"So you want to build a LEGO City but don't have the space? Maybe Micropolis is the answer."

You don't have to be a part of the Lego community for too long before you start coming across Lego cities.  In some cases, small children create random buildings from whichever bricks fall to hand, and cars drive along roads made of living room carpet.  In the UK, where space is often at a premium, a city may be a few skilfully designed buildings, or maybe it's a collection from the Modular series sitting on a shelf.  But across the pond, where everything is bigger, including spare rooms and basements, is where you'll find the epic layouts that can stretch 20 or 30 feet in both directions, usually built on tables so that their creators can crawl underneath and pop up in cut out areas to access the city centre.

One such layout is New Jang City, the creation of popular YouTuber, JangBricks.

Image: JangBricks

A fantastic looking city, but I dread to think of the cost!

But what if you crave a sprawling Lego metropolis, but don't have the acres of space (and indeed the thousands of bricks) that such an undertaking requires?  That's something that's been on my mind for some time, as I'm most envious of the fabulous layouts with city centres, shopping districts, suburban areas, ports, airports and more.  But I simply don't have the space.  However,  maybe there's an alternative...

A little while back, I came across TwinLUG.  TwinLUG is the Twin Cities Lego User Group, based in the Twin Cities in the USA.  If, like me, you've vaguely heard of the term 'Twin Cities' but can't place it (them?), it refers to the area around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota and St Croix rivers in the state of Minnesota (1).  The 'Twin Cities' refers to the two largest cities in the vicinity: Minneapolis and St Paul. (2)

Back in 2010, they published what they called the "Micropolis" Micro City Standard.  Now I doubt whether they'd claim to be the first to build Lego cities at a micro scale, but they decided to create some guidelines that would allow their various members to create city blocks separately, but which would fit together as an integrated whole.  I liked this idea, and, despite being someone who is largely MOC-averse, I thought I'd give it a go.

Here are a couple of the group's creations...

Both images (c) their respective owners, with my thanks to the TwinLUG Flickr group

So I went off to BrickOwl, ordered up a few parts and they arrived a while back.  At which point I promptly forgot about them!  But having just come across the link to the TwinLug page again, I'm going to dig the parts out, put my town-planning hat on and become the Lord Of All I Survey.

After I've build the UCS Razor Crest which I just managed to pick up at a bargain price!

But just going back to the Micropolis standard, as you'll see if you click through on the above link, it works on the basis that one 16x16 plate is a quarter of a city block.  Two 16x16 plates are the bread in a Lego sandwich, and Technic bricks plus some regular System bricks, are used in the 'filling' to allow each build to be clipped to its neighbour.  There are rules for where the sidewalk (or 'pavement' for our UK readers) go, but the remainder of the block is then free for you to begin construction.

If you want an idea of the sort of thing that can be built at this scale, TwinLUG have a Flickr page dedicated to Micropolis, and you can see some of their fantastic creations, here.

Before I went off to BrickOwl to order the parts I thought I'd need, I assumed (3) that 16x16 plates would be common as muck and therefore cheap as chips (4).  Not so!  A few sellers have one or two for sale at around £1.29, but if you're buying in bulk - each quarter block requires two plates, although you could probably skimp on the bottom plate if you were only connecting to your own build - the price jumps a bit.  Forty plates would set you back over £110, and that's before shipping.

As such I've only bought enough for about two full blocks, but I guess that's enough to see if the bug bites.  I shall start construction soon.

But that's after the aforementioned Razor Crest, ill-fated (5) ship of Din Djarin, gets built.  I have a bad habit of buying these larger sets and then 'putting them away for later'.  Not this one!  This one gets built.  Look out for a review, soon!

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1. Minnesota is up the top, butted up against Canada, roughly in the middle (East to West-wise) of the USA.

2. Thank you, Wikipedia.

3. Never a good idea.  As they say, 'it makes an ass out of U and Me'.

4. Other similes are available.

5. Sorry.  Belated spoiler alert!