that. We’ll transform your urban landscape into a narrative powerhouse where architectural choices amplify your story. We’re talking about how your world’s history, geography, races, and magic shape your city’s layout.

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 3 of *Worldbuilding Blueprints.*

The first thing we’ll discuss today is the foundation of layout — using lore as an architectural blueprint. Now, bear in mind, I’m assuming you know how to pick your city’s location and map out its history and cause, based on Episodes 1 and 2 of this season. If you need more details on those topics, check out the earlier episodes of the podcast. If you’re watching this on YouTube, that’s linked in a playlist. Otherwise, just use your podcast app.

The reason why a city was founded, as we discussed in both *Town Locations* and *City History,* has a deep impact on its layout. A fortress city grows upward and inward, with narrow switchbacks and walls hugging the contours of a cliff. A trade city stretches outward, its roads widening toward markets and gates. A holy city radiates from its temple the way ripples spread from a dropped stone.

A shadow core is often built without planning on the remnants of a previous part of the city. The reasons behind a city or a core of a city coming into existence affect the layout of that area in a way that is universal across cities.

But each city is also unique, and that uniqueness grows in part from its environment. A coastal or riverside city moves on water — canals and harbors become its arteries. A mountain city stacks in tiers, its houses climbing rock like ivy. A desert city hides from the sun with narrow lanes for shade, cisterns beneath courtyards, and rooftops that bloom after nightfall.

Even altitude changes a city’s layout. Low Town and High Town can mirror class and climate — the rich enjoying cooler air while the poor swelter below.

On top of that, you add weather. Monsoon rains need somewhere to go, resulting in giant storm drains that riddle the city. Snow demands broad avenues for clearing and peaked roofs to prevent buildup during midwinter. If a city is swathed in endless fog, your citizens might name every lamppost like a friend.

Your city’s climate should be visible in its rooftops and in its sewers — even when it’s the wrong season for that particular architectural design.

I’ll give you an example. In the southern part of the Empire of Lumiaron in my world, *The Sangwheel Chronicles,* they build houses with flat roofs because in their history, war in the south had been common and winters mild. So they build like their ancestors did, with every rooftop a potential archer’s platform.

But in the north, above the Arctic Circle, where winters are savage and wars rare, they build with peaked roofs so that snow can slide off and drain when it melts. This visible difference, even in summer, helps towns from the south feel different from those in the north.

Okay, that’s how to use environment and weather to make towns feel different. But don’t forget that fauna and flora springing from those attributes also influence your town.

Greenery can mark privilege — tree-lined boulevards for nobles, while at most a weed or two grows in the slums. Or your temples might have extensive gardens fed by aqueducts to show their mastery over nature.

On the other side of the fence, nature could be a constant invader — in a jungle city where new growth must be beaten back every summer, or the vines start reclaiming the walls.

And what about local city animals? Do you have squirrels, rats, seagulls — or some kind of fantasy creature?

Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has a whole green belt to allow red deer to move through the city without ever touching tar or pavement. They even have wild bridges over the highways. There are also foxes, owls, bunnies, and the more ordinary squirrels that live in the city.

And because Helsinki is a seaside town with a strong rock concert culture, there are seagulls trained to attend rock concerts — not for the music, but to steal your sausage roll. Trust me, I have firsthand experience.

But one thing’s for sure: you’d never mistake Helsinki for any other city — and not just because the signs are in both Finnish and Swedish.

So that’s your first thing to consider. How does your city’s environment, weather, and local fauna and flora intersect with its reasons for founding and the cores you’ve defined? How does the environment make each core’s layout unique to its location?

Next, we’ll talk about demographics and districts.

Once people arrive, the city divides into districts by momentum if nothing else. Fishers cluster near the docks. Smiths build houses near their forges. Priests want temples together. Mages need workshops close to the ley lines that hum beneath their feet. Each group bends the architecture around its needs, resulting in clustering.

That’s how districts form — accidental at first, then inevitable. Unless, of course, your city was planned — but then you have other influences, and that’s another kind of core.

Anyway, back to accidental districts. You’ll have growth around the various industries and cores of the city, but this is fantasy — so we also have to layer in our fantasy species, or “races.”

(Side note: I hate calling them races. I don’t think they’re the same species as humans, so why would they be called races? But everyone uses the term, so here we are.)

Your fantasy races profoundly affect their cities. Let’s assume standard fantasy tropes — dwarves, elves, and so on — just to discuss their impact on architecture.

Dwarves carve downward, turning hills into honeycombs of forges and halls. Elves build with living plants — bridges of vines, sleeping platforms shaped out of tree branches. Halflings and gnomes prize comfort — hill houses with round doors and courtyards overflowing with herbs. Fairy and winged folk think vertically — terraces, hanging gardens, and doors that open to the sky.

Humans, ever the borrowers, mix it all together: a dwarven bridge beside an elven roof garden beside a gnomish clock tower.

And speaking of fairy folk — physiology shapes layout. Centaurs need ramps instead of stairs. Amphibious races demand water entrances. Giants require plazas broad enough to turn around in.

When you’re building your city, consider who your dominant race or species is. What do their homes look like? How do they move through the city? How do they transport goods?

Then, think about what other species share the city and how the architecture accommodates them. Is there an Elf Town? A Little Hobbiton? An area that caters to mouse-people where no cats are welcome? Entrances on rooftops for a flying race?

In a multi-species city, you can use layout to surface cultural friction. Where a dwarven quarter butts against an elven grove, you’ll find hybrid architecture — carved stone wrapped in vines — creating a grudging compromise or a continuing conflict. That gives you potential fault lines for story or campaign drama alike.

Before we talk about the flow of power, give me a moment to tell you how you can get even more out of this podcast.

Members of the *Just In Time Worldbuilding* YouTube channel get free access to the worksheets on the topics we discuss in these podcasts — from the “Build It in Straw” tier to the “Build It in Stone” tier. Not only do you get worksheets, but also a monthly members’ livestream and early access to all my videos.

If you don’t want a monthly membership, you can purchase worksheets on my Ko-fi page. And if you’re interested in the first season’s worksheets, you can buy the book *Worldbuilding Blueprints: Volume 1.*

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All right — let’s talk about governance and infrastructure.

A city’s layout is also a diagram of control. If you follow the water — both gray and potable — you’ll find who rules. Waste flows downhill through the districts no one cares to protect.

If a peasant has to walk half an hour to fetch water from the communal pump, they should be grateful the water is clean. But the noble’s palace is a different story. Even if it’s on a hill to command the city, there’ll be some way to get water up there — aqueducts, pulleys, pumps, or servants carrying it continuously.

Even beyond water, you can see layers of power in a city’s layout. The wealthiest quarter is almost always upwind of the tanneries. Markets sprawl close to gates where taxes are collected. Elites cluster together in safe, convenient neighborhoods — maybe on a hill for defense or a riverside for water access — but either way, everything is easy where they are.

But elites don’t always stay in the same place. You can sometimes see old power structures peeking through, especially in shadow cores. Collapsed tunnels from earlier dynasties might now be infested by thieves. A temple might be riddled with forbidden catacombs and sealed staircases leading nowhere — architectural leftovers from political wars long fought and lost or won.

When building your city, ask yourself: where do your elites live, and why? Where do your poorest citizens live, and why? How does infrastructure — sewage, potable water, transportation — work for the rich? For the poor? For everyone in between?

Don’t forget common spaces like markets, parks, and town squares. Who uses them? Where are they located? What do they say about your city’s current or past power structures?

And speaking of power structures — let’s talk about historical scars and triumphs.

Cities are palimpsests. Have I said that before? Probably, because it’s true. Every century scribbles over the last, but the ghost of old writing still shows through the bones of the city.

A wall shattered in a siege becomes the foundation for new homes. A desecrated temple is reborn as a thieves’ den, its altar serving as the leader’s table for sorting loot.

This is where you lean on the city history we designed in Episode 2 — think about how that affects layout.

While citizens can obviously build new over old, don’t forget about nature. Ivy reclaims ruins. Magical storms might glass whole neighborhoods into reflective wastelands.

These changes create what archaeologists call urban stratigraphy — the layers of the city’s past. Each layer holds a different mood, a different era’s moral codes and power structures, still imprinted on the streets and buildings that once stood there.

In a fantasy world, those memories can even be literal. A city built along a ley line might shift its streets over centuries to follow drifting energy. A failed summoning might leave a permanent crater park where nothing grows except translucent glass trees. Ghosts might haunt the old places.

The important thing is this: the past is never gone. The present just changed the zip code.

So, when you’re creating your city’s layout, take a long, hard look at its history. How do the past cores influence the present ones? Is there a shadow core built on what was once a holy district? Has an elite district swallowed a former economic core? When the city was defeated, what infrastructure was destroyed — and what was built in its place?

At this point, you should have a reasonable idea of your city’s layout — but it might still be missing its unique spark. So let’s bring it together by talking about finishing touches.

Beyond structure, your city needs sensation.

What does the air taste like? Are there cherry trees that bloom in spring, leaving sweetness in the air? Is there a weed people smoke that leaves an acrid tang lingering in every breath?

How about sound? What does a visitor hear first when entering the city — the clang of forges, the rustle of prayer flags, or the hum of magical machinery?

Use sensory anchors to differentiate your districts. The dwarven quarter might smell of metal and mushrooms; the elven terraces, of resin and rain. The old market echoes with a hundred dialects and the flapping of awnings.

Even how the city is lit can tell neighborhoods apart: ever-burning mage lamps for the rich, smoky tallow for everyone else.

I actually did a whole video about how lighting impacts your worldbuilding — check that out in the information card on YouTube.

Don’t forget landmarks people use for directions. For example, an old magical fountain that only flows during an eclipse might be called the Dark Sun Fountain — “Turn left at Dark Sun Fountain.”

A street whose numbering skips from 6 to 8 because seven was thought cursed after it was destroyed in a war could be used as a shortcut to reach the noble quarter.

Or an alley that doesn’t officially exist because it was meant to be replaced by a guardhouse, but the money went into the magistrate’s pocket — so everyone calls it Watchman’s Alley.

When your players or readers explore the city and hear those names, you can gently bring in the lore of your city without info-dumping. That draws them into your story and your world, instead of giving them pages of exposition to slog through.

And those are my thoughts on the basic layout of your city.

Now, there’s a lot more to this chapter in the book that will eventually accompany this podcast — things like how an underwater city might look and how magic affects layout. But for the podcast, I think we’ve spent enough time on city layout.

In the next episode, we’ll move on to economics, so make sure you’re subscribed for that.

And a huge thank you to the channel members who make this podcast possible — especially the members of the *Build It in Stone* level: ep_ic, Laurabones 79, A. Wellyard, NecromancerJm, Neil Buckley, Katie KofeMug, and Tony LaManna.
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Without your support, this would not be possible.

And I’ll see you soon for another episode of *Worldbuilding Blueprints.*

Remember: build what you need, when you need it.