When they build a town, in what order do they build things generally? E.g. roads, sewer, residences, schools, electric cabling, post office, etc etc.
In:
Usually don’t just find a place and… build a whole town.
It’s much more organic than that… A small number of people settle somewhere, they build houses, get most of their things from some neighboring town… as more people begin to settle, more necessities are required. Things get added and upgraded as people decide they need it.
Technically, a town doesn’t exist until it has been incorporated. By the time this happens, there’s usually a notable community of businesses and residences.
In most cases, roads and electric will exist just by towns usually being built between connected cities. You’ll notice most historic downtowns have two main exits, usually a single long road connecting them or a port of some sort. Even now, new towns usually form by spreading off from a main highway.
You may also notice some places have multiple city names that a post office will even gladly deliver to. This mostly has to do with the fact post offices don’t care about anything but street number, street name, and zip code. This also happens when a “town” isn’t actually a town – but an unincorporated census designated place.
It usually takes time before these CDPs become incorporated, but until then it’s not unusual for these places to have recognition by the governing county as a respected region. Some even go as far as to put that region on county cop cars for use only in that region (but don’t let it fool you – they’re still usually county police and have wide jurisdictions)
Once a town is incorporated, they’ll be expected to handle many matters that the county once did – founding law enforcement, fire rescue, a town hall for employees to do their jobs. These aren’t necessary, however it would be unusual and mostly pointless for a town to even incorporate unless their goal is to manage their own finances and services.
At that point, they’ll be able to receive their share of taxes (and in some states, levy their own), to build out services intended for residents and visitors. This is also why newer CDPs delay incorporation – the longer they can feed off the income of the county the more likely they can build successfully. It does mean slower building though – as they need county approval to do anything with the counties money – something they otherwise won’t need to get permission for as a town.
tl;dr a town is formed when a region establishes its own government, so the order of services built is largely irrelevant.
If you’re China you can just build a whole city from scratch and move people into it. Some countries have planned towns/cities built in a short space of time for various reasons (I think Indonesia are moving their Capital to a planned city soon).
Most often, though, a town springs up over course of time and is centred around a population and delivering services to that population. The basic idea behind a town is that it’s easier to create one place for everyone in a geographic region to visit to get their services rather than have them travel all across the countryside.
So the most common first things built to form a central town area are things like a post office, a market, a religious/cultural building, a bar/entertainment venue and the like. Usually along an existing trade route/road as towns work on scale (more people passing through/visiting = more efficient and cost effective town).
The most important thing to understand is *why* a town exists or should be built.
It can serve a rural/farming community and be a place where the population can meet and hang out (community centre/religious building), trade and sell goods and services, or go to find professionals (blacksmiths, carpenters, lawyers, doctors etc. etc.) – It’s super useful and efficient for these things to be located roughly in the same area.
A town can also be highly residential (suburban centre type thing) where it serves as a central base for a population working in a region with one or two major industries (mining, manufacture plant, processing centre etc.) in which case it’s providing a place for a community to live outside of times when they travel to and from work. The first things built might be entertainment and family services to keep people happy outside of work and to give kids a place to learn.
You can have a tourist industry type town, built up around some kind of tourist attraction (beach/nature park/entertainment or cultural attraction) where the first things built will probably be transportation services, hotels and secondary entertainment venues.
Many towns are incorporated for government or public services for a population or community – so a court house, town hall, welfare agency, tax office might be the first buildings that pop up.
There are a lot of reason for towns to exist when, where, and how they do. There’s no real order to the way they are built unless planned specifically – it’s usually organic and fulfilling a particular need of the population.
Simple answer here – my dad is a digger driver, and this is based on the UK
They plan *everything* first. You’ll know how many houses you’re building before you start.
Sewers and drainage comes first. Then basic dirt roads (nothing concrete, as you’ll need to add power).
Then the first few houses are built near the edge, so people can see what they look like and walk round a “show home”.
Then it gets larger from there – it’ll keep being built in the background. As the houses are finished, the roads and sidewalks are finished for that part. Then they all move down to the next bit. Depending on how many houses sell, depends on how quick they move to the next sector of the site.
In the U.K., once you build a certain number of houses in a new area, you’re legally bound to build a pub, a school, and a row of stores. Convenience store, pharmacy, ATM, etc.
The school aspect isn’t implemented often, it’s rarely that big. There’s an area called Chase Meadow in the Midlands, which has been consistently built for the last ten years-ish. That has its own school. It’s weird because, for example, 11th grade is empty until the year below moves up / because hundreds of new families moved in at the same time.
Hope this helps friend. I’ve used American language because I know we Brits have different words for some things
Edit: the discussion below over “legally bound” is very entertaining
Dire Straits wrote a song about it. Telegraph Road.
Lyrics for the lazy:
A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
Made a home in the wilderness
He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came walking down the track
And they never went further, no, they never went back
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their load
And the dirty old track was the Telegraph Road
Then came the mines, then came the ore
Then there was the hard times, then there was a war
Telegraph sang a song about the world outside
Telegraph Road got so deep and so wide
Like a rolling river
And my radio says tonight it’s gonna freeze
People driving home from the factories
There’s six lanes of traffic
Three lanes moving slow
I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I’ve got a right to go to work but there’s no work here to be found
Yes, and they say we’re gonna have to pay what’s owed
We’re gonna have to reap from some seed that’s been sowed
And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles
They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
You can hear them singing out their telegraph code
All the way down the Telegraph Road
Well, I’d sooner forget, but I remember those nights
Yeah, life was just a bet on a race between the lights
You had your hand on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder like you don’t seem to care
But just believe in me baby and I’ll take you away
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
‘Cause I’ve run every red light on memory lane
I’ve seen desperation explode into flames
And I don’t wanna see it again
From all of these signs saying “sorry but we’re closed”
All the way down the Telegraph Road
All these examples are modern-times City planning. In the old days (when most current cities started) someone built a general store at a cross-roads. Someone else built a stable next to the general store. In this area farmers built houses for themselves and their children. More children = more houses. Postal service gets tired of delivering mail way out there and builds a post office and declares a name for the area. Residents get sick of mud and set out to tax themselves to build roads and bridges.
Most improvements happen because people are sick to death of current conditions and pull together for the common good.
From my experience in Australia having seen several rural towns transition through various stages. First there is a pub. Then people will live closer to the pub. Then people with broken cars will seek help at the pub (prior to the mid 90’s there were a lot of lemon cars), and someones shed becomes the local garage. The local garage may become a small petrol station. People stopping for petrol will want food, so the petrol station spouts a restaurant. Now that you have beer, fuel and food the town is complete until there is reason to grow (eg: a mine opens nearby). At this point the town will get a small grocer and a hardware/ farm supplies shop. If families settle, then things may change when a regional school is funded. At this point someone will come along and open a church. The school often comes with an oval, which then becomes a showground. It often stops there unless there is a need for some regional facility or institution in the area (eg, hospital).
in my town, they put down the roads, then the sewers, then the road again, then the different cables, then roads again…
Well I can tell you that in Romania they build the roads first and then they ruin the roads by breaking them to build the sewage. So maybe not the best way to go at it.
Groundwork first then utilities, everything is planned out beforehand, new estates are not legally obligated to provide any kind of retail units, schools etc. It’s only I think if the local area cannot cope with the number of potential new families. They build in phases, the first load basically pay for the next phase and so on. The roads are normally a temp surface until a section is completed them no site traffic is allowed down those sections any more. The plus side of building like this is if there are any issues with the first phase houses ie build quality, then the construction team are on site and things get repaired very quickly, once they have finished them that’s another story. As the differtm phases complete the cost of the houses increase to buy due to demand once people see all the differtm styles that are being constructed.
Another bonus of new estates like the one near me, every single house has fibre broadband to the house, super fast.
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