Sharn is a virtual ghost town!

[Rel]

Earlier today I was considering the architecture of Sharn and I started to conceptualize how big the average towers are. Once I understood the size I was dealing with I started to comprehend the enormous amount of space that was compared to the population of the city.

See if my math is correct here:

According to Sharn: City of Towers, the largest towers are 2,500 feet in diameter and the smallest are 800 at the base. The tops narrow to between 200 and 600 feet. So the average diameter at the base is 1,650 feet and at the top is 400 feet. This gives us an average diameter from top to bottom of 1,025 feet. 512 feet in Radius.

We know that the tallest towers rise to heights of 5,000 feet but let's assume that the average tower is only half that at 2,500 feet. The total volume contained in such a tower is 655,360,000 cubic feet.

Now we don't usually think of living space in terms of cubic feet but rather square feet so we divide this by 11 because that is the height of an average floor of a tower (this number should probably be higher but that's what the books says). So now we're down to 59,578,182 square feet. That's more than twelve World Trade Center towers per average Sharn tower! But wait, there's more!

I've taken a long look and done a bit of counting of the numbers of little towers represented on the map of Sharn on page 10. A VERY conservative estimate would be that there are 500 towers shown as being in the city. So that means we're looking at at least 29,789,090,910 square feet contained within the towers within Sharn. That's nearly thirty billion square feet.

Ok, let's reel that in a bit. Buildings are not 100% living space so we need to take out what is commonly called the "core factor". This is the space taken up by walls and such. Given that these are stone towers with thick walls, we'll use the absurdly high figure of 30% core factor. That STILL leaves us with well over 20 billion square feet of living space.

The population of Sharn is listed at 211,850.

So every man, woman and child within the city has a minimum of 98,430 square feet of ENCLOSED space to live in. That is over two acres each! A family of four would, on average, have just over 9 acres of enclosed living space.

My conclusion is that Sharn, as written, is not really an urban environment; it's a vertical suburb!

Do I really take these numbers seriously? No. Will this hamper my enjoyment of the setting? No.

I just thought you might be interested in knowing. Either that or my math skills really stink and I'm way off base.

 

[Turjan]

Well, just see this from a practical side: Vast cotton fields in the living room save you from spending money on clothes .

On a different note: Were the towers not meant to contain a large, hollow core?

 

[Stone Dog]

Also, you can't forget the huge numbers of warehouses, foundries, parks, plazas, bazaars, arenas, theatres, probable orchards and other such odd produce areas, temples and other such and sundry things that take up large amounts of space.

It is an interesting bit of math that makes me chuckle, but I don't think it is all that dramatic. There is probably also HUGE amounts of ornamental stonework and stuff that sucks up a good amount of space.

Good eye though! Fun to think about...

 

[Kirin'Tor]

Well, I trust you math skills...maybe I can extend the math to help!

First, I assume at least half of every tower, is taken up by shops, inns, meeting halls (etc. with consumer areas) and of course, like a trump building, a grand entrance floor. Many of these areas would also have multiple floors or double (or even triple, quadruple, or more) height celings.

So, lets call that 45% of every tower. That makes for 11bil sq feet ...thus every person in Sharn has 54k square feet. Still too much.

Now, in an average city, 30% of the buildings, in some direct way, relate directly to teh oversight & maintenence of the city in a non-consumer way. (Govt., Sanitation, Police, Fire, etc.) Sharn, as an industralized magic city, would probably have all of these as well.

So, if we take 30% of all the space in Sharn away first, and then take the 55% non-living space factor, we 37k sqft a person. Closer, but no cigar.

Ok...so Sharn has all these bridges and walkways connecting everything: looking at the pics, I'd guess every 10 floors has a bridge going though it. Lets call that another 15% non-living space.

That leaves 27k per person. Still way too high.

Industry...things still have to be made, and Sharn is no excpetion. magical factories may be smaller, but forges & the like are still pretty big. A quick goole gave me the figure of 11% of a large cities population working in factorys in that same city.

If we can assume that for every person in sharn that works in a 'factory' (23k of them) has at least a 10x10 area to themselves (average, soem bigger, some smaller), and every 20 of them have a managment\meeting\work-related area of approx 400 sq feet, then every 20 factory workers take up approx 2500 sq ft.

Then we can eliminate 2.8 million sqfeet for factories. That honestly didn't affect the short notation of the space per person (still at 27k a person)..but it felt good to work with real numbers for a second.

Well, so far the numbers go like this, in case anyone wants to continue trying.

29 Billion in Raw Space:
-2.8 Million Industry Space
-30% Core Space
-30% Govt & City Maintenence
-60% Non-Living Space (Including Walkways, Resturants, Trump Rooms, etc.)

And that leaves 27k per person. The average american has 718sq.ft. living space per person, plus soem yard...we do have to remember that that 27k includes the 'yard', since they don't have a normal one.

One theory to try investigating: what percentage of buildings in, say LA or Miami (or somewhere else really commercial) are stores\boutiques\food\nails\etc, etc...maybe 90% of every tower is just one big mall!!

...that was fun, thanks Rel

 

[Plane Sailing]

Fun calculations!

Personally I'd put the core factor as at least 90% of the internal volume (considering the ratio of space to stonework in old castles I've visited and got the plans of, and that Sharn towers are even more structurally imposing (by a large margin))

Cheers

 

[reanjr]

Here we go again

 

[Gez]

Half of every tower is space for shops? :blink, blink, blink:

You'd need a frenetical consumerist society. People would spend about 800% of their yearly budget each day in the shops to justify such an overabundance of shops.

No, rather, I think two-third of the floors are used for gardens. There are vast windows and balconies by which whole roads can pass through the tower. Those provide ample light for the crops and vegetable.

Also, there are lots of cisterns throughout the levels. Sharn's climate is rainy, so they would be filled through drainpipes. And there must be a complicated plumbing system to distribute the stored rainwater to the lower levels.

Speaking of plumbing, there must be impressive empty columns for sewers. In Sharn, sewers are mostly vertical -- ain't that fun.

Do not confuse, though, with other empty columns, which are meant for chimneys. The aspiration with these giant towers must be impressive, especially given the manifest zone to Syrania. When you lit a fire, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody lightweight enough, and heat-resistant enough (a fire mephling, maybe) could be whisked up the chimney.

As for triple or quadruple height ceilings? I let you imagine how hard to warm those buildings would be. Fortunately, there are lava pools below, because otherwise...

 

[Henry]

Rel,

Welcome to the mystical hand-waving that is Eberron's population figures.

Keep in mind that I think Keith said over on the WotC forums that those figures do not include women and children, and that the war depopulated everything a bit, and things look a lot better. Even considering the world outside of Sharn, the pop. figures are too low for square land area. Someone once came to the calcuation that Khorvaire has (with the pop. figures in the book) a population density of 1.9 people per square mile. Triple that and you get almost 5 people per square mile, which is enough to build a pre-to-early industrial society.

 

[Remathilis]

I think the general concenus is "triple any given population number in Eberron" and things look a bit better.

 

[Rel]

I guess nobody sent me the memo.

But I can see the point of saying that there was a good bit of depopulation after 100 years of war.

Actually, just like every other aspect of Sharn, I can see taking this oddity and turning it into an adventure hook. Think of it like this:

The general loss of population due to warfare has caused a drop in the population of Sharn over the last hundred years. Although many of the soldiers came from the countryside, that left fewer people to work the land and with food still in high demand there would have been some movement out of the cities. A few wealthy merchants, particularly ones with access to magic, may have bought up vast tracts of land (on the cheap) for farming and been willing to hire workers to bring in the crops.

The upper wards of Sharn still maintain similar populations because the rich largely avoided military service or else had the means to equip themselves to better survive combat. But the middle wards saw a significant loss in population creating some residential vacancies. Naturally the folk of the Lower Wards would move into these areas as prices dropped (they like to see the sunshine once in a while).

This in turn left large sections of the lower wards vacant and ripe for expansion by the lowliest of all Sharn's denizens: The Goblins. With a high birthrate and short time to sexual maturity there is a virtual population explosion going on in the underbelly of Sharn. And yet there is not a single Goblin present on the city council! How long can this inequality last? What can be done about it? Is Sharn destined to become a Goblin City again? Will Daask become the new ruling power of the city through sheer force of numbers?

Hmmm...possibilities, possibilities