2
The Distribution of Towns

Opening context:
Independent Regions

Conflict

If the population of a region is weighted too far toward small villages, modern civilisation can never emerge; but if the population is weighted too far toward big cities, the earth will go to ruin because the population isn’t where it needs to be, to take care of it.

Resolution

Encourage a birth and death process for towns within a region, which gradually has these effects:

  1. The population is evenly distributed in terms of different sizes — for example, one town with 1,000,000 people, 10 towns with 100,000 people each, 100 towns with 10,000 people each and 1000 towns with 100 people each.
  2. These towns are distributed in space in such a way that within each size category the towns are homogeneously distributed all across the region.

Closing context:
Agricultural Valleys, Country Towns