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eumaxindia-advertising-agency · 3 months ago

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Unique Bus Branding That Looks Beautiful In The Cities

Attractive bus wraps combine eye-catching imagery, bright colors, and well-placed advertising features to optimize exposure and make an indelible impression on spectators. Bus branding is the practice of promoting any organization or service on buses, whether they are publicly or privately owned. Bus advertising is accomplished by digital signage mounted inside the vehicles, rear panel advertisements, advertising on the vehicles, bus covers, and advertisements on the cushions. Any advertisements intended to attract clients when clients are out and about or not inside are referred to as transport advertisements.

By effectively and economically addressing the intended market anywhere they go in the city, transit shelters, and stations contribute to increased awareness of the business. Bus shelter branding puts your company in front of a large audience at close range and guarantees the audience’s uninterrupted focus.

Painting employment, fabric graphics, concealment, and inscriptions can all be used to advertise buses. Even fully colored bus exteriors are occasionally carried out by corporations with substantial advertising assets or through financing.

Sharing Hidden Tips for Bus Business Marketing:

Establishing a name for your bus company in today’s rapidly shifting marketplace requires more than just providing superior amenities; it calls for a creative strategy that captures the minds and hearts of prospective customers, convincing them to choose your vehicles over competitors. To achieve this, a company must deeply understand its target market and craft messaging that resonates with its desires. Incorporating visually appealing layouts into your advertising collateral can significantly enhance effectiveness, especially in bus back advertising, where unique designs can captivate and engage a broad audience. This approach, combined with the power of storytelling, can transform bus travel into an exciting experience, promising more than just a journey from point A to point B. By leveraging these strategies, you can create campaigns that make people say, “These Are The Most Creative Bus Ads You Will Ever See,” delivering memorable experiences that leave a lasting impression.

A distinctive and captivating advertising effort can be achieved by carefully and passionately developing compelling stories. With the help of such a potent strategy, you can bring creative content to life and produce eye-catching visuals that effectively represent your brand across various media. An arresting image, for instance, can convey the fun and convenience of riding in your vehicle, speaking volumes without words. Showcasing these visuals on social networking sites can create a snowball effect, boosting visibility and fostering an emotional connection with viewers. Engaging directly with your audience through these platforms builds trust and loyalty, turning occasional riders into dedicated supporters of your business. Remember, in today’s crowded marketplace, standing out means more than just being noticed; the key to making an impact lies in incorporating authenticity and creativity into every aspect of your advertising efforts. Exploring Bold Bus Branding Concepts to Captivate a Crowd can further elevate your campaigns, ensuring your brand leaves a memorable impression.

Bus Branding for Corporate Events & Festivals:

Bus branding for corporate events and festivals is a dynamic way to create a buzz and elevate your brand’s visibility. Transforming buses into mobile billboards, this strategy allows your brand to travel with your target audience, reaching people where they are, whether at a bustling city center or a vibrant festival ground. For corporate events, branded buses can serve as a unique extension of your company’s presence, turning heads and making a memorable impact as they shuttle attendees or guests. For festivals, they can enhance the festive atmosphere and capture the energy and excitement of the event, while also offering practical benefits such as transport or information hubs. With custom designs that reflect your brand’s personality and event theme, bus branding provides an engaging and immersive experience that goes beyond traditional advertising. It’s not just about visibility, it’s about creating an experience that resonates with your audience and strengthens your brand’s presence in a creative and impactful way. Additionally, for educational institutions looking to make a statement, exploring the Best Bus Branding Ideas for Schools can offer unique ways to showcase school pride, promote events, and build a strong community presence.

Effects of Online Social Sites:

Social networking is unquestionably an efficient tool for advertisers, especially bus companies, as it provides a platform for engaging content with viral potential and facilitates direct communication with potential customers. Using eye-catching visuals, such as banners that showcase client endorsements or highlight the comfort of your cozy seating, can help create an audience and spark conversations around your brand. This is more than just advertising; it’s about building a community and encouraging dialogue about your services. Consistency is crucial here, regularly sharing engaging content keeps your audience interested and invested. Exploring different Bus Branding Design Options can further enhance your social media strategy, allowing you to present your brand in unique and visually appealing ways that stand out and attract attention.

Unique Outdoor Advertising Strategies:

Regional companies such as transportation providers can still benefit from physical promotion, even in this progressively online landscape. Consider placing posters in key places, selling customized products, or even supporting neighborhood events. These techniques aid in the visible recognition of your company among the community. Additionally, creative internet techniques like wrapping buses act as outdoor advertising billboards, drawing attention to themselves everywhere they go. When both in-person and online tactics are combined, you can successfully reach diverse market categories with an extensive strategy.

Graphic Device Utilization:

Subsequently, but just as importantly, it’s critical to convey all of these campaigns attractively. Unlike requiring advanced artistic knowledge, anybody can produce visualizations of high caliber with this potent creative software. Because of its intuitive interfaces, changing advertisements is quick and easy, ensuring that the transportation company constantly presents itself in the best possible light. To become a transportation provider that people choose, you must first gain a thorough grasp of your customer base and engage them wherever they are. It involves making the most of each tool and channel available to you to increase your audience’s awareness, devotion, and confidence.

Your strategy ought to be centered on the internet. It gives you helpful insights into people’s tastes and behaviors and makes it possible for you to connect with a wider demographic more effectively. Communication sites are great for interacting with your target audience, disseminating news, and displaying client endorsements. In addition to bringing instant visitors to your web page, pay-per-click marketing can help generate leads or reservations for the business.

Email advertising is still an effective way to nurture prospects and notify clients of fresh paths, specials, and timetable adjustments. In the logistics sector, referrals from others and referrals are vital, and reward schemes can be a useful tool for fostering these relationships. Recall that the objective is to offer such value that consumers are forced to pick you above rivals. In the competitive landscape of the bus industry, an outstanding brand reputation is essential.

Unique Bus Branding of Eumaxindia:

Together with us, explore the potency of bus advertising in India. Every day, countless interested consumers see your advertisement thanks to the comprehensive bus marketing solutions we provide. To ensure your business stands out, our strategy is designed to maximize visibility and create memorable experiences. Embracing our status as the top bus advertising company, we take pride in our ability to craft visually striking and innovative bus advertisements. For optimal exposure, we make sure that every square centimeter of the bus surface is utilized. However, if a more focused approach is desired, our Partial Bus Branding Design Solutions offer the flexibility to highlight specific areas of the bus, effectively capturing attention while maintaining elegance and impact. Our striking designs and sophisticated presentations engage viewers, leaving a lasting impression that keeps them thinking about your brand.

Our adherence to perfection is demonstrated by the popularity of our Bus advertising in Chennai. We leverage our skills to create exceptional promotional chances out of regular transportation advertisements. With this advantage, let’s get your company seen and remembered by travelers. With the greatest bus marketing solutions in India, the message for your business is accessible on remote or city roads.

Benefits of Bus Full Branding

Advertising benefits from bus full branding in several ways. Such advertisements can readily stick out to the spectators due to their enormous size. Participants can more easily observe the full message since, aside from that, they are positioned at their heads. The amount of individuals who see these advertisements is further increased by the fact that vehicles travel essential routes and pause at busy locations. Because of their high readership, such advertisements have a low price for each opinion, which makes them incredibly efficient. The buses travel identical lines repeatedly, giving the marketers the benefit of ongoing publicity. Bus ads can’t be disregarded or bypassed, unlike TV and radio commercials. Indeed, the eye is drawn to the eye-catching, colorful exhibitions.

Advertisements on urban vehicles’ exteriors and insides, including full and partial concealment, are referred to as “bus branding.” In practically every Indian marketplace, there are city buses ads and ads on buses possibilities. When contrasted with other marketing channels like TV, radio, and the web, bus wrapping costs are significantly lower. When compared with various communication options, bus or bus stop marketing is the initial choice of many businesses. The least expensive of all communication forms under investigation is the bus sheltering advertisement, frequently referred to as bus station advertisement or bus stop advertising. Since public vehicle advertisements are inexpensive to run and have a great deal of exposure, bus advertising is an extremely efficient kind of marketing.

Conclusion

Bus branding works well in places where big layouts are forbidden. It turns out to be very economical. Broad exposure is provided by bus signage. Advertisement on buses is an economic strategy. There are two types of bus advertisements accessible: lighted and non-illuminated. Marketing on buses provides exposure at a glance. Bus ads are aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand. Bus advertisements have a very high reach. Bus marketing stands out conspicuously and is appropriate for neighborhoods that are rich and urbanized.

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kimyoonmiauthor · 3 months ago

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Worldbuilding—Cities and buildings

So continuing the series on worldbuilding, because I have a lot of these already. But you should make sure by this point you have a map, so you know the climate. I'd also work on everything else before the city. If you do the city and don't know everything else first, you might lock yourself into things you didn't carefully think about or rely on tropes you could have avoided by thinking through the other things first.

To me, a city/village/architecture, etc is a sort of practical art. It helps organize space and your setting, but also can tell about the psychology of your characters—no matter if you are deliberately worldbuilding or not You get viseral reactions when you tell people you're living in Harlem v. Hell's Kitchen v. Long Island or maybe it's Silicon Valley or Beverly Hills. Eastend v. Central London. So it's not a bad thing to think hard about it. (I could use Seoul too... but you get the idea)

I've been turning this one over in my head for a little while because I wasn't 100% sure how to approach it. I suppose this is in the "extras" category unless you're making up a city from scratch or something of that sort because you are doing an Urban Fantasy. But I think including small things from this list can give your places "flavor" It's on my list of villages/cities, but this loosely goes over how to think of items. And maybe inject a little psychology in the mix—design of spaces 100% can affect how people act and think in a space which was pointed out to me by my Cultural Geography Prof.

Why think about this at all you might wonder. Because design of buildings, design of streets can influence things like the spread of disease, poverty, access to jobs, internal economics, and in some cases it 100% can influence your access to health, education, and ability towards upward mobility which recent studies are showing. When it affects long term health outcomes, then it's worth thinking about, not just in basic OMG, Asbestos, but things like how traffic is thought of and controlled, noise pollution, and where the road and how busy the roads are. When the quality and type of materials can affect things like plague prevention, then yeah, maybe it is worth thinking a tiny bit about if your characters spend an inordinate amount of time there.

Officially, never took a class on this, but I did link to professors in this section. Also, kinda piggybacking on my relatives. My grandparents studied architecture and often talked about it historically. And then my cousin and some family friends are architects, so kinda asked questions over the years. It's come up in passing in other classes, so using that info and compiling a "where to look" type of thing.

Urban Development Keyterms

City Planning

Development

Grids

Cul-de-sacs

Food Deserts

Food Swamp

Parks

Public Works

Economics

Walkability

Street Planning

Bike paths/transportation paths

Green areas

Water

Resources

Districting v. Zoning

redlining

transportation—public v. private and parking lots

urban renewal

community development/community outreach

slums

vacancy

commute times

city heat maps

Youtube Channels to check out:

City Beautiful- Covers a variety of cities from different regions and break it down with lingo and tells why it became that way and why it might be right/wrong.

A good video to understand how roads/cars destroyed things in the US comes from him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNHlbk4IX6A&ab_channel=CityBeautiful

He goes over urban development from the 1900's-ish to the present and how that shaped US cities. This video goes over easy-to-access additional sources.

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He's a professor and a professional designer, so reliable source.

Some say Not Just Bikes, but I'm 50/50 since most of the time he compares one city to the rest of the world and usually sticks to Europe/US/CAN.

Also look at this one:

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Clear contrast, right? But notice it gives you the psychology and reasons why with the environment they are building on with the city ordinaces, which is why I think this topic is worth thinking about a bit when it comes to writing.

City Planning

The panning of a city, village or town on where to place things. This may include ordinances about style of homes, public goods, businesses, etc. Basically what this section is about.

This can influence things like the spread of disease, access to food, poverty, transportation, public works (Water electricity, gas, etc), parks, libraries, etc. You can make it better or worse depending on how you plan your city landscape. An Example of how city planning influences disease is here:

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City Ordinances such as quarantine, the ability to enforce it, how housing is built or not built, etc definitely has an influence as shown in the doc. Requiring

Lime plaster walls prevented disease and that all buildings be White washed is definitely something a city ordinance can do.

Salt peter (potassium Nitrate), amber, brimstone (sulfur), juniper, as a way to fight it is also a part of something the city can pass.

Not everything is in the control of the larger government, so creating the government landscape for this can add flavor to your world. How much control does your city have or not have compared to the rest of the country?

Development

Refers to how the city plans to do works and expand or slow growth. Often "Urban Development" and City Planning are said to be synonymous, but it's not quite the same thing. Urban development refers to the actual building one may or may not do and one may or may not have permission of the community.

That's why often people do community outreach these days by surveying the local population, asking what they think, and try to improve the area.

For example, time the walk man to allow pedestrians to go first would be city planning, but not necessarily Urban development.

Finding out there are a high number of deaths along a strip of road and finding ways to slow down the traffic may be both Urban development and City Planning.

Telling people to not build more Cul-De-Sacs and restricting them might be City Planning and Urban Development.

Objecting to a 2000 floor sky scraper because it blocks your lawn from getting any sun would be anti-Urban development, but it might lower your property values to have a dead lawn.

Complaining because a building's reflective surface raises your air conditioning bill... Someone didn't think carefully about Urban Development, but it might not fall directly under city planning since it's between individuals, not about zoning, etc. (This did happen with the Disney Music Hall in Downtown Los Angeles).

Grids

Power Grid, Water grid, but also Streets. Often cities and villages are built this way to make it easier to navigate.

Famously, NYC, (Parts of Los Angeles) Washington DC. Kinda Seoul, but this is iffy because the building pattern is different... there are more back alleys in Seoul, Tokyo... maybe? (It's designed more like HK/Seoul from what I remember, and some streets are not driveable.

Boston is a mess. Hong Kong, I kinda remember them doing this.

I remember London as being kinda a mess. But thinking about how easy your town, village, city is to navigate might be something to play with. To grid or not to grid.

Cul-de-sacs

I hate them, they usually are associated particularly in the US and Canada, etc with HOAs, manufactured terrible looking houses, and low walkability.

Here is an article with the problem with them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-09-19/the-problem-with-cul-de-sac-design

Because of their design they are not easy to get in and out of and are notorious for car accidents and fatalities

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2012/04/09/the-curse-of-the-cul-de-sac/

However, they often are the setting for posh people who want to have closed communities away from the dirty low-income people.

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This covers the problem with Suburb and how they are planned within the US. It gives you a dynamic understanding of street planning, city design and districting and zoning.

BTW, HOAs are evil. Especially corporate ones. Especially ones that force you to grow grass which creates undue pollution.

Food and Access to Food

Basically make sure a neighborhood has no access to food (Food desert) or if they do have food, it's Fast food only.

You can make it better by allowing people to plant the community strip with food, or making public access places into food havens. Like Public parks, community lots, or building public spaces, in general. The original vision for a mall was supposed to be a community center/hub, not corporate magnet, but it rather failed.

Vertical gardens, as the article points out, and make them community run.

Often these resources are private or in higher income areas. My own city, BTW, put all the fruit trees into rich neighborhoods, while keeping the low income areas mostly with poisonous plants in public spaces.

Fruit trees BTW, are messy and take more public works to maintain as they need to be pruned every year plus they litter and collect bugs more often. But I think this could be fixed with community outreach, education, etc which usually the government isn't willing to fund for poorer areas which are also not good tourist spots, s you can see the vicious cycle unfold here.

It's worth thinking on, though since there are edible plants that don't attract a world of pain to upkeep. (That's for you to research, not for me to list otherwise we'd be here all day with locations, etc).

What would a city with all public plants must be edible look like?

Public Works

Despite what many Far right people think, having some socialism is good.

It gives you water, power, sidewalks to walk on, streets, tree maintenance, parks, libraries, community centers, and so on.

These are government maintained by taxes. Oooo... Socialism.

Parks in particular, how far they are spaced and how they are maintained, and what kinds of activities they do or do not have can alter the mobility of a neighborhood's psychology drastically.

Is the park filled with food resources? Is the park green? Is the park gated? Not gated? Are certain people allowed or not allowed? Is there water there or not? Is it visible from the road easily? Is it accessible only during certain hours? Is there a community center in the park?

Green spaces designated for such can improve small things like mental health and well being for the residents in the area. Activities can also help people not fall into crime. Rec centers and community centers are often credited for lowering crime. If they don't step up and schools don't step up, often it's left to religious community members in poorer areas to motivate away from those activities. But the lack of them, often means more traffic, and absolutely more stress.

Small things like Libraries, when well-stocked can help with upward mobility. If the elite restrict university books at the public library that can heavily influence if the average person can get ahead.

Who owns the public works, like police, Fire fighters, Education, health care, can heavily influence the well being of a population. IF prisons are more profit-motivated, what does that mean for the community it serves? How will it treat its prisoners?

These are things that citizens should be theoretically aware of and also, it's useful for when you're creating a town/a village/city. The dump, might not have Fire fighters and maybe increased police stations instead. No medical hospitals nearby. There are no parks. There is no public transportation without walking for a mile, and people are cramped on each other. How do you think that will influence the well-being of your character?

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He also covers architecture topics. But this one covers how to control (or not control) water. Thus is might be useful to city planning and water works.

Economics

Yeah, so the design of your city can influence upward mobility. If more public spaces are green and beautiful and accessible to the public, (BTW, with less cars. More Cars==parking lots, parking garages, more freeways, more traffic, more pollution, more noise pollution, more stress.), and more resources given in terms of nutrition, education etc, then there is more upward mobility.

100% one could manage to destroy a neighborhood to make it eventually low income—destroy a church or two, split it with a busy road, refuse to build a park, don't fund the schools properly (AKA school vouchers), institute a strict government curriculum that strips out art/gym programs (Say No Child Left Behind),

Walkability

This includes how close or far amendities are and how easy it is to navigte your neighborhood without accident, injury, or other problems. Can you bike it with little trouble? Are there cool spots when it's oppressively hot? How are the streets arranged? How are traffic lights regulated? Are there pedestrian only walkways and streets?

The varies by climate which is why I told you a million times already, have a map so you know where your town/city/village strangely named location is. If it's a city in the sky, you still need to know climate because this will influence this Walkability.

There's a place nearby where there were a lot of deaths and accidents, so the city did a survey of the local residents and asked questions. They needed to slow the traffic and slow the amount of deaths. So what they did was install different traffic lights so the pedestrians go first. (White man shows up before the light changes). And then they added bike lanes which slowed traffic for that stretch. This upped the walkabilty for the neighborhood, less dying.

Sometimes it's that subtle—bike lane, bus lane, driving lane. Or sometimes it's better public transportation which reduces the number of cars on the road. Or sometimes it's as subtle as creating nice shade spots by planting a bunch of trees so there is shade in the winter. Basically, walkability makes the place more pleasant to live in and walk in.

I gave some cities to look at for this below to shake things up for you.

Seoul for tunnels, Japanese for private streets and back alleys where cars don't fit. Los Angeles has one of the worst scores in the world. I'd also examine Europe--particularly Paris and the Netherlands.

Street Planning

Bike paths/transportation paths

Green areas

Water

Resources

Districting v. Zoning

redlining

transportation—public v. private and parking lots

urban renewal

community development/community outreach

slums

vacancy

commute times

city heat maps

Food Deserts

Food Swamp

Parks

Public Works

Economics

Walkability

Street Planning

Bike paths/transportation paths

Green areas

Water

Resources

Districting v. Zoning

redlining

transportation—public v. private and parking lots

urban renewal

community development/community outreach

slums

vacancy

commute times

city heat maps

Resources to help draw your own:

Google Earth

CityCAD (Windows only and not free)

City Skylines (Not free and a Game)—beware of time suck rabbit holes

SIM City 2000 5.99 (From EA)/Free, https://playclassic.games/games/city-building-dos-games-online/play-simcity-2000-online/- Time Suck of a few hours.

CityEngine- over 2,000 USD. O.o; Why are you writing books then? Borrow from a city planner friend and then you don't need this tutorial.

Modelur- 150 Euros per month, works with Sketch up. First month is free. If you do go free, don't forget to cancel.

3D Cityplanner ~10 Euros a month Educational. ~60 Euros professional. Limit of 10 projects.

Cities to check out for best and worst?

Los Angeles, ranked one of the worst for traffic. No one likes to hear that their cars contribute to homelessness, but it's true. It's really terrible for walkability.

San Fran is one of the worst for housing, but is also known to spend MILLIONS (not kidding) on anti-homelessness measures like spikes. Which still gets to me and is like WTF. You rather that, than actually build homes for homeless people?

Seoul-the underground tunnel system is really cool and the subways are often ranked one of the best. Also, I'd check out the foot cart system. Marginally, for me, beat out HK and Tokyo. Though the open air markets of HK are more impressive in terms of sheer amount of goods being sold.

Tokyo- One of the most confusing subway systems such that there are otaku who memorize lines and have "favorites" (Not kidding there are train otaku for this and people who live there are confused).

Chinese rail system is also impressive (HK, granted). I liked the motorized walkways in HK. It's worth looking at.

France- I personally liked the cafe culture the best and the indoor-outdoor spaces.

Courtyard and planted courtyard—so many to choose from but general Mediterranean is a good place to start and also most North African and Middle Eastern.

Gardens/Parks- Spoiled for choice here. My favorite are English Gardens, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. The water use on particularly Japanese and Korean are my personal favorites. Japanese makes running water look effortless. But Chinese plantings are also impressive. I honestly thought I'd be more impressed with French Gardens... ^^ But this is my personal preference. I did like the French Fairy Gardens to be fair. Italian were meh for me. lol I'm going to get some hate.

The planted parks of Dubai are also impressive, but I heard that the financing for these proposed projects are often not vetted. However, I kinda like that concept. (Ted talk, IIRC).

Hong Kong is worth studying for the strict districting and layout of the city. The Commercial center is all one way, the residential is broken up another way, and how it's grouped and thought of is worth thinking about, plus the bridge to China's mainland where they designed the bridge to switch between left and right driving is quite a feat.

City Park Design

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You could also go for a concrete park, though this kinda defeats the purpose, but it would be a way to emphasize how oppressive it is, especially if you take out communal activities and green settings. It would also be oppressively hot as stone absorbs more heat than green spaces. If you do a concrete Park, consider making it white, not Black due to heat maps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79VUAFq2rbg&ab_channel=AndrewMillison

This video talks about how to design a green area from a desert. His whole channel pretty much covers the basics of how to do this with various world examples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl2Ma_heuLA&ab_channel=ExploringAlternatives

This video explains the basics of Permaculture. I should note that Asian and Indigenous garden design often does the same thing and predates Permaculture. (Probably other areas of the world as well, but I haven't learned them fully).

The point is, if you plant a park well, then it won't need weeding. If you plant it poorly, you'll constantly need to have people clean it up for you.

Architecture

Who is earning just above minimum wage and can live in an apartment like in Friends? What if they did portray the characters as truly poor and like how it would have been in NYC at the time period? Leaky pipes, problems with landlords, bug issues, rat issues, the apartment is cramped and small... would that change the show? Would that change how you feel about the characters?

Thus planning the space your characters live in will help you keep your rooms from drifting, but also help you think about how they interact with space, which is subtle to the reader, but builds the character that little bit more.

Architecture keyterms

articulation

Building permits

"Scheduled" Monuments/Listed

Zoning (again)

Foundations

Passive Solar

More definitions here:

https://global-exam.com/blog/en/english-vocabulary-architecture-vocabulary-list-top-100-common-words-used/

building ordinances

For example, you can dictate how many windows a building can or can't have, how many kitchens are allowed for a building based on certain restrictions/types, etc.

Resources to help draw your own Houses:

SIMS (1-4) Note that there are limited features and it's an expensive game

Sketchup- Steep learning curve, can get for free or pay a license to get bigger features. Major time suck, but will give you the outline of buildings https://id.trimble.com/ui/sign_in.html?

Blender- Free, but might take some time to learn. https://www.blender.org/

Graph Paper programs online are often free and allow you to layer.

GIMP doesn't really do 3D, but is also free so you can layer and draw a basic layout. https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Affinity: If you want a Photoshop alternative you pay for one time. Don't buy monthly subscription models. It's guaranteed to make the program worse. Graph paper and pen is low cost.

Passive Solar

Most of Feng Shui, despite what people think is practical advice and passive solar. (If you take out the Kua Number type of thing). A lot of people think it's funny things that Asians do, but if you look over the list and compare it to contemporary science and historical design of buildings, a lot of it ends up matching up. It's only shrouded in extra mysticism.

Some of the basics of Passive solar are:

Green areas help with mental health. Including planted courtyards, planted rooftops, green plants in rooms as long as the plants don't Take over. Green areas tend to also cool temperatures and improve air quality.

BTW, pushing clover and wild flowers again as a great way to help the environment.

Water is a calming and cooling force.

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These are worth watching, but you'll understand now why so many Asian courtyards have water features.

Imagine you could set up a water system where the whole of your courtyard is a water fence in the summer. Of course supplying it would be enormously difficult, BUT if you could also make it a water filtering system somehow, wouldn't that be *cough* cool?

There's also an old European thing where they would purposefully wet the floor and the evaporation would cool the room.

Point the entrance or at least your biggest windows towards the Sun On Earth, All Northern Hemisphere houses point South, All Southern Hemisphere houses point north on windows.

More and more airtight insulation is best Many old buildings were built with mud brick (high insulation), stone (high insulation), adobe (AKA clay) also highy insulation. Generally the material should correlate to the surrounding area. The more insulation means the longer the place takes to warm or cool.

Double glazed windows as well.

Under floor heating (stealing form Koreans here... but then later claiming it's not).

Hot air rises. Done. AKA work with nature rather than Against it (a lot of victorian houses were like this).

Central Air conditioning through ducts from the ceiling of the room. Cool air is heavier and thus falls.

Passageways cool air. So corridors are good as long as there is cross ventilation and ways to connect them to rooms. See here:

tunnels

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BTW, in the 1980's-ish they used to connect hallways with glass windows above entrances in apartments, but they took it out because the glass would break in fires. But if you're clever, you could think that the futuristic apartment building/highrise you create might have something that connects to a cooler hallway.

Skylights help regulate heat.

Obviously, heat rises. So if the heat is allowed to rise during the night, it can cool the building. Visually, too, it can help people be able to see the sky, which can also give a calming effect, especially in buildings that need to be industrial.

Ceiling fans help regulate room temps.

This one is a bit more complicated to explain physics-wise, but if you're that interested, look it up.

The color of your roof matters.

In cooler climbs, the roof tends to be darker. In warmer climbs, the roof tends t be lighter in color. I witnessed this in Japan and Korea. Darker colors absorb more light and heat than lighter colors.

Green roofs

Purposefully making your roof of moss or of plants can also naturally cool the building as the plants provide shade. However, the cost does go up when you are supporting plants because you need systems of run off, etc , but it is worth considering if you want to build your city this way:

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Green areas in General

Green courtyards, green rooms (as in has plants) can help with the mental well being of people, which is why hospitals often have this.

Bad Ideas you might have seen, but don't know are bad

Do not recycle Rebar

If you do this in a story, engineers will laugh at you.

To get up the tensile strength, it would have to be melted down again and reformed again into rebar. Simply straightening it is not enough to get back tensile strength.

Side Notes:

Autistic people (also people with CPTSD) really like curves, but they are exceptionally hard to build well. You'll hear architects and builders groan over curves because of the technical difficulty. But curves also make wheelchair accessibility difficult. So yeah, gotta think about this too. (That said, seeing someone rip out a curved staircase makes me cry.)

Thinking about government growing programs where landed people can volunteer to give up any food they grow in excess to the city would be something positive to think about. Maybe the government would even pay for it. (I know, "evil" socialism.)

Books and further resources

Castle by David Macaulay is really accessible and will give you format of castles. (All his books for kids are really great for breaking down basics of architecture).

Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design Flexibound by William Lidwell (Author), Kritina Holden (Author), Jill Butler (Author)

Architectural Digest (Has a free Youtube Channel)

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition Kindle Edition by Donald A. Norman

Conclusion

As I said at the top, the setting helps build the psychology of the character very quickly. A messy character like Nodmae, tells you a lot of the character in a short amount of time. Yet the piano at the center of it, tells you what she really values.

Likewise, if you want to make the reader and character boxed in, what better way than shifting their total surroundings so there is dirt, noise, air pollution, not enough green plants, the plants that do exist are poisonous and the heat from the materials used is not conducive to passive solar. The plants that are around are against the climate, so it's dead, and people are living in a food desert.

But building up little details along the way about these types of things where the nearest restaurant in walkable distance is McDonalds, can make the story feel closed in and claustrophobic.

Setting definitely influences things like health outcomes, suicide rates, violence, etc. So I say exploit it to its fullest and put some thinking into it. How does your character feel about where they live?

But you could also imagine a Utopia city where people share their harvests, food and green areas are all over the place. Where poorer areas are as lush as the rich areas as well. And I think these small little things can really enhance your story or at least give you a checklist of things to think about when you shape it for stories that don't feature made up towns. Maybe even making you more aware of the places you visit and live in and how to truly respect it and maybe do little things to help with poverty around you.

#Youtube #worldbuilding #Urban planning #city planning

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