When building my own idea of what the Star Civ was and how it operated, I realised that finding correlation between seperate elements of the StarCiv was going to be important in building a picture that made sense. I have been lucky enough to find many correlating factors.
It should first be noted that there are no two stars that are exactly the same - all vary in size and shape, yet all carry the distinct aesthetic that makes Star Civ structures so immediately recognisable.
However, it looks as though most stars followed a basic set of principles that guided their design and implementation.
I should, at this point, clarify my use of the term 'star'. These are the structures that have been the basis for many, many of our cities and towns. Here is an example of what I would term a typical star - Ingolstadt in Germany:
It is close to a river (which was once a star civ canal) and in fact the canal runs through it, with the bulk of the star (in this case) being on the north side of the canal. I suspect that Ingolstadt would once have had smaller, sub-canals running through the heart of the city, however, time, catastrophy and flooding have taken their toll and many of the smaller canals have been 'filled in' either by nature - or by us.
Anyway, if you're reading this, you most probably know what a 'star' is, already. So, onwards.
Many star cities had various elements that are present, almost across the board:
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A. Type 1 architecture in it's central area
Type 1 architecture (a name coined by Colm in one of his videos) is the undulating, wavy style of street layout as shown in the picture below:
This style of layout has a very 'natural' feel to it, although it makes building the structures that form it so much more complex than is strictly necessary. But that's what the star civ was all about - creating beauty, even if it meant more difficult to produce. This pattern can be seen in many places within nature itself - and my particularly favourite is the patterns created by light reflecting within water - as can seen below:
This type of architectural style of building can be seen almost everywhere around the world, because the StarCiv was everywhere. In fact, if there is a Type 1 building layout present, it is an extremely good indicator that there was a star at that location. (It's funny - I saw that type 1 layout at Erice when I was just browsing GE the other day and marked it as a great example to look at later. I've just relooked at the area surrounding Erice whilst writing this - and guess what - there's the outer edge of the original star left - 38°02'06.93" N 12°35'31.66" E - and a mini 4-point here - 38°02'08.64" N 12°35'26.68" E - which I didn't even notice the first time I looked! Also, being on top of a hill, Erice is what I would an 'outpost' city - one that is not connected directly to the canal system. Erice may also once have been a companion to it's much larger sister city Trapani to the east, which was also a largish star city at one point.)
So, to clarify - type 1 architecture can be seen in many, many star cities, both those that were 'on the ground' and also those that were 'up in the hills and mountains'. It is an enduring feature that I feel it's fairly safe to say that we can link to the StarCiv. It also tells us that this is the oldest part of the city and was the initial 'hub' from which the rest of the town or city grew. How the city then grew is fascinating in itself, but more on that later.
Another example:
Trapani's type 1 ( 38°00'57.56" N 12°30'44.97" E ) as shown above, forms the core of the city from which the rest grew. An old map showing Trapani -
This confirms that the oldest part of the city of Trapani was where the type 1 occurs - within the star itself.
Once you start looking, you may be shocked at how much type 1 you find.
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B. Expansion from the inherited type 1 building to 'Garden type' building layout
The gardens of the StarCiv are a whole massive topic of their own which I will be covering in depth at some point, but they need mentioning here in specific detail because they are so integral to the expansion of ex-star cities by our civilisation. Here's a quick timeline to get things in order - the catastrophe destroyed much of the StarCiv - the survivors (or whoever we are) rebuilt our civilisation on the bones of the StarCiv, using the starcity centres (with their type 1 often still inhabitable) to begin with, then spreading out from there to form larger and larger cities.
And here, again, we used the bones of the StarCiv to advance our own civilisation.
Larger Starcities had their own formal, stunning gardens. These were most often situated just beyond (and surrounding) the external walls of the starcity. Very occasionally, they were inside the walls. They were based on a very specific set of shapes and an aesthetic look that ties in with the rest of the StarCiv - triangulation, geometric shapes and soft curves and ovals. As well as gardens that contained, I assume, normal garden type plants, there were also many tree gardens that consisted soley of forestry.
The gardens at Versaille in Paris are perhaps one of the best examples of 'Star Gardens' still surviving today. But there is ample evidence that this type of garden was present not only at larger Starcities, but many, many others stars as well, albeit in a more modest form. However, it's easier to explain this correlation by using the example of larger starcities because it's so obvious that the gardens of the larger stars have been used as blueprints for the expansion of these cities by us.
Taking a quick look at the road layouts of many major cities - just beyond the original type 1 area (undulating, wavy) the layout of the city becomes far more like this:
and there is a reason - a very specific reason - that our major cities have formed in this way, with a very specific type of layout - and that's because they have been following the patterns laid out by the StaCiv gardens that surrounded the original star cities.
Take a look at these 'garden' layouts, get a feel for their shapes:
Examples of this kind of 'garden' can be found, intact, worldwide. Not all of them were were paved over or built upon.
There is further evidence that the starcities were surrounded by star gardens, in the form of old maps and drawings - for example, here's an map from c1750 showing, in detail, a small part of the area surrounding Vienna, just beyond the city:
I urge you to right click, view image and take a close look at the surrounding area - this is just a small part of the outskirts of Vienna and the entire city was surrounded like this by gardens.
We literally moved in, wiped the garden clean and built our own structures in the space they had occupied. And left some as they were. Of course, it depended on the general level of destruction that was suffered by the star city during the events that devestated it - for example, in Russia and Ukraine, there are few cities left with gardens because the destruction was almost complete, so there was little to no pattern to follow when building these cities by us.
Many, many of these gardens still exist today, in many major cities of the world. They all have the same aesthetic look and feel and can be easily identified. There were even more still around during the 1940's - I have many aerial photos that I will post in the seperate 'Gardens of the StarCiv' thread that I'm working on - to be published shortly.
C. Canals, canals, canals
The water system was of extreme importance to the Star Civ. It provided means of transport, communication and most probably, power. And maybe a few other uses, unconceived by us, yet.
To give a better idea of how much water was involved in a many star cities, I've edited a few maps showing (more clearly) the water systems:
tbc