Block Life

In the Westerlands, inside cities, most houses that were not private residences of important individuals were commonly built in a particularly pragmatic fashion - referred to as "blocks". These buildings consisted of, usually four wings (or more), surrounding a court yard or atrium, and had many floors, each home to a number of smaller apartments, where the laborers of the city lived (the plebeians).

Smaller Cities
Even in smaller cities, this practical pattern of building was often followed, as the atriums were highly necessary parts of the construction, necessary for placement of toilets, places to do, and dry laundry, places to prepare various smelly substances and places to simply linger out of sight. The streets went around these buildings giving an impression of a confided space with small buildings stretching out, often making it hard to notice that there was actually more behind the building facade - often on the other side of the block would be a stretch of green land, where the inhabitants of the block could grow gardens and keep some minor animals, and then a canal might further separate from the next set of blocks.

Larger Cities
In larger Cities, the inhabitants of a block often worked for the same company or individual, and it was much more common to have canals dividing sections of blocks.