I'm trying to work on my fantasy story, The Lion King II: Defenders of the Pridelands, but I'm having trouble when it comes to describing towns, cities, and villages. Currently, I'm working on chapter two of my story, where it takes seven years after the events of my main character's childhood and now focuses on a different character named Emelyn, son of a governor and the older sister of Blythe. The city is heavily inspired by our modern world, taking inspiration from America and Europe, instead of airplanes, the world has airships that can go on for miles and travel to the seven continents in the world of Xanthus (which I might change the name of it as well); and ports that are used for transportation as well, but I just can't describe the inside of what the city looks like.
I would think about this—how advanced do you want it to be along the spectrum of commerciality? For example, our world today is mostly designed and built by corporations before anyone lives there, entirely laid out on commercial plans for commercial reasons. A corporation will buy an undeveloped area of land, have plans drawn up for how to lay out streets and divide the land up into plots, not in any natural way really, but for reasons that make sense to the corporation according to traffic flow or whatever their reasoning is. Subdivisions are laid out, streets made, and then subcontractors or some equally commercial element comes in and pours foundations and builds houses. These are then opened to the public for purchase or rental or lease, all done entirely commercially. We end up living in spaces and along roads that were laid out by a committee thinking about profit and loss and availability of resources. Of course all these things are important and always have been—each of us must live our lives according to profit and loss, otherwise we lose everything and become poor or homeless. But it's a very different thing when a faceless corporation makes these decisions, as if your entire street was designed by Walmart inc. It's very different from how things happened centuries ago, when little settlements would be created by a group of people who wanted to live close to the river where goods come in by ship, and it grows into a small town and then maybe expands little by little into a city. This way isn't really necessarily better, it's different and more natural, but like natural things in general, it might be laid out stupidly in many ways. But the decisions were made by the people who lived there, and that results in a very different look and feel. Think about for instance the movie Poltergeist if you've seen it, which was set in a new subdivision (still under development) of the type I described at the top. It even turned out the corporation moved a graveyard (or the headstones anyway) and just didn't bother to tell anybody that. All the houses look the same and feel the same, like your life has to fit into some corporate idea of how American people should live. Which end of the spectrum would you rather set your towns in? Do the buildings look something like Alpine villas, made of timber beams and stucco, with high peaked roofs and lots of ornate wood carving done by hand by artisans? Pleasant little lanterns on wrought iron posts here and there, giving off a nice warm glow to light the town? Or maybe more like simple rectangular box buildings laid out according to some plan made by utilitarian designers? There are many different styles of architecture you can borrow from. I'm not highly knowledgeable about it, but you can look into different kinds of architecture and look at pictures to get ideas. Terms like Early American Colonial, Romanesque, Gothic, Tudor, and on and on. Or maybe an earlier aesthetic, something like squat medieval buildings made of big monolithic stone blocks set on each other with no mortar but the stonemasons are so skilled the blocks fit perfectly with no gaps. This isn't stuff I've thought about much before, so I'm doubtless mixing up my periods and techniques etc, you'd want to do some research into any periods or architecture you might want to borrow from. But really what's important isn't even to pick a period and learn about the architecture so much as to set a tone with your words. Are they pleasant little hamlets with lush green grass and tall trees, where workers come home weary but satisfied and their wives are cooking a nice big family dinner, or maybe it's more of a dingy grey zone where people all look sort of the same and dress the same and live lives of drudgery laboring for companies that treat them like cattle. You can rapidly characterize a town or a village like this and set the tone for the story. Anyway just throwing out a few ideas.
A little more. Not all medieval architecture is made of closely-fitted stone blocks, that's how thy made castles and fortresses. But even today people are living in ancient stone villages made in the medieval era in European countries like France and Greece. Tight, winding cobblestone streets wide enough for carts but very tight by modern standards (which incidentally is why so many European cars are so tiny). Tall narrow buildings packed together, often on steep streets. Look up images of villages like this and you'll get all kinds of ideas. But it's also important that you've read a lot, so you understand how authors get these images across. Just knowing what the villages and the houses look like is a good and necessary start, but you also need a good vocabulary of words and phrases to describe it. I would try hitting up Project Gutenberg or Archive.org and download some books set in places like this. Maybe The Hunchback of Notre Dame (OK, not sure if that one's in the public domain). But try a search for stories set in medieval towns or villages. Or look at some movies set in those places to get ideas.
I usually like to look for artwork for inspiration. That way I can study it - get a vibe for it and maybe even tweak it in my mind's eye. Most descriptions don't need huge blocks of words just a paragraph or two and a strategicly placed sentence. Xoic made some really good points that cities are shifting to more corporate influence. And to also read - find out how other authors are doing it. Also cities and villages are about moods and tones and reflections of power in different moments in history - and why some architecture looks intricately beautiful and majestic while others look grim and depressing. Think of the mood you want your city to possess. Are the people under rule - maybe their housing is cramped and rundown with chipped cement and corroded iron. Is it faintly mystical or religious - are the houses aligned in a symbol only viewed by the airships and mountain tops. In the Old Testament the Jewish people aligned their tents into an enormous cross. Are they self-arranging by enclaves - like little Italy and chinatown? Think of the changes over time in your own neighborhood. Mine has undergone so many that now a property that would've housed 30 properties 30 years ago now houses 100. They have zero backyards and cars cannot even sit outside their garage or they'll overhang the sidewalk. Lush sized property has now been traded for zero maintenance and a very uncomfortable closeness to one's neighbor. Is this what people want or what they're given? Either way the properties were snatched up fast.
