City Plan: Cordale#

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 districts and the villages.
• About 2½ times: 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 districts#

The old seat stands on a hill above a stream, in a shallow valley that falls to the stream from both sides. The Ambrey aqueduct comes down from the uplands to the north, ends in a cistern on the summit, and runs on toward the coast.

Getting around#

• The Stair Railway: "The Stair Railway (1890s) links all seven capitals. Electrified, not maglev." (18:281) On the plan it keeps to the valley of the stream, and Cordale Station is in the New Seat.
• The Port Serell road runs south-east down to the port.
• The Irondown road runs north beside the aqueduct, toward Irondown in Hastholm.
• The Ambrey road runs west toward Ambrey, the "Vineyard town on the Stair of the western coast" (atlas), and on to Westhaven.
• Water. The Ambrey aqueduct is canon in name: "Cordale's dry coast depends on the Ambrey aqueducts." (18:287) Its course past the capital and the cistern on the summit are proposals.
• Air. The canon lists no airport at Cordale. The Principality's is at Port Serell (18:284).

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 Cordale the rules take this form:

• The princes' streets ring the hill. The Princes and Princesses of Cordale fill the Old Seat, and its winding streets are Lanes and Crescents. The reigning Princess has no street.
• Each quarter names its streets for its trade: the Bank Quarter for money, the Serell Quarter for the sea, Fountains for the dry country and its water.
• The New Seat is numbered, First Street to Twenty-fifth Street.
• The old lanes keep their founders' names. They are the Stair's mixed family names: Ferrer's Lane, Delorme's Lane, Vilar's Lane, Castagna's Lane.
• The villages keep their own streets: Olive Press Lane, Cistern End, Fountain End, Well End.
• Estates were built on the fields that sold, each with a theme:
  • the dry country (Pomegranate Green, Aqueduct Way);
  • herbs (Marjoram Drive, Parsley Avenue);
  • trees (Hazel Gardens, Oak Avenue);
  • flowers (Violet Gardens);
  • birds (Swift Avenue, Redstart Drive).
• Groves and fields whose owners never sold are still worked, with the estates round them.
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 5,380 of 5,527.
  • 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.
• No towers. Cordale is "a quiet inland seat" (18:64). The money that raises towers lives in Port Serell.

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

• Nothing is taken from Earth's places or history (05:266).
• No new name uses the crowded families: "-gate", "-mere", "-combe", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-".
• House Amberline has no street, because the canon's Amberline, Ambergate and Ambrey are close already.
• Prince Anselm has no street. The canon gives the name to princes of the Crown and of Cordale, and gives Ansel to kings of Ormsby, so a street would not say which it meant.