>> And this leads me to another question: Just how big must a human community be to contain all the people necessary to a community? :^) <<
That depends entirely on the civilization level. The low end seems to be around a dozen people at hunter-gatherer level in poor habitats such as Australia. More often it's tribal size, several dozen to several hundred people. Many intentional communities fall in this size range, as do villages and flyspeck towns. A more typical size for a small town is several thousand people. That would be largely self-sustaining if designed that way, but nobody does so in local-America these days. Neighborhoods may be a few hundred to a few thousand people, depending on planning. People in towns that size drive to the nearest hub town to shop or get services, and those are typically in the 10,000-25,000 range.
A key difference between local-America and Terramagne-America is that the latter prefers walkable communities and plans neighborhoods accordingly. The neighborhoods usually have a range of housing from apartments to small houses to large houses; the corner lots often hold sharehouses, boarding houses, multiplexes or small apartment buildings. Scattered among those are small businesses. Some people have a home office or workshop for crafts, consulting, etc. You'll see antique stores, hair salons, resale shops, handymen, etc. working out of converted houses. Thus within each neighborhood there tend to be basic services available, so that folks don't have to drive clear across town for every little thing. The core of each neighborhood will have stuff like a school, a park, and a clubhouse. Strip malls and community clinics are often located toward the corners of a neighborhood such that several neighborhoods can reach them conveniently. Different designs are possible. Here's a neighborhood with a green core and its function spaces toward the edges. In the downtown area you see denser housing: live-work buildings, rowhouses, medium or larger apartment buildings, multiuse buildings with retail below and several floors of business and/or residential space above, etc. Community centers, malls, town parks, promenades, medium or larger businesses, and other major attractions are located in this area also, although larger towns often have more than one cluster of them. Take a look at some different parts of a municipality and compare more and less walkable neighborhoods.
Thoughts
Just how big must a human community be to contain all the people necessary to a community?
:^) <<
That depends entirely on the civilization level. The low end seems to be around a dozen people at hunter-gatherer level in poor habitats such as Australia. More often it's tribal size, several dozen to several hundred people. Many intentional communities fall in this size range, as do villages and flyspeck towns. A more typical size for a small town is several thousand people. That would be largely self-sustaining if designed that way, but nobody does so in local-America these days. Neighborhoods may be a few hundred to a few thousand people, depending on planning. People in towns that size drive to the nearest hub town to shop or get services, and those are typically in the 10,000-25,000 range.
A key difference between local-America and Terramagne-America is that the latter prefers walkable communities and plans neighborhoods accordingly. The neighborhoods usually have a range of housing from apartments to small houses to large houses; the corner lots often hold sharehouses, boarding houses, multiplexes or small apartment buildings. Scattered among those are small businesses. Some people have a home office or workshop for crafts, consulting, etc. You'll see antique stores, hair salons, resale shops, handymen, etc. working out of converted houses. Thus within each neighborhood there tend to be basic services available, so that folks don't have to drive clear across town for every little thing. The core of each neighborhood will have stuff like a school, a park, and a clubhouse. Strip malls and community clinics are often located toward the corners of a neighborhood such that several neighborhoods can reach them conveniently. Different designs are possible. Here's a neighborhood with a green core and its function spaces toward the edges. In the downtown area you see denser housing: live-work buildings, rowhouses, medium or larger apartment buildings, multiuse buildings with retail below and several floors of business and/or residential space above, etc. Community centers, malls, town parks, promenades, medium or larger businesses, and other major attractions are located in this area also, although larger towns often have more than one cluster of them. Take a look at some different parts of a municipality and compare more and less walkable neighborhoods.