THE CITY OF GRAN DAR

City Layout

The City‘s sheer size makes visualization very hard. Here is a profile of half of the City, cut through its central vertical axis, showing 10-level lines to illustrate the scope of the whole setting.

CITY SIDE PROFILE

Looking down at the very top of the City, laid open to see the layout of radial and ringway streets, we can appreciate the architecture and some of the scale involved. These images only show the top three levels of radial and ringway streets. Note that as the streets fan outward from the City axis, the number of radials doubles whenever the length of a ringway block exceeds a certain value.

CITY TOP LEVELS

Level	City Top Level Street Plans
Streets of Level 1
Streets of Level 2
Streets of Level 3
Some details of Level 1

Looking down at the top of the City from a greater distance, laid open to see the diameters of the City‘s fifty top levels, we see the sheer size of just this small part of the metropolis. For comparison with the scale of the top three levels, one image here shows the entire top level with its street pattern.

CITY TOP 50 LEVELS

Image Description	City Top Level Diameters
Diameters of the top 50 levels
Diameters of the top 50 levels with all of Level 1 detail showing
Oblique view of the top 50 levels

City Closeups

We move in closer to see an example of a City crossing of radial and ringway, where a dome is carved out, and shops and other establishments do business.

CITY LOCAL STREET PLAN

City neighborhoods follow similar plans, with spacious homes and easy access.

CITY HOME PLAN

City Streets

Streets and domes define City social life.

CITY STREET PROFILES

Dome and Stair	Axial Domes	Axial Turning Domes	Great Central Dome

The Great Central Dome is a beautiful, multilayered, open structure at the very center of the metropolis. Here are its layers, one by one, looking straight down through the opening they share.

THE GREAT CENTRAL DOME

Central Dome Top Views	Central Dome Top Views	Central Dome Top Views	Central Dome Top Views

Turnings must be visualized from a distant perspective to appreciate their beauty and intricate structure.

CITY TURNING DIAGRAMS

City Turning Roads	Notes
	A side perspective view of one of the four sets of four turning roads each, spiraling around an ellipsoidal contour of the City.
	A side perspective view of the one seemingly-incomplete set of three turning roads, originating at Level 180.
	A side perspective view of three of the four concentric sets of turning roads.

Airshafts

Gran Dar, called the City simply because of its unique size and character, is the hub of all governance, knowledge, and organization on Tarnus. Its structure and appearance still carry mysteries predating the Colonization. Here are a few diagrams of its layout and physical features.

CITY AIRSHAFT DIAGRAM

The airshafts of the City number in the thousands, plummeting vertically from the hollowed stubble of their vents at the surface all the way straight down to the very base of the City, nine kilometers below. At that depth, the air is so thick that its very weight makes its circulation slow, and because of the fumes from the millennia of sewage accumulation at the bottom, no one can venture all the way down. A few have tried. Only two researchers returned after using nearly all of their portable air supply. The rest, numbering in the hundreds altogether, were never found. Here is a modified cross-sectional diagram of one of the narrower shafts. All of the shafts, of all sizes, used the same structure.

CITY AIRSHAFT PLAN DIAGRAM

A vertical view looking down an airshaft‘s center axis would appear something like the next diagram. The shafts are so straight that researchers using alignment beams have found no deviation from the vertical in excess of a millimeter. This is made all the more remarkable when one considers that tectonic and other seismic activity are ongoing on Tarnus, but have somehow not affected the relationships among the City‘s parts at all.

Stairs

CITY STAIR DIAGRAM

The inhabitants of the City do not use the airshafts for movement between the City‘s levels except under duress. The lack of handrails, the slippery footing, and the stench have encouraged the boring of stairway shafts during the recorded history of the Colonists and their descendants. These stairways, or screwstairs as they are generally called, provide nearly all of the support for interlevel foot traffic. Only when a City dweller wants to traverse many levels at once are the lifts required. The stairs are quite simple, although their fabrication out of the native rock is a sophisticated process. Each stair is constructed around a center column of native stone. The result is shown in the following diagram, a partial cross-section.

This article will be updated and extended as needed.