Twenty miles high, some of those miles more crowded than others, primarily self-sustaining...What are the opinions here as to population size?

I'm estimating there are less than four hundred people who can actually call themselves 'street racers'. Assuming the size of a Crew averages out at around twenty, and there are eleven Crews (excluding the Keepers and Prophets, but including Penn Racing even though it's both small and the only known Crew that isn't based on a draconium influence), also around a hundred independent racers and/or other small crews, that adds upt to three hundred and twenty street racers, which sounds pretty reasonable considering the main income-earning of Crew-members seems not to be in racing and only around thirty people (at most) tend to compete in all the races we've seen. So that might translate as to a relatively small population, though the majority probably do work in industry and manufacture. Any ideas as to the numbers of Academy racers, delinquents, 'secret' organisations such as the priests and Prophets and Keepers?

That's a tough one. I don't think they've ever mentioned anything to give us a hint as to what the diameter of the city is or what the population density is. Without those numbers, it's hard to tell.

Like most people, I tend to apply my own personal experience to fill in the blanks. I was born in New York City and grew up in the suburbs just outside. So when I see Dragon City, I can't help but think of the skyscrapers and density of New York City since that's familiar to me. The population of New York City (Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs) is roughly 8,000,000 people. If we also count the surrounding suburbs (which I think we pretty much have to because they wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the city), the total population is more on the order of 12,000,000 people.

So to me, Dragon City feels like 8-12 million people and probably 8-12 million dragons as well. But that's probably just because of where I grew up.

In "Into the Fire" (episode 3), Parmon states that the average crew contains "75 to 100 local members." I'm sure the reason we never see that many is because of the reality that the animation budget isn't big enough. But they're supposed to be there even though all the action we see focuses on the crew leaders.

The phrase "local members" is also an important keyword. That implies all the crews have even larger memberships but it's spread out in other localities. So there could be a large number of local chapters, each with 75 to 100 members. How many local chapters there are would most likely depend on big Dragon City is and how they divide up the city. For example, New York City is divided up into the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. And the boroughs are further subdivided into neighborhoods of varying sizes (most people have probably heard of Harlem and Greenwich Village). So when Parmon said "local" he could have meant anything from large areas like boroughs to small areas like neighborhoods. Or perhaps he's referring to membership in other cities that may exist but that we never see. I don't see enough information to decide myself, other than I have the feeling that the crews could be quite big if we count all the other local chapters.

Similarly, I get the impression myself that at least some of the street races we observe are local events, and that there may be other street racer groups in other parts of the city. That makes it difficult to get a handle on the total number of street racers in the city.

Not sure, but I'm going to assume that the Prophets and Keepers conform to the 75 to 100 local members statistic. Maybe they have more chapters scattered about as well.

Yet the races we see involve competition for a prestigious Academy spot. What happened to the other several hundred who should have theoretically been trying?

It seems that Artha's been competing against Crew-leaders all along, so did he get some sort of a head start because of his father's...breeding skills or whatever? Unless the vast majority of the Crews don't actually race, which actually seems quite likely based on what we see on screen, but we really don't know what else they're doing, because they're not legitimately recognised organizations or as far as we've seen private armies. Or perhaps the majority are 'sleeper' members who have day jobs.

If there are in fact around twenty thousand people in the various Crews in total, and that for every Crew-member there are twenty in the audience, that's 220,000. And if none of these people do anything but race and watch races, let's assume ten people to support each of these people (manufacture, agriculture, security, done by sane people who don't watch races etc), which comes to 2,420,000. And let's say there are another two million people to account for Sun City, which isn't involved in street racing at all. Which comes to 4.4 million. These aren't particularly good calculations, but they're quite generous based on the information we have (that a good deal of Dragon City life seems to focus around racing), and they don't even make five million. Nor do the Crew-sizes show up on screen at all, even though I'm guessing it would be rather useful to be able to send 75-100 people against the Dragon Booster and see how he deals with that.

I would guess that the 'crew leaders' are perhaps only leaders of say, the local part of the crew. Maybe there's some other leader somewhere who's more in charge of the whole thing. Moordryd certainly doesn't seem like he has to deal with the paperwork of more than a local part of a crew. :P

*is getting a mental picture of Artha under a pile up of 75-100 crew members* :P

I'd probably go with 'not all memebers race'. I'd say there's plenty more things around Dragon City that need people doing them. If the whole population raced, it wouldn't be a very balanced society, they'd all die of starvation very quickly. ;) We do know for sure that there at least has to be people making gear, and obviously the food. And we know Conner breeds dragons. Aside from that, I can't think of any other jobs that would have been specifically pointed out.

I'd also assume that some of Dragon City is industrial rather than residential. But I think as Furox said, we don't know the actually dimensions of Dragon City, other than its height, and niether do we know what proportion is devoted to what.

The entry requirements for the Racing Academy seem pretty unclear to me. For example, The Mechanists don't ride dragons according to the crew description on the official web site, and indeed we never see any of them in a race. Yet Rivett was in the Academy according to the episode in which he appeared. This is either a mistake on the part of the writers or it says one doesn't necessarily have to be a racer to get in. Maybe the Academy is like a multi-discipline college: there are degree programs for racers, gear design (i.e., engineering), dragonology and so forth.

Difficult to say. Though Artha's done a lot of losing, so he is kind of in over his head. The street races could be organized by age bracket more than anything else. BMX bike racing works that way: the kids are always grouped to compete against other kids their own age.

I tend to think so myself. We've only seen Cain in one race and Phistus has been in none. I would imagine that the few top crew members who do race would need support, like a pit crew that keeps the gear in good repair and someone to bring the Dragonola Bars. :) So say some number of people on the crew do support and the rest are up and coming racers in training.

And as you said up at the top, there are also crews that don't seem to race at all. The Mechanist, Keepers and Prophets seem to fall into that category. The Grip of the Dragon doesn't seem to race much either, nor does the Will of the Dragon. I only recall seeing a green dragon in one race ("The Stand") and it's unknown whether the rider was a Grip of the Dragon crew member or an independent like Kitt was originally. That seems to take about five crews away from those that race. (Though the Grip and Will of the Dragon compete in Drag Ball and probably Joust instead.)

Well, let's take Penn racing. You have the racer, and then people getting gear racks ready, and possibly a spotter. Kinda like a pit crew in indy racing, or maybe the guys who fix up a boxer in his corner. So for every racing individual in a crew they have at least two people as support, probably more for crews, like someone to tweak gear on the fly acording to what the spotter said. Maybe someone to race back to base and bring a special piece if they don't have it.

There might be overlap, but very little since you'd want people to be synced up with each other and a team, instead of interchangeable parts.

Back at Crew HQ you have people taking care of the dragons, raking care of bussiness in general, going out and buying gorceries, cooking diner, selling things, maybe even gear tinkers.

Also there are probably races we don't see because Artha can't compete in them, like I don't know, tandem racing, or relays. Practically Penn racing only has two racers. Marathon racing is diffrent since it's about brain and stamina more than speed.

Also, who knows how many races are in Dragon City a day? And you wouldn't want to race your dragon every day, you might tire it out.

So there's more crew members acounted for what they are doing.

And, Sarah, Sun City has the Elite Races.

So I'm going to say around four million+

Well, to support a city twenty miles high, based on rough estimates of structure weight and 'density' (buildings per square km/mile/whatever), you would likely be looking at a diameter anywhere from 100-500km. And based on assumed population density for the different levels (for example, Sun City would have a relatively low P.D., while Mid City would have a much higher P.D.), there are probably closer to between 20-100 million people.
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Of course, the actual 'population' (created character models) is likely around 80 or so (and that could be a generous estimate too).

But as the city is built up lower levels are probably slowly abandoned, leaving down city to the crews and all but the toughest customers (like kitt!).

Also, how many people could Dark and Work town (or wherever the food is) substain? And a couple miles at least doesn't have anyone living in it, namely Precint, which is where people work, not where they live, and Old City

I actually took that into account. But even Mid City would cover around 2500 square kilometres and 8 vertical km, and it's where "the vast majority of Dragon City's residents" live. So, Mid City is where there would be around 75% of the city's population. And given that it could contain approximately two megametres of volume, at incredibly high population density (say, 150-250/square km), that's anywhere between 3 and 5 million in Mid City alone. And that's assuming that the diameter of MC is half of the lower width estimate for the city's base.
(based on the large estimate of 500km at the base, taken in half, that's between 75 and 125 million. However, that may be pushing it...)

Actually it seems pretty clear that the "Crew Leaders" are in fact the leaders of the Crew. They're on the Council and identified as such on the website.

And as to not all members racing, it would be "better" if we were shown on screen that something more like the opposite was true: racing is supposedly the premier sport of the city, and the more there are involved in that, the greater implied population. Assuming a 4/1 support/racer ratio for the Crews, too, still leaves between 15 and 20 'active' racers per Crew--and yet, what's on screen seems to usually have only the leader and up to three others with them competing in the race/s they specialise in. Which is a support/racer ratio of around 19/1, a lot more than Artha (yes yes, speshul dragon and all, but he and Kitt get along just fine with just one guy doing tech and a ten-year-old randomly hanging around, 1/1 ratio, and before that Kitt apparently made it on her own, so it obviously isn't necessary to have THAT many support people for some modicum of success on the tracks).

What the remainder of the Crews do, god only knows. They don't seem to be a legitimized force like Security, they're not being used as private armies on any regular basis; I don't think we've ever seen any Crew member/racer taking part in a mission (eg Pyrrah in Fanning the Flames, Wulph) that couldn't be handled with maybe three backup. If the leaders are older teenagers, it seems likely that the majority of members are also young adults, hence they're not some sort of family/clan hanging out in the compounds and manufacturing gear/produce in between doing race support, with a large proportion of the members children or aged. But if they're merely a loose "association", then why do they have the large compounds? Cheap housing? And if they do work on other things as a group, then why does it appear that Paynn Incorporated (and hence other corporations) are the social group that produce necessary items rather than Crews-in-day-jobs? It could so easily have been, say, implied that it's the Crews responsible for crafting various gear types related to their influences, but that doesn't seem to be happening at all.

I assumed the reason why the Mechanists didn't ride dragons was because there just aren't many grey dragons--"all but extinct". So to me there's then no reason why a few Mechanists wouldn't ride grey dragons if such were available (though questions about how Rivett obtained/rode Libris in the first place remain unexplained). As to the entry requirements, they're obviously flexible enough for Artha to be on the verge of getting in--ahead of various Crew-leaders. The Grip and other Crews do seem to have different specialties and perhaps have hopes of getting into the Academy on those specialties; even so, there still should be far fiercer competition for racing spots in the Academy if the population is as large as it should be.

Like I said, diffrent sorts of races. Kitt probably competed in things that don't require as much gear, or most of the gear was provided by the track (i.e. Leap of Lorius) so she could go in, one or two gears magged on and win the race.

Yet these races would presumably be the races that offer the most rewards (Academy spots, prize money). (How Chute got in, how Artha/Moordryd aim to get in, how Kitt and Artha make money, etc.) Why are the Crews thus ignoring them with their supposed resources?

With the growing population, are there enough jobs for every adult?

I find it hard to believe. :faint: :faint: :faint: I wonder what the above average crew would be like. I never realized there are this many crew members.

Are there enough jobs for everybody? How is it possible for the crew members to feed themselves if they are so many? How much money would they spend on food? Not only for themselves, but for their dragons too.

Do the riderless dragons have a place to go to eat? There are so many dragons out in the street, just as there are dogs and cats in our world. Do they have to eat banana skins, and fish bones, to survive?

No, the dragons do not need to eat banana skins and fish bones. They can hunt for Yellow Bellied Newts, Crow-Drags, etc, to eat.

I don't know for all crew members, but I'm sure Moordryd gets a pretty generous allowance, not to mention the fact that Word has an interest in the crew himself, so I wouldn't be surprised if he at least partially supports the Dragon Eyes.

Do other crews have benefactors? Don't know.

This is unclear as well. We also don't know how many riderless dragons there are in the city. I don't recall seeing any obvious strays wandering around in any of the episodes. Maybe all the riderless dragons live outside the city.