5 SIMPLE Tricks to INSTANTLY Improve Your City's BACKSTORY

Welcome to season 2 of Worldbuilding Blueprints where we'll be discussing worldbuilding towns and cities! In this episode, we'll cover how to create your city's core layout and history! 

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Chapters

• 0:00 History of a City
• 0:49 Core of a City
• 6:02 City Lifecycle
• 11:48 Cores in Detail
• 27:56 Your City History

Transcript

A city does not remain static throughout history. It evolves and changes in various phases of either growth or decline, each shaped by external pressures, internal growth, and pivotal events — and the same should apply to your fantasy city. The history of your city is a critical part of your worldbuilding. And today, in this episode of Worldbuilding Blueprints, that's what I want to explore: how do you build the life cycle of your city and include the lore for your readers to enjoy?

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 2 of Worldbuilding Blueprints.

The key to understanding a city's history is understanding the concept of a city core. A city core is the part of the city that everything else seems to grow around. It's the place and concept that pull people into the city and keep them coming back. Whether it's a fortress on a hill providing protection, a busy market square that provides a place to buy and sell things, or a temple that draws pilgrims. Think of a city core as one of the heartbeats of a city.

For example, in Helsinki, the Esplanadi Park is the cultural core of the city. Christmas markets are put up there. May Day celebrations take place there. There are theaters on both sides of the park. If there are protests, they go through Esplanadi Park. It is the heart of Helsinki.

In ancient Athens, the Acropolis was the original power core, towering over the city and reminding everyone who’s in charge. In Las Vegas, the Strip is a cultural and economic core of the city, pulling in outsiders with lights, casinos, and shows, and employing many of the locals.

Notice that I mentioned different types of cores — cultural, economic, and power. And that is important to understand about a city's growth. Not only can different cities have different cores, but over time a city will develop multiple cores, like a dockside quarter, a thieves’ den, or a theater district.

These cores are the core of both the city's layout and its growth cycle. They're where life concentrates, where stories happen, and where the character of the city is revealed. They are central to planning the layout and history of your city.

Briefly, there are the following kinds of cores:

The power core is the palace, the fortress, the governor's hall, the administrative quarter — basically where the political head of your city sits.

The defensive core is walls, fortifications, barracks, siege engines, soldiers, and so on. They are what protect your city from external forces, and they're often created as part of the initial city building in order to defend the operations of the rest of the city. But they can develop later because, as the city grows and becomes more valuable, new defense cores may arise and grow over time.

Then there's the economic core, which is your marketplace, your harbor, your caravanserai, your artisans' quarter, or your resource extraction. This emerges very naturally where ships dock, where caravans unload, or where rural folk bring goods in. If the founding core of the city wasn't economic, this core will soon appear as surplus is generated and the exchange of goods begins. Economic cores also encompass resource extraction like mining and processing.

Then there's the religious or worldview core. This is where you have temples, cathedrals, shrines, monasteries, and so on. Often a sacred site might exist as a founding reason, but it also grows in importance as the city gains wealth to build monumental temples. Or the city might have been saved by the intervention of a god and thus develop a new holy view.

Then we have the underworld core. This is your slums, your thieves’ quarter, your red-light district, your shadow economy. Often this occurs as other cores decline and hence creates the infrastructure for a shadow economy to move into the abandoned infrastructure, which we'll talk more about when we discuss the actual life cycle.

And lastly, we have the cultural core, which is the arenas, the theaters, the academies, the gardens, the library. This basically emerges as wealth accumulates and elites invest in monuments to culture, learning, or entertainment. Sometimes this is sponsored by rulers to show benevolence, and sometimes it's grown from guilds or communities who are looking to leave their stamp on the world.

Now that we understand the concept of a city core, let's talk about the city life cycle.

A city life cycle begins with its foundation phase, when its first core is created. At that point, the city enters a normal growth phase where people are attracted to the core and the city expands. In this growth phase, there could be additional cores and purposes added, and if there are, this creates a growth acceleration in the city. But there might come a point where no new cores are being added, and that will result in the city's growth plateauing when the cores are all saturated — when they're all giving as much as they can and no new cores are being added.

This will result in growth saturation for a large part, and the city might then enter a state of slow decline where people leave because they no longer get sufficient resources out of the city's existing cores.

So that's the kind of natural life cycle. But a city is not an island. It doesn't exist independently of everything else going on in the world. And so the city's life cycle can, at any point, be interrupted by shock growth and decline cycles.

This is when a crisis strikes the city — an army invades, resources run out, a drought hits the city. Any kind of crisis could result in this kind of shock change. This kind of change can result in additional cores being added in a hurry and thus accelerated growth, or it can result in some core functions being removed from the city.

That creates a very interesting situation because if a core is terminated — if a core is removed — you need to ask yourself if there are any additional cores that still remain in the city. Because if a city has no more cores, if all of its cores have declined, the city enters terminal decline. And terminal decline will result in people slowly withdrawing from the city until it is completely abandoned.

Let’s take a look at some examples. Constantinople was initially founded as Byzantium due to its defensible location on the Bosporus and the access it gave to trade. So it had a defensive reason and then an access-to-trade reason, and it grew as a city in a normal trade cycle. But it also had many, many shocks. One of the most interesting shocks was when Constantine the Great decided that the site where Byzantium was would become Constantinople — the capital of the Roman Empire — moving the capital away from Rome itself.

This ushered in an era of grand architecture and economic prosperity. But there were a slew of other negative shocks, like the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Crusaders, which devastated the city, leading to its fragmentation and instability.

Now, Constantinople never entered terminal decline. It changed hands and eventually became the modern-day city of Istanbul.

But Ani in Turkey is a testament to the full terminal decline of a city. Ani was a city on the Great Silk Road, and when the trade along the Silk Road deteriorated due to the Portuguese finding the route around Africa and cutting out the overland route, Ani lost its core economic purpose due to the trade route shifting and eventually fell into ruin and was abandoned completely.

You should bear in mind that a city might be in steep decline but still maintain some purpose — some core function might yet exist. For example, Rome retained cultural significance under the papacy and eventually recovered from its steep decline despite shrinking dramatically under the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. So a city might enter a very steep decline that looks terminal, but as long as any of its cores remain active, there is still hope that it can pull itself out of that decline. If it still has a purpose, it can recover, even if it is in a smaller form.

So that's the overall view of the life cycle of a city and its core functions. Now let's plunge deeper into the life cycle of a city and explore how it ties back into creating the lore of your city, Starting with the first core.

As we discussed in the first episode of this season, every city begins with a reason. The founding motive of the city creates the first urban core — the beating heart around which everything else gathers. And in that episode, we explored many founding reasons: it could be strategic, economic, religious, or political. The essence of understanding why your city is founded gives you the core of your city — the first and most important, at least initially, core of your city, be that power, defense, economic, religious (rare but possible), underground (rare but possible), or cultural (again, rare but possible).

There are two very important things to understand about that first core. The first is longevity. Sometimes the original motive of a city will fade, but the core persists in some format. Rome's original ford on the Tiber no longer mattered once stone bridges spanned that river, but the forum created by that ford remained the civic heart of the capital.

We spoke last time about Johannesburg and its core founding reason of mining. Now, the GDP of Johannesburg these days is made up of only a very small percentage of mining activity, and yet it is still enormously impactful on the city in terms of the massive mine dumps all around the city and in terms of the way that the city’s center is laid out around those original claims. So, the core of the city will have a long, long impact even if it is displaced by later cores.

The other point to remember is especially relevant in the case of the city’s conquest. Later generations or conquerors might reinterpret the first core of the city. For example, Mexico City was built atop Tenochtitlan’s sacred heart. I think I mispronounced that. My tongue doesn’t quite want to get around those characters. Anyway, Mexico City was built atop this ancient sacred heart, and old temples there became cathedrals, altering the religion but preserving the purpose of the original core despite being overwritten by the conquistadors.

So your city can be dramatically impacted by its original core long after the core has vanished from being an active part of the city's growth.

Okay, let's move on to growth and new cores.

As the city expands through its phase two and three, new cores emerge, each with its own function and culture. They may cluster around geography like a riverbank or a hill, infrastructure like a harbor or a caravan gate, or institutions like a university or a guild hall. This often results in urban sprawl and deterioration of the old cores. It is the most common way in which new cores form, and multiple cores create a polycentric city. Each is a stage for different kinds of stories, and the spaces between them are natural tension zones.

Normal growth and decline within cores can happen for various slow-moving reasons, like economic drift, where trade moves from old river docks to new caravan gates. This happens especially due to changes in geography as the city physically expands or due to economics as new trade opportunities and transport mechanisms open up.

Economic agglomeration is when businesses or other endeavors cluster together due to the benefits they gain by being close to each other — like shared suppliers, shared labor pools, more customers, and so on. For our purposes, think of this as a kind of mini-process. You get one tavern by the docks to serve the sailors. Sailors gather there. More taverns open. This results in brothels and gambling dens following, and suddenly you have a full dockside underworld core due to economic agglomeration and the growth engendered by it.

You can also have growth due to political relocation, where a king might build a new palace, shifting the power core, and the old core might be left to rot. Or it might become a secondary palace, or it could even be handed over to the defense core.

Cultural accretion is another means of slow-moving growth. This is where once sacred plazas become marketplaces as merchants take over the space — potentially to sell to pilgrims at first, but over time the sacred nature of the square that the vendors took over vanishes.

And finally, you have decay and shadow growth, where old cores fall into ruin and are repurposed by the poor or the underworld. Bear in mind that cores don’t vanish; they become palimpsests. An abandoned fortress might be absorbed into slums, still visible in crooked street patterns and walls.

That’s our natural growth of a city. It’s important for you to understand how this happened in the life cycle of your city — to note down when additional cores entered your city just through natural growth. Did it go from being a fort on a hill to attracting merchants? Those merchants created an economic core. Over time, that economic core drew in the underworld to prey on the merchants and bring brothels to the city. And then, in due course, you have these three cores: the original defensive core to protect the ford across the river, the economic core of trading with the merchants, and the underworld that preys upon them.

So, note those down when you’re creating your city’s lore — how did the cores enter the city through natural growth?

But as we discussed earlier, natural growth is not the only element that leads to city growth. Growth and decline can also occur due to shocking events or crises that fundamentally alter the city in a short space of time. So, let's talk about those next.

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Okay, enough of that. Let’s talk about shock change events.

Shocks to the city can either strip away old cores, strengthen existing ones, or create entirely new ones. When a trade route shifts away, for example, the city may lose its economic lifeblood. A mine running dry can rob the city of its resource base — both of these would cause a decline in the economic core. Fortresses once vital can become obsolete with new weapons, and sacred sites may fall into disuse if they are desecrated or abandoned, taking their pilgrim traffic with them.

But not every change is about loss. Sometimes surviving a crisis reinforces a city's identity. A settlement that withstands a siege might double down on its defenses and grow into an even stronger fortress, resulting in growth in the defense core. A community that lives through a magical disaster might become famous for its arcane studies. Even a city that loses its trading role but still has fertile farmland might reinvent itself as a largely self-sufficient farming town.

Other times, change brings brand new purpose and new cores. A conqueror can rebuild a captured city into their capital. A devastating earthquake might uncover valuable resources and spark an economic boom. New technologies can transform the city overnight, giving rise to new cores at staggering speeds.

Whatever the cause, the effects of these changes push the city down one of three broad paths:

Recovery and growth. The city adapts to whatever crisis has struck it by adding or reinforcing cores. Leaders may emerge to stabilize things. New infrastructure might be built or policies enacted to encourage renewal. In some cases, the crisis might even accelerate growth, leading to urbanization and industrialization. London after the Great Fire of 1666 is a classic example. The destruction was immense, but the rebuilding introduced stronger urban planning and better infrastructure, setting the stage for much greater prosperity.

Reduced but stable. The city recovers but in a diminished form, surviving with fewer functions than before. It might specialize in just one industry or fall into the orbit of a stronger power as a vassal or satellite city. Venice illustrates this well. Its naval dominance faded over time, but it endured as a city by becoming a cultural and tourism hub.

Terminal decline and abandonment. In this case, the city loses all of its cores and eventually dies. It may become completely deserted, leaving behind only ruins, ghost towns, or legends. Survivors might migrate elsewhere, founding successor settlements. The Armenian city of Ani shows this fate. Once it was a thriving hub on the Silk Road, but it was hit by repeated invasions and economic collapse when the maritime routes replaced the overland ones. Without that new purpose, Ani was abandoned, and its stones are left to weather on the steppe.

Now, it's important to understand that part of decline. Decline doesn't usually happen to a city all at once. More often, it begins with the fading of a single core. Maybe the docks fall silent when trade routes shift, or a fortress loses its importance as new weapons make its walls obsolete. A temple that once drew pilgrims might stand empty after a theological schism. Each time a core withers, the city loses one of its vital purposes. The city as a whole survives so long as another core still beats strongly enough to keep it alive.

The end only comes when every core has failed and caused decline for many reasons, including the shocks we discussed above. But it can also be less dramatic than a shocking event.

Economically, trade can dry up. Mines can be exhausted, or infrastructure can crumble beyond repair. Environment and magic can turn against them — floods, plagues, volcanic eruptions, or ley lines that the city was built around could collapse, rendering a once vibrant district completely uninhabitable.

Political and social collapse can hollow out a power core if rulers fall or civil wars rage. Religious and cultural shifts can make a once sacred site irrelevant or strip a university town of its prestige.

But decline isn't always the end. It can also mean transformation. A fading core may be repurposed into something new. A fortress could be turned into a monastery. A decayed port can be reborn as a fishing town. A temple precinct can be converted into a bustling bazaar.

Cities that adapt this way survive, reshaping themselves around their remaining strengths or new opportunities. So, the decline of a city is really the story of its cores. As long as even one core remains, the city lives on — perhaps smaller, perhaps lacking in luster, but still alive. Only when every core has gone silent does the city finally die.

So, now that we understand city cores, city life cycles, and the events that drive the city's growth and decline, let's talk about your city.

When you start your city’s definition, ask yourself: did your city grow organically, or was it planned in some fashion? How long did the initial growth cycle last before the founding reason ran out of steam and the city's growth plateaued? Did the city grow rapidly, like with a gold rush, or slowly as people moved in from the farms? And are there any urban legends or myths told from those early days?

Then define your city's shock events. Consider if any of the following types of events have happened to your city and what their impact on the cores of the city was.

Did you have external shocks like war and conquest? Economic shocks like a trade route shifting? Natural disasters like a flood, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption? Or pandemics and famines that devastated your population?

Did you have political upheaval where a ruling dynasty of the country that the city belongs to collapsed? Did you have any new discoveries that came to the city — new technology that changed the way the city functions? Or did the city seal any new alliances or create new trade routes resulting in additional cores?

You can also look for internal shocks — things that happen inside of the city, like social unrest and riots caused by inequality or exploitation, or when key industries like miners and merchants come into conflict with each other.

You could also have religious or magical schisms — different schools of magic could come into conflict with each other, creating a disaster within the city. You could also have infrastructure collapse where there is unstable city growth, for example through overpopulation or food shortages, and that could result in part of the city collapsing. The sewage structure or the transportation network might simply not be able to deal with the number of people, and that could precipitate a crisis.

Or somebody within the city could invent a new piece of technology, and that could result in very rapid growth as the city attracts investors and others seeking to take advantage of this new technology. And the same, of course, with new resources — the city might discover a new mundane or magical resource, leading to massively expanded growth due to this new economic purpose.

Now, these shocks most often result in the creation or removal of cores. And, of course, as we discussed earlier, cores can also be added just through natural growth.

But when a core is added, it's also important to understand the growth of that core. So ask yourself: why did your new core arrive? How does the new core interact with the old ones? Is there a shift in the purpose of the city overall? Is there conflict, for example, between an economic core and a resource core, or an economic core and a cultural core? Does the core bring investment or development to the city?

Who are the key players in the development of this core? Are there local leaders or external influences? Are there any powerful factions that stand to gain or lose from the introduction of this core? What risks or obstacles exist in establishing the new core?

And then, of course, once you have the core established, you have all of the normal growth cycles around it. So ask yourself, while the core is growing, does it still serve its existing purpose, and is there more space for growth?

For example, let's say the core is built around mining. Is there still more of the resource to mine? Let's say the core is around trade. Is there still capacity within the infrastructure and logistics of the core to expand and handle more trade?

And then ask yourself, how does that growth change the social fabric of the city? Does it attract migration and create a more diverse population? Does it lead to new social classes or economic divisions? Are there cultural shifts in architecture, traditions, or governance? What myths, legends, or stories emerge during this phase of growth in this core? And is there any internal conflict created by this core between the city's elite or even between the workers of the city?

And then finally, when you're talking about the decline of a core, consider what triggered the decline. Think in terms of loss of trade, war, climate change, social collapse, resource exhaustion, and so on. Did the core have a chance to recover from its decline and enter a new growth phase? Was any key infrastructure or industry lost to the city due to the decline of the core? Did the decline trigger a decline in other cores of the city?

And if this is the final core of the city, who were the last people to leave? Think of scholars, farmers, warriors, priests, and so on. If the core resulted in abandoned buildings, were those buildings repurposed for another core, like, for example, did they become an underworld city? And if it was the last core and the city was abandoned, what ruins remain today?

If you track your city in this way — tracking its cores as well as the events that cause those cores to grow and decline — you will build up a comprehensive lore for your city. A great tapestry of history that all works together to help you understand not just the history, but also the rough layout of your city, as you can physically map these cores to the events that are related to them.

And that is my thought on how to build comprehensive lore for your city.

Next time, we will be discussing mapping out the actual bones of your city — what the streets look like, what nooks and crannies you should build, and so on. So make sure you're subscribed for that.

And a huge thank you to my channel members who make this possible, especially to the members of the Build It in Stone level: A. Wellyard, Epic, Katy Kofemug, Laurabones79, Necromancer JM, Neil Buckley, and Tony LeManna, as well as the members of the Build It in Wood tier: Aya Shameimaru, BearNecessities, Carrie, Dylan Buttera, Glacier Maniac, husoyo, Ignacio Rascovan, Jackmeowmeow Meow, Joaquin Moreira, Michelle Fleck, Moxain, Nicholas Ammann, Patricio, and Tiffiny Felix. Without your support, this wouldn’t be possible.

And I will see you soon for another episode of Worldbuilding Blueprints. Remember — build what you need when you need it.