City Plan: Low Merrin#

Interactive street plan for lowmerrin. Enable JavaScript to explore it.

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 town: the valley, 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 town at a glance#


What it is	The capital of the Merrin Confederacy: "seat of the Diet of Merrin and the Three Shores Council" (33:46).
People	1.6 million (33:46). The Confederacy holds 23.5 million (33:49). A Merrin person is called a Merrin, "the same word as the state" (32:28).
Where	Merrin is "Upland valleys and a warm coast, in thirteen cantons" (32:122). "The Merrin valleys: short, fertile, and each a canton." (32:130) Low Merrin is the lower of the two Merrins; High Merrin is an "Upland canton town" (34:27).
Climate	13 °C in the coldest month, 27 °C in the warmest, 1,350 mm of rain a year (32:142).
Farming	"Valley farming
Speech	Orethi "without the rank-honorifics" (32:76). "Door's open." "And the lamp's lit." (32:42)
On the plan	The sheet is 44 × 36 km. About 450 km² is built up, and 1,122 km² of the valley is still vines, orchards and fields. The plan shows 8,046 streets, about 8,150 km of them. 7,806 have names, which is every street longer than 80 m.

The districts#

The town lies on both banks of the valley's river. Vines climb the sunny slopes to the north, and orchards the slopes to the south. The river is not named in the canon, and the plan does not name it.

District	What is there	Its streets are named for
The Diet Quarter	The Diet of Merrin: "three delegates from each canton, 39 in all" (33:48). The Three Shores Council: "11 councillors: Tessmere 5, Merrin 4, Stellan 2" (33:71). The Shore Court: "for disputes between the three" (33:80). The Staff Green in front of the Diet, where "Merrin's new Presider takes the staff" on Canton Day. A Refuge House (canon, 32:286).	the other twelve cantons, whose streets meet at the Diet: Kestrelhead Street, Brakewater Road, Oldharbour Lane, Fennick Lane, Tollis Lane, High Merrin Lane, Saltcombe Close
Riverside	Both banks of the river through the town, with the Diet Bridge	the river and its mills: Mill Street, Leat Street, Otter Lane, Osier Street, Alder Street
The New Quarter	The planned town by Low Merrin Station. The Merrin Cantonal School (canon, 32:295) stands at its edge.	numbered, First Street to Thirteenth Street, crossed by roads named for the cantons
The Vine Terraces	The north slopes, facing the sun	the vineyard: Grape Way, Cask Street, Cellar Lane, Must Street, Pickers Lane
The Orchards	The south slopes	the orchard: Apple Avenue, Pear Street, Quince Lane, Medlar Street, Ladder Road
The valley	Vines, orchards and fields up and down the valley. The old villages are Willowby, Presshill, Osier End, Damson Cross and Vinehurst.	see How the streets are named

Getting around#

The Stellan road (canon name). Fennick is a "Southern canton town on the Stellan road" (34:26). On the plan the road leaves the town south-west, by Fennick, for Stellan.
The High Merrin road runs up the valley to High Merrin.
The Tessmere road runs north-east toward Tessmere and the northern coast.
The Shore Line, "the one railway" of the coast (33:164). The canon runs it "from Northgate to Aldport along the coast" and does not name Low Merrin as a stop. The plan brings it through the town, as the proposal roads map does, with Low Merrin Station in the New Quarter.
Air. The canon names only "Tessmere and Stellan airports" (33:166). Low Merrin has none.

Landmarks#

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

Place	Where on the plan	Note
The Diet of Merrin (canon)	The Diet Quarter	"Where the thirteen cantons meet; its Presider changes every year." (34:48)
The Three Shores Council (canon)	The Diet Quarter	"The league of the three coast states, sworn in AL 1402." (34:51) It decides by "Two of three states" (33:72). In AL 2314 Tessmere holds the chair (33:73).
The Shore Court (canon)	The Diet Quarter	(33:80)
The Merrin Cantonal School (canon)	The New Quarter	(32:295)
The Staff Green	Before the Diet	Canton Day's ceremony (33:188);

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 Low Merrin the rules take this form:

The cantons' streets meet at the Diet. Merrin's leaders are its cantons. The Presidership passes round them "in the order they joined the Confederacy" (32:223), and the Diet is "Where the thirteen cantons meet" (34:48). The streets that meet at the Diet are named for the other twelve cantons: the town's own canton needs no street of its own.
The New Quarter is numbered, First Street to Thirteenth Street.
Each district names its streets for its work: the river and its mills, the vineyard, the orchard.
The valley's old lanes keep their founders' names. They are the coast's own family names: Dunstan's Lane, Doral's Lane, Ruel's Lane.
The old villages keep their own streets: Press Street, Cider Lane, Chapel Lane, Ford End.
Estates were built on the fields that sold, each with a theme:
- flowers (Marigold Road, Daisy Road);
- trees (Walnut Drive);
- the orchard (Grafter Road);
- birds (Heron Close, Swift Close);
- herbs (Marjoram Way);
- stones (Jasper Drive).
Fields and orchards whose owners never sold are still worked, with the estates round them.
Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 7,806 of 8,046.
- A name is used once in the town.
- The estates may repeat a name found far off, never within 6 km or in the same locality.
No towers. Low Merrin does not build upward; its growth has gone into the valley.

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

Nothing is taken from Earth's places or history (05:266).
Reedcombe and Saltcombe are canon cantons, so their streets keep their names. No other new name uses the crowded families: "-gate", "-mere", "-combe", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-".