Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20150316010241/@comment-5106672-20150316175535

The size of Storybrooke is a bit unclear, but I guess it all falls into what you call a small town. Hamar (population 29,331) is a medium-big city by Norwegian standards, while Alghero (my hometown, 40,641) is a small town by Italian standards. Besides, Hamar feels like a city, with plenty of theatres and cultural areas, an ice arena, shopping malls and everything, while Alghero is a small town because it has very little "city" things.

Storybrooke has definitely a small town kind of vibe, a sleepy place where little (beside magic) happens, so it can be called a small town by that. And I don't think the Enchanted Forest was densely populated at all: for one, it is a pre-industrial setting, for another, the closest thing to a city we've seen is Hamelin, but it seems that, beside royal palaces, most of the populace lives in rather small villages. All brought together from the kingdoms we've seen, how many people could there be? A couple hundred thousands, perhaps? My current city, Trieste, has about 200,000 people and the area is 84 km square, not very large.

All three cities I mentioned have train stations (Alghero has a very sucky one, lol), but on the other hand, they weren't cursed to isolation multiple times. :P