Looking for a few opinions/help

[projectedtowin]

Hey Everyone, I'm working on a map, and wanted to see if anyone felt like helping by giving me an opinion/rough sketch of what their city roads would look like given a basic shape of the land mass. See the attached image for the general shape. I've done a few sketches but I'm not yet happy with my city layout yet, so maybe someone can help inspire me!

[MistyBeee]

Hi there !
Maybe some information about the context would be helpful for the ones that would be interested into helping you ? For example an idea about the kind of town you're creating (style and era inspiration), age of the town (is this an old city or a recent one), geographic situation (is this an island or a part of a bigger land ? what is the climate ? how is the terrain relief ?) : everything that may have an influence about when, why and how your town was created.
A good start point can always be to look on the Web at some towns with a similar situation, age and history and study their layout

[projectedtowin]

Thanks Misty! I don't want to give out too much detail about it, but think of it as an old port town/city (population of about 3000). This area is a habitable, relatively flat portion of a desert peninsula (desert to the north), and has an old fort on a high rocky outcropping to the SW of this section.

Think New Providence from Black Sails meets this national park in Egypt

[selden]

Some simplistic thoughts:

Early roads are going to tend to be parallel to waterways.

Paths through the desert are going to tend to be from one oasis to another.

Roads going to/from the castle (which will be on the highest local hill, so they can keep an eye on everything) are going to tend to be from the primary entry gate to wherever the tribute/taxation is available -- e.g. well developed farms and fishing boat docks.

After that, they're likely to branch out from those primary routes, but be relatively random, perhaps avoiding the worst of the marshy areas.