i have been trying to write some cities

24 Jul, 2026

the idea was, there would be 5-10 cities, only a few paragraphs to describe, and then a drawing for each one, and then put them all in a little pdf of places you could go to. I thought this would be easy but then it turned out no.

In every city:

There should be something that outsiders or visitors especially can do: illegal, unseemly, it did not occur to anyone to do it before now, you wouldn't do it if you had to live here afterwords
If there is something supernatural it has to be load bearing, not decorative
Something is unstable: bad choice of location or government or its way too hot and everyone is irritable

Then I got stuck and tried this surrealist game where you write '99 preparatory notes for [blank]' and then you write the notes fast all in a list.

99 Preparatory Notes for Cities

The city has only one street and the street has only one entrance.
This city is tied onto a crumbling ledge.
The city is trying to move to a better location, every building balanced on wheels, not very carefully. Behind it, scattered wreckage.
The city hidden in a bigger city.
The city is in diguise as a different city.
The city is in diguise as a wilderness.
One house, hundreds of warehouses
Extremely geothermal, lights on all the time, glowing through mist, lots of earthquakes. Like a goldrush town as long as they can keep the wells open.
The city can drop off bits of itself like a caught lizard
Something here is very dangerous for a little while every day, but easy to avoid by staying inside: bat migration, free venting hour for factories, shadows get loose
Part of it is always on fire.
No-one goes in the front doors of anywhere. Not strong enough to open them
No longer used infrastructure still visibly attached to every building. It could be turned back on, then what? no one is prepared for this.
In the city there are wild animals, they are allowed to be there, you are not allowed to hurt them
The buildings here are massively reinforced, huge thick walls, tiny windows, metal shutters. They are ready for a disaster that is always about to arrive. Everyone will tell you it is something different.
There are several currencies. It is illegal to exchange one directly for another. The most valuable ones are the most inconveniant to keep (enormous and delicate fossil, rare tropical birds, a special note which also requires the holder to do a dangerous job when needed)
On the commemorative mugs: a field of wheat
Why is it impossible to build anything anymore?
Why is everyone you meet here from somewhere else, and they don't want to talk about it?
Instead of fixing anything ever, they route around it
This houses in this city are mobile, can be carried around with you, you might find one anywhere in the world, if you have one or go in one you are in the city and you have to follow the laws
No one can sleep in any of the houses after dark. Too haunted.
Aggresively unplanned: home next to powerplant next to perfume shop next to pit being dug. No rows, streets, or districts. What's important is: why is it like this
Nothing is here but the infrastructure (power lines, a generous subway system,) is all still going
The city was laid out in the shape of a horse from above, and it is not allowed to obscure the outlines. Controversial building schemes involving more glorious horse with more flowing mane, maybe a unicorn.
Walled up monastary grows and grows, starts to have schisms, each one walls itself off, now there is a sort of foam of walls and people who are not religious live on them. Ladders are popular and illegal.
Built on a swamp, structures sink an inch every day. Houses light enough to blow away are safe, but if you have money you just build more floors forever, and sink faster with each one. Secretly stripping building materials from sub-basements & selling it back to rich homeowners is a terrible but satisfying job.
On the commemorative mugs: a battle that no one can remember the outcome of
No windows, no ceilings
Festival city: no-one is here, but once a year, everyone is going to be here.
There is a district for each season and you must have a house in each one. It is illegal to visit the city of the opposite season, because that is the one where people go when they die.
Landlord pyramid scheme: every building is renting itself out as 3 other buildings, each room has another room inside. Get deep enough inside the church and you're in a dive bar. As long as you don't take something out of a building it is not technically stolen, so the smallest space will have the nicest stuff inside.
In the process of being scavenged for parts
work-from-home factories
It was cursed but this turned out to be a big win
Sinkholes everywhere: to keep from falling in houses are tied to eachother, spiderweb of ropes and chains. all still leaning towards the pits
Digesting itself, surrounded by a moat of its own waste
A long city: this was a migration that stalled out
A single house, all by itself, middle of nowhere, full of documents. The city only exists on paper and is the creation of a handful of people with excellent grant writing skills. They have become too invested in the pretend city to give up while they are ahead.
Every ten years they set the whole thing on fire. You are not supposed to take anything out first.
Someone has bought up half the buildings in the city and knocked out the walls between and lives in there somewhere. Sometimes people go in looking but they can't find anyone. The inhabited city is getting smaller every day
Because of a recent fire or flood, all of the most prized possessions are drying out, jumbled up in the streets.
They built walls over the city and then curved the walls in and they covered the whole thing and it is very safe in there and dark
Laws are voted on by single "oracular" dog (actually just a regular dog)
You can sell your legal identity to someone else, but you have to take theirs or have another one lined up.
Castles only. They are cramped together on the streets and they all have rooftop guns pointed at each other.
It is illegal to build anything taller than two stories, but "temporary" scaffolding and cranes are permitted. A see-through wire frame city. The cranes lift whole floors up in the air for parties or to store things.
Planned religious community with world's most vibrant & successful & deranged blackmarket.
Cut through by many chasms, bridges privately owned and hugely expensive to cross.
Utopian names on everything, utterly squalid in reality.
The city center has been preserved as a memorial to an ancient disaster, nothing has been moved or touched or changed. You can take tours but are not supposed to touch anything.
People are very superstitious but there is every indication that they are right.
Everything that looks beautiful is fake when you get close to it: flowers, views, the river.
City entirely planned out by respected dead architect, they are still building it, the plans are hidden away in secret.
Unethical Fire Department has taken over the entire government
Instead of fences: violent carnivorous plants
It should be impossible to live here, but they are trying to prove a point
This city was mostly carted off to the new city which can be seen in the distance.
This city is brand new and decorated with little bits of an old city which it stole.
Built by big wasps, they are long gone. The architecture is indestructible, so people have to arrange their habits to fit.
Everyone is on strike and it's wonderful
A sacred city, tourists are allowed but are assigned jobs while they stay
Instead of walls: hallways.
On the commemorative mugs: a famous animal, the idea of wintertime, weapons, an erotic sculpture, and a view you can only see by peering through a hole in a brick wall
As of yesterday no one is actually in charge anymore. If you ask people about it they shrug cheerfully.
Everything is built from mud, carefully, but easy to dig through
The city is rafts drifting down a wide river. When they reach the sea they sell everything they have brought and walk back upstream
The streets are only radial and never cross. Except at the very center, where you can go if you want to meet 100 devils
The city is covered in spikes like a sea urchin. All the walls and all the houses. You have to pick your way between them on the streets and sidewalks.
If you want to come in you need to write your life story down in a book they have been keeping forever and it is impossible to lie. When you leave you have to do it again
This city was built by refugees from the other cities, and they have each recreated (small, partially functional) versions of where they came from. 99 miniature cities
This city was built by one person, all alone. It is big as a real city, with churches and houses and running water. The builder threatens to shoot anyone who tries to move in.
Bones are the principal building material
Almost everyone here is employed in making the city's only export: explosives.
A frequent and unpredictable swarm: anyone is always allowed inside the nearest interior when it descends
There's a big wreck looming over the whole thing, which it is impolite to talk about
After sunset, no lights or fires are allowed, unless you are the police
There are at least 8 mayors. You have to register with one and then follow their rules.
This city is built on a currently dry river channel. All buildings are required to be seaworthy.
Something in the food and water here gives everyone mild hallucinations, they are all perfectly fine with this
If a person visibly admires something, custom requires they must accept it as a gift
This city imports unsettling amounts of an apparently useless material
Two cities, grown so big the borders overlap. The closer they get the more the people act like the exact opposite of all those people in the other city
The people who live here never leave, they are deeply curious, credulous, and frightened of the outside world
Swamped by a disruptive, overwhelming festival, a different one every day
secret passage one-up-manship has an enduring popularity in the fancier parts of town.
A disreputable city being occupied by the state
There is not a city here yet, but the location is obviously ideal. Multiple powerful forces are fighting over who gets to build one
They make wonderful art but everything practical has been neglected or poorly done (this is a point of pride.) beautiful fire hazard of a city
Long abandoned, now full of exotic animals. People camp outside the walls and go into the city to hunt
What people who live here think it is like here is totally off base
They have shut themselves up in there and the only thing anyone knows about it is the increasingly strangely worded signs that are appearing on the walls
This city ejected all of its underground & quasi-legal businesses and regrets this more every day
Because of an ancient wizard curse: a vast inconvenience. curse may not even be in effect anymore
This city was specially designed to take advantage of an irregular circumstance (animal migration, popularity as a vacation spot, waterfalls, misfortunes befalling neighboring cities)
There are so many newspapers. The reporting on and creation of news-worthy events is so entangled with the government and life generally that they are effectively in charge.
Because of an ancient law all major business transactions must include a sincere marriage
Some of the buildings are alive and must be kept happy
All the children are living in the park now and refuse to come home