How would a town be designed for a winged race?

Question

I am creating a world that has a race of winged humanoids, but I am unsure of how a town for them would be designed. They are a slightly smaller than human sized, pre-industrial, omnivorous species that prefers living in colder climates. I would like their homes to be primarily accessible via flight, as they are far more comfortable in the air than on the ground. Their main resources are wood, feathers, stone, and silk, but I am not really concerned about the logistics of how the town would be built. In other words, I value style and functionality over realism, so implausibility is welcome! Anyway, sorry if any of that was confusing, but thanks for reading.

Answer 1

The Cliff swallow Petrochelidon pyrrhonota is a highly social species. It builds its nests, by the thousands, under the overhangs of cliffs (and artificial structures like bridges). Each individual nest made of mud. Together, the overhang protects them from weather; the cliff protects them from non-flying attackers; and the density allows one watcher to warn the colony of danger.

Human towns as well are often sited primarily for protection (think Civita di Bagnoregio), and that requirement is often a driver for town density. If your world provides natural or artificial danger to your flying race, that's a good driver for a scenic, dense small town.

A group of winged humanoids would find a nice tall cliff, preferably with some overhang, preferably of a durable rock (granite vs sandstone). Flying up to it, they would first build a basic scaffolding, hanging on to what handholds exist -- far less stressful when a mistake makes you fly instead of fall to your death! Anchor holes would be chiseled in the wall of the rock, and a wooden framework would be put into the anchor holes. Then, adobe -- a great building material, and easily portable in small quantities, one flight at a time -- would be packed around the framework, giving a strong, weather-tight home. Other homes would of course share walls to reduce the total building effort and material needed.

From below, the gray face cliff seems to have reddish encrustations where overhangs cast a shadow. The encrustations have a pattern of yard-wide holes. And with a shout from below, forty feet below the bottom of the lowest dwelling, heads appear at the entrances, peering down to see what unwinged neighbor is vying for their attention.

At dawn and at dusk, when the humanoids commute from their sleep dwelling out into the surrounding landscape, or to other buildings where they spend the day, the air buzzes with flight. A head poked out of a dwelling, followed by the rest of the body. A small dive -- looking to the unwinged like a startling fall -- builds airspeed to the point of flight, and then two or three powerful flaps stabilizes that flight and brings the flyer back to the level of the dwellings. They may reach out with a hand to grab the threshold of another entrance and disappear again; or, having stabilized, they may dive again to build up speed and flap away towards another task.