Oolite Bulletins

I'd like to plumb the community wisdom on this one,

Considering we have a reference for how 'Human Colonial' structures are composed (I never realized how much satellite data is out there!)...

What shape and pattern do you imagine that other species might produce for their cities?

For example, I would expect an insect inhabited planet to have more hexagonal features to their dwellings/structures.

You mean ... rodentia in underground burrows (like Hobbits) ?

It's a tricky one ... I think there's always going to be huge amounts of variation. Ant- or bee-type social/hive insects will be very different to more solitary/individual kinds like beetles or mantises; squirrelesque rodents will have different structures to ratty or rabbity ones; and so on.

There's always going to be physics, though: planet radius, and therefore gravity, will have a huge influence on what sort of structure can stand up. Population size, too, might be an indicator. This might need to be something that's generated using planet descriptions as much as species descriptions, too; a planet plagued by earthquakes might have massive, bunker-type buildings with sloping walls, regardless of whether they're insects, frogs, human colonials or whatever; one that suffers from solar flares might be largely subterranean; and so on.

Maybe there could be materials types which fit with certain species? Some insects could have papery structures, like wasps' nests; some could have hexagons; some could have chitinous material; some could have a lumpy mud look like termite mounds. Lobsters might tend towards something shell-like, with ridges or a nacreous look. Frogs, I would suspect, would be likely to have a lot of greenery and water around the place, but it gets trickier when you consider lizards, birds, felines and rodents. After all, there aren't many human structures that resemble chimpanzee or gorilla nests!

Felines like dens and have a strong need for feeling safe where they are sleeping. They like being situated where they can observe what's going on around them, but not be observed themselves. Being up high, somewhere relatively inaccessible, fills most of those needs.

Diziet Sma wrote:

... need for feeling safe where they are sleeping.

That would apply to most species, I'd think... it certainly applies to me.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Felines like dens and have a strong need for feeling safe where they are sleeping. They like being situated where they can observe what's going on around them, but not be observed themselves. Being up high, somewhere relatively inaccessible, fills most of those needs.

Most primates like to live up trees away from predators, and they make new nests every day ... but we've come a long way from that. I don't think we can expect intelligent, technological alien civilisations to reflect the behaviour of the Earth-equivalent class/order/family, though.

Disembodied wrote:

Most primates like to live up trees away from predators, and they make new nests every day ... but we've come a long way from that. I don't think we can expect intelligent, technological alien civilisations to reflect the behaviour of the Earth-equivalent class/order/family, though.

Maybe when they go on vacation.

Interesting question. Depends a bit on whether you think that the species descriptor is pretty much the sole inhabitant, or whether it's just the majority. So for example Lerequ (Lobsters, gal2, islands) might have various Lobster settlements sub-surface where they won't be spotted from orbit, then a minority population on the islands of various other species, and a few big coastal cities which stretch right out and then underneath the sea where the majority of interspecies interaction takes place (and probably where the major shuttle landing sites are)

I think there might be a distinction between 2-dimensional species (Colonials, Felines, Humanoids, Lizards) and 3-dimensional species (Birds, Insects, Lobsters). The other land-dwelling species would probably spread out a lot like humans (except on those planets with "shyness", in which they might perhaps just spread out uniformly and sparsely over the surface?) in the cities. A species able to move in three dimensions within its environment might go for much more 3-dimensional use of space. Cities might be much smaller viewed from above, with lots of links between buildings above ground level.

Remember that most structures are dependent on the needs of the species and the requirements of the environment along with the available building materials.

The materials may not be an issue in a galactic society where anything can be brought in, but environmental issues are important. High winds would not lend themselves to high structures. Earthquake-prone worlds would likewise not go for high structures (apart from Californians) and would adopt low dwellings or even underground ones - more grounded cultures might go for buildings that have a large footprint and may be ten stories high and built to withstand earthquakes. Avians in high mobility atmospheres would likely "nest" in mountain hollows or cliffs.

There's also a large degree of personal or cultural preference to consider. Not all avians on a world might want to live in a cliff face. Some might want the peace and quiet of the valleys. A species belief system might dictate certain shapes - maybe hexagons are a religious icon for some insects and anathema to others...

Some avians and insects might be flightless, and some lobsters might be purely (or primarily) land-dwelling ... some human colonials might prefer to live in floating cities, and farm the oceans, depending on terrain, climate, local wildlife etc. Environment and tech level could have a larger effect on building type than species.

Ah, another great discussion. I love this forum.

(Or we could go with a variant of Drew's books - they're all anthropomorphous version of animals based on what we, humans wanted them to do, so we'd want them to live in societies comfortable for us when we visited or oversaw... tweaked with natural variants of the creatures involved and the resources available - although according to Drew - we put the best fitting species on each terraformed world)

I'd go more for the "humans created them then dumped them on their new worlds and abandoned them".

It means that they would come up with their environments more or less on their own but there would be enough of an impression left to create a layout that would at least have some connection to human sensibilities.

It would make the cities easier to visualise and explain away any resemblance to New York. Again.

So in terms of per planet variation.

Techlevel would have an impact on the shape of cities
Population impacts city density
Special cases for earthquakes / solar-activity ... and others
Inhabitants species seems less important.

Thanks for discussing this - it's quite helpful.

I'm also theorising that the colour of light emission from cities would often be biased to the local sun colour.

submersible wrote:

I'm also theorising that the colour of light emission from cities would often be biased to the local sun colour.

Probably not, unless the inhabitants are native to that world. Their eyes may be most sensitive to the same wavelengths as that sun's apparent color as it's seen through the planet's atmosphere, therefor any night lighting they have is quite possibly in similar wavelengths.

However at very low tech level (read: Earth's!), the color of artificial lighting may just be what's cheapest either to make or use.
Incandescent, fluorescent, and LEDs...all initially had color restrictions due to the materials and operating temperatures used.

Switeck wrote:

submersible wrote:

I'm also theorising that the colour of light emission from cities would often be biased to the local sun colour.

Probably not, unless the inhabitants are native to that world. Their eyes may be most sensitive to the same wavelengths as that sun's apparent color as it's seen through the planet's atmosphere, therefor any night lighting they have is quite possibly in similar wavelengths.

However at very low tech level (read: Earth's!), the color of artificial lighting may just be what's cheapest either to make or use.

And at very high tech level the only city light visible from orbit is likely to be mostly intentional.

Hmm, that's a thought. Some of the more totalitarian, artistic or eccentric states might design their cities precisely for their view from orbit. A corporation's logo, picked out in cities and brightly lit transport links between them (the last rebranding exercise involved two hundred million refugees); a new city with its street pattern in the shape of the President's head; a city of thousands of disconnected spires, each with a beacon on top: from orbit becoming a pointillist painting.