This is one of my dreams, like bucket list type "Need to do in life" dreams. I've been building with LEGO since I was three years old (I'm 19 now) and i have always wanted to build a massive LEGO metropolis. I see so many of these beautiful cities online and I get jealous because i can't do it yet. Hopefully, one day when my life is stable and I've finished studying to become an architect, I can finally build one of these. Right now i'm just stuck with dreams :(
You will get there! I have been playing Lego since I was 7 and I'm 14 now, I might not have a lot of Lego, but I can at least make a small Lego city, But right now I still need to clean it all since I took a break of Lego and other stuff, But you will get there ✌️✌️
I strongly suggest MILS plates. It will be an additional cost to get the extra parts, but it makes your city so much sturdier. If you need to move a building, it’s much easier to do so without the same fear of just a base plate by itself that your building will collapse. As well, it fits with the 2021 road plates better.
Unpopular opinion: the modular buildings is a bit over rated. Don't get me wrong they are nice, but they are used in pretty much every Lego city, and a lot of cities are the same building style that matches the older style that the modulars go for. I want to get at least 2 of them, the burch tree building, and the corner garage, that's pretty much the only ones. When I think of a city, I want to do modern architecture moc buildings etc, but have a small portion for the "older" style of buildings, because I have those 3 in 1 buildings.
These were some great tips Emily 👍! You have a great Lego city! I'm trying to make my amusement park unique by turning my barracuda bay set into a water park!
So far what I’m doing is just collecting sets and pieces for my city. So when I begin building a city, because at the moment don’t have room for it, I’ll have a good amount of items I can add straight from the start
I want to build tables that are 4 baseplates by 4 baseplates. Unfortunately right now starting my city has come to a halt do to finances. I do have some new roads and trains. My plan is to make the tables so friends of mine who don't have space right now can add to our combined city, but keep the pieces separate.
Go to Amazon and buy other brand base and road plates. Then you save a ton of money and can freely trim them down to size when needed without throwing up.
Hello I love to build lego and I’ve been building a lego city! I just want to ask you where did you get the grey bricks that you used for your sidewalk? I just wanted to ask because I’m thinking about getting another one of those 2021 road plates but I don’t have enough sidewalk to cover all of it. Anyway it would be amazing if you could tell me we’re you found them. Anyway! This video really helped me so thanks for making it!
When I buy my home I'm gonna have a special room for legos and toys and games and music and food and pizza and tacos and lagunitas. And fun only for my family
I only have a L shaped space for about 5 baseplates so it’s going to rotate throughout the year right now it’s hidden side but soon it will be changing to Star Wars for May Thankfully I kept my old black space base plates for that but for regular streets I am switching to the new road plates partly due to space constraints mostly my kids use all my old baseplate style roads Anyways happy building everyone 😁 and great Video
Great advice Emma 👍🏽 I started my city young at 10 and it has changed a lot from then to now that I’m 14. First it was just all friends sets and marvel. I have a small room, so I use a layer style in my city. Smallbrickcity give me this idea. He has an awesome display where each level is a different place in the city. So his idea was building up. My city start with an underwater and bat cave , second level is my amusement park . Third level and to the side is my beach and ninjago world and last level is my main city. Agree on just adding what you have. I use to not want to share because it wasn’t perfect like others but I learn to just enjoy and share anyways because people like seeing the progress. I also don’t have any writing rule how things go or theme. I have marvel, Harry , modular, friends, whatever I like. Main thing is to have fun. Setting scenes is my favorite. Love this video 🥰
I'm building a Lego city underneath my bed and so I have to be mindful of space. I personally love the new road plates the best because it allows me to add more buildings
Great advice. My city is on just 4 plastic tables that are all 30 inches wide and and 6 and 8 feet long 2 of each with also 3 shelves in my bed room that my mom got for me before my family dropped our Amazon prime a few months ago. 2 shelves are basically empty right now but I have 1 longer one and that is planed from the 1989 batmobile set while the shorter empty one might be for the crocodile set not sure on that because my focus lego related right now is getting my city close to done so hopefully in June I can get the corner garage and bookshop add those vip points to my moms rewards card that we have been saving for a few years then put the points towards the batmobile and that is to be my birthday and Christmas set maybe this year.
Very nice video! :) If you want to have train tracks in your city, my tip would be to first decide where the tracks are going and then put down the baseplates and go on from that.
Always wanted to build a Lego City, currently starting up the planning for a massive, probably never going to happen in my life but we miss 100% of the Lego we don't build, kinda Cities. The main plan is to use every non-promotional (With the exeption of a Toys R Us exclusive I really like), non-polybag Lego City set from 2005-2016 + any set afterwards that I give a pass to. A grand total of 391 sets (1309 Minifigures, I counted) all brought together in a 3 Layer Setup representing the ocean, sea level and above sea level, containing every biome referenced in City sets and using real water where possible, along with seperate areas to represent the Moon and Mars. I won't be using modulars, or any non-City sets, and anything extra (Like enough housing for the 1309 citizens) will be custom built. It will also contain two municipalities, the main city and a smaller town, since I feel like having all of the multiple versions of the same set all thrown into one City makes things a little dense. I have a vauge idea of the layout, but I have yet to go out and determine the stud length and width of every single building from each set that has one to get the actual dimensions of what the layout will be and how much I'm gonna need, it's alot, but it's the kind of thing I expect to take years and years, likely over a decade or more, so I have plenty of time to plan it out. It's a fever dream built off of sheer willpower and nostalgia, and as a hobbyist world creator I think it's the perfect project to work on, a physical region that I can write countless amounts of history, lore and storylines about? Oh yeeeeeeah, that sounds perfect for me haha!
Those are some really good tips. I'm new to your channel and haven't seen many of your past videos (at least yet), so I hadn't seen too much of your city. The glances in this video, it really looks cool. I like your streets with the median, looks more realistic than the old plain baseplates. I don't have a city yet, but I do have thoughts of doing a shoreline with boats, docks, beach, that maybe expands into a city. Realistically, that's maybe a retirement plan. Always have lots of ideas, but only so much time.
Can you give a few tips on building stands or bases for sets? (Kind of like how you did with the Disney train station!) I love your city it looks great!
Here’s the main (big) problem with building a Lego city…………..if you are a real Lego Maniac……..you are not building a Lego city in order to start a RU-vid channel, to amass a huge online audience and make money off your “hobby”. No……you just love Lego and it provides you with an outlet for your creativity and allows you some time to unwind from this crazy world. What I have observed in the last few years are many people who have fallen into the trap of being more concerned with “followers” then with the real reason you started your hobby in the first place. Spending all your time (and energy) trying fit every Lego set and theme into your city turns you into a manic….but not necessarily “Lego Maniac”. In the end………you turn your “love and passion“ for Lego into……..a job……….and how many people really love their job. I have seen many people take their hobbies and destroy them, by turning them into a source of revenue, rather than a source of pleasure and enjoyment. I have a fairly large Lego City, but I didn’t build it to become enslaved to it, I built it to enjoy it.
I totally see where you’re coming from on this, and it is a shame when a hobby no longer becomes fun when it turns into a chore or a job. I just wanted to point out that half the fun is LEGO and being creative, but another whole side of this (and something I truly equally enjoy) is creating videos. I come to LEGO to relax, meet other AFOLS, and form a connection with people, but I get a lot of that “unwind” from video editing as well. RU-vid is almost two hobbies combined into one - LEGO and video production. If I hated editing, I wouldn’t still be uploading videos. I started the channel in 2020 after I was laid off from my job. After 40+ applications sent out to places clearly not hiring and never hearing back, I found an outlet where I could meet people and share my hobby with folks from all over the world. It turned into my full time job and I’m incredibly thankful for that. I love my LEGO job because I get to do something I thoroughly enjoy every day. I loved my old job in data science as well. I strongly believe if someone doesn’t love what they’re doing, they should start doing something else.
@@Emmasaurus …..thank you for your gracious and thoughtful reply. I hope that your love of Lego will never diminish, due to keeping up with the latest theme, or sets, or fads. In our modern world of short attention spans and fickle loyalties, viewership retention and thus “income” can turn very quickly. I was a musician who travelled and played all over. After awhile, life on the road and lack of a life outside of the band, became a chore rather than a joy. I have also seen many friends and talented “crafty” people turn their woodworking, metal work, etc. “Hobbies” into a business that eventually……burned them out. I wish you great success and may you never loose the wonder. Regards.😁
This is literally the only video on RU-vid that has been helpful for me trying to figure out my Lego city! Thank you so much for your content and everything you’re putting out. Your channel is amazing
Thanks for the video Emily! My daughters and I have acquired a few train sets and the shelf city idea sounds interesting for their old friends and hidden side sets. Could you share the link for the youtuber with the city on shelves format? I didn't see it in the video notes. Keep up the great work!
I have my lego city spread around 2 tables and some of the shelves in my bookcases. It's a conbination of lego friends and city stuff. Your city looks pretty good
I think for most normal people, going slow at it is the best bet. Some people will get over the Lego hobby, others probably shouldn't spend thousands on plastic that only a handful of people will ever see. Even if you're a RU-vidr I think having it as a side series vs the main course is good too. My only suggestion is if people can afford it, get all the major sets when you can. The value for city sets is extreme.. like the Diner set that had a decent release is now becoming more and more in demand already, people are now like "I need that" vs before it was (for some people) meh. Anyways nice city so far.. I'm still considering if I should go with a pirate/castle theme (pirate I would have an under water scene going too beneath the structures/ships and dungeons for the castles) or city. But I think City offers more flexibility as pirate/castle is just sooooo slow with new sets
I love your videos and always loved legos as a kid! My mom tried to buy me as much as she could as a kid, so now as a 22 year old I try and treat my inner kid self with legos 😂❤️
Big error in your video, baseplates are not 15" by 15", they are 383mm by 383mm (15.08" by 15.08"). If you use inches you will have problems if you have more plates connected to eatch other.
I only have a small space for my Lego Town. I drew up plans before starting to see what I could fit and how to get as much in as possible. Ended up with 8 32x32 base plates for modular s and 2 24x32 base plates for roads wide and 4x32 base plates deep. Front and centre in the town is a large park taking of 10 32x32 base plates including water features built into the MILS plates
I like the content of the channel, but.. And I mean this as constructive criticism. Very loud and fast talking! I had to stop watching because it’s so stressful. Take your time and be more chill like Jangbricks to mention an example. Well, that’s my experience at least.
I thought a saw a video where your husband made some custom platforms/ tables. Is that something you guys possibly started after this video was made? If so, I’d like to learn more about how he made them. Thanks
Ive been working on my own, slowly. Paradisa themed, but sci fi. Im avoiding easy options like modular buildings; mostly as theyre too expensive and every city has them, while if i make original stuff
I like the content. I would like to see more video of the content, and a lot less of the 1st person vlog narration style. I like the parts where you showed examples of your work and what you like, and less of the camera in your face. Thank you for your work, I subscribed and I am curious to see what else you have to say. Please more footage of Lego and less of you.
I am about 12 and im just starting a city, its very small, not even 10 16x16 baseplates, I hope to at least have a 6x6 area of 16x16 and have a full train loop
I started working on a Lego city and it's coming out good the only probably is the bricks and I need to go through bens of Legos but it's looking good and I will be working on it later today I'm really working on the side walks and the buildings rn it's really fun and it's cool to see a Lego city in irl 😘
Appreciate the video as I am just starting out. The ikea tables look nice, will probably go in that direction (just using a plastic table now). On the roads, I found the baseplates don’t fit with the roads very well so I ended up substituting full size 16x16 plates instead for now. I am doing that on my first modular (bookshop) and so far so good.
I started my city with Assembly Square which is by far one of the nicest sets, and about 6 months later maybe i got the Police Station, they both work well together, but i would like some older modulars like Green Grocer, Palace Cinema, Pet Shop, or Town Hall.
Similar situation, I got Assembly Square on a pretty hefty discount earlier this year. I used to be into lego a lot, recently got back into it but always preferred technic stuff etc. The Assembly Square showed me a whole different side of things. Added the Boutique Hotel, Sanctum Sanctorum (again both on pretty hefty discounts) which are now on a shelf with 3 sets of roadplates around them. It's not perfect in height but it looks nice. Gotta work with the space and budget you have. Picked up the Corner Garage (was discounted, but the upcharge with age adds) and Birch Books as its going out of production on a slight discount. Which I can add alongside the little street I'm starting to develop. Now looking at how to add to that. Whether it's worth sticking to boxed sets, or perhaps branch out with MOCs and/or off-brand bricks to keep costs down. Seeing how you can get like 90% of some of the discontinued modulars for less than the original retail price of the set versus the hundreds or even thousands they retail for now... 🤯
It's funny that you mentioned a Star Wars city because that is what I am working on. The death star is a skyscraper, Jabba's palace is a mob bar, and then I am getting ready to plan Watto's Auto.
Yeah, I wish I knew half the tips on city making....that and made my city not just Lego...I added like a few action figures....I never liked the MILS concept....tried it once and it didn’t work, but I wouldn’t discredit....as a concept....it’s just on personal tastes
I’m gathering lots of bits and pieces and some sets I’ll use for parts on Facebook marketplace. I try to negotiate to between 3 and $4 a pound. Just be careful of knex and mega blocks if you want it to be purely Lego.
