Compared to real-life cities like New York, San Francisco, etc... how does Sigil compare in size? I mean, if you could lay the city out flat like a normal city, how much land would it cover?
How big is Sigil compared to real-world cities?
Wed, 2010-07-07 15:15
#1
How big is Sigil compared to real-world cities?
Wed, 2010-07-07 17:38
#3
Re: How big is Sigil compared to real-world cities?
As I said in the other thread, Sigil is about 20 miles long and 3.125 miles wide, and incredibly densely packed. That's 62.5 square miles. Modern New York City is 468.9 sq mi counting the water in the city limits, with 304.8 sq mi of land area according to Wikipedia. Its population is about eight million.
Note, however, that the toroidal shape makes it actually much smaller in surface area. Sigil is only 20 miles long in the center of its curve; it's substantially shorter along the edges. Exactly how much smaller it is depends on how sharply it curves, and that's not clear in canon. The "edges" would look like two vast circles in the sky, in those parts of the city where they were visible.
In the Cage says, on page 13, "Though the city has a population of more than a million, two-thirds of that are transient planars and primes." That's more than a million people stuffed into the city at all times, and 333,333 permanent residents. The Planar Handbook and subsequent works put the population at 250,000, roughly 2/3rds of 333,333, but that makes sense considering the population dropped after the Faction War (what with death, famine, and all the portals changing).
As Petitioner said, Sigil's whatever size you need it to be. The Lady of Pain can change the size of the city at will (In the Cage, page 6), and even if she couldn't, it's your game.
But officially, Sigil is probably about an eighth the size of New York City, and approximately as densely populated if you count the transient visitors.
In medieval times, which are "default" for the Planescape settings, cities reached surprisingly big sizes and populations. I'd look up city plan for various European cities - some are pretty old and their populations are about 50-150 thousand. Their current size would indicate how much space 200 thousand people in Sigil would need (as it's very tightly packed). A city of 220 thousand people today can be about 111.71 km2 (43.1 sq mi) - today (!) (an european city, with a big old town and relatively low buildings). So I guess it could be close and give the picture.
However, from the gameplay perspective - this really shouldn't be a problem for anyone. The city is as big as it needs to be
;). It's all about perspective. Even Tokyo can seem small, if you're trapped under cables in some dark alley, close to your cubicle-flat 
.