City Plan: Brightwick#

Using the plan. Drag to move, and zoom with the mouse wheel, the + and − buttons, or a pinch. Names come in as you zoom, each set lettered to read at the same size on screen:

• Whole city: the old city, the outer wards and the villages.
• About 2½ times: every ward, the main streets and the great buildings.
• About 6 times: the longer streets and the smaller places.
• About 12 times: the name of nearly every street.

The ⤢ button fills the screen. North is up, and the scale bar bottom left is always true.

The city at a glance#

The wards#

The Guild Council has "24 elected by wards" (18:146), and the plan draws twenty-four wards, each named for a guild. The twelve guilds the canon names give the old city and most of the wards round it: Weavers, Glaziers, Mercers, Dyers, Chandlers, Cordwainers, Coopers, Fletchers, Tanners, Vintners and Brewers from the First Burgesses' names (17:617), and Carters from "coopers and carters" (18:151). The other twelve are proposals.

The old city is the six wards inside the Freedom Ring, round the Guildhall. Their streets are named for the guild's own First Burgesses, whole names, since "First Burgesses take their guild's name as a surname in office" (17:617):

The eight wards round the old city are laid out on grids that face the Guildhall. Their streets take the guild's own words:

The ten outer wards reach out to the downs. The Printers' Ward is numbered; the others take their guild's words:

Beyond the wards are the estates and the downs, farmland with its old lanes. The villages are Woadley, Sanderly, Lynchet and Dewford.

Where the city builds upward#

• The Exchange towers, about 360 of them, stand in the Masons' Ward, just outside the Freedom Ring. The Brightwick Exchange is "the Seven's stock market" (18:274), and its firms build beside the Guildhall where it trades.
• The Station towers, about 250, stand round Brightwick Station in the Carters' Ward.
• The North Road towers, about 150, stand on the Skellan road in the Bakers' Ward.
• What stays low. Nothing tall stands in the old city. The Guildhall and its Great Window keep their sky.

On the plan the towers show as dark footprints in blocks built almost to the street.

Getting around#

• The Stair Railway: "The Stair Railway (1890s) links all seven capitals. Electrified, not maglev." (18:281) On the plan it comes in from Arvenne to the south-west and leaves to the north, with Brightwick Station in the Carters' Ward.
• The Freedom Ring is the avenue round the old city, named for the purchase of 1344.
• The Arvenne road runs south-west to Arvenne, which the Free City lies wholly inside (17:150).
• The Kellmoor road runs west toward Kellmoor, in Hastholm.
• The Skellan road runs north toward Skellan, the timber town in Ormsby.
• The East road runs east across the downs.
• Air and sea. The canon lists no airport at Brightwick (18:284), and the city is landlocked (17:149).

Landmarks#

Canon places are marked canon. Their position on the plan is a proposal unless the text gives it.

How the streets are named#

• streets are often numbered;
• famous people, leaders above all, get streets, and those streets sit together;
• an estate takes a theme, such as flowers;
• many streets keep the name of whoever first laid the road;
• some streets simply stop at a field whose owner never sold, and the suburbs have their cul-de-sacs.

In Brightwick the rules take this form:

• The First Burgesses' streets sit together, by guild. Each old ward names its streets for its own guild's First Burgesses, by their whole names.
• Every ward takes its guild's words. The wards round the old city and beyond it name their streets for their guild's craft.
• The Printers' Ward is numbered, First Street to Twenty-fourth Street.
• The old lanes on the downs keep their founders' names: Abbott's Lane, Quennell's Lane, Goodhew's Lane, Redfern's Lane, Wakeham's Lane.
• The villages keep their own streets: Dew Pond End, Fold End, Cross Street, Stile Street.
• Estates were built on the fields that sold, each with a theme:
  • the downs (Indigo Field Grove, Hurdle Avenue);
  • flowers (Poppy Way, Campion Avenue, Speedwell Gardens);
  • trees (Alder Grove);
  • herbs (Comfrey Way, Sage Road);
  • stones (Onyx Gardens, Slate Drive);
  • birds (Swift Road, Plover Way).
• Fields whose owners never sold are still farmed, with the estates round them.
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 8,576 of 8,769.
  • A name is used once in the city.
  • The estates may repeat a name found far off, never within 6 km or in the same locality.

The names avoid everything the naming rules and the canon forbid:

• Nothing is taken from Earth's places or history (05:266). The guilds' words leave out cloths named for Earth's towns.
• No new name uses the crowded families: "-gate", "-mere", "-combe", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-". The Salters have no ward; the Carters take their place.
• Three First Burgesses have no streets: Lark Vintner, who holds the office, and Rosamund Glazier and Perrin Cooper, who stand for it at the year's end (18:151).