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[Aquillion]

I was reading through Thud and Blunder again today, and lots of things in it looked useful for Dwarf Fortress.  One thing in particular leapt out at me:

A medieval city was curiously divided. On the one hand, the respectable part of it was highly structured, with guilds controlling much of the private lives as well as the work of members. On the other hand, the poor sector was chaotic and dangerous, as we may read in the poems of Villon. Between Internal Revenue and welfare, we seem to be re-approaching this dichotomy. We do still have fairly sharp geographical separation of urban classes. In an ancient or medieval town, any districts there were were usually along occupational lines. A rich merchant would live near the appropriate street, but his house would be apt to stand like an island in the middle of poverty, vice, and savagery. This could make our hero's abrupt exit from it more interesting than he intended.

The historical fact is that most cities of the time period dwarf fortress covers were divided between wealthy, orderly areas and poor chaotic ones.  Many fantasy novels also use this.  It provides lots of opportunities for adventure and excitement, and helps make for more interesting towns and settlements in general.

Just a suggestion, anyway.

[sweitx]

Interesting idea.  Of course, we would need a procedural generation algorithm to handle it.  Here is one possibility.

1. Assign a certain "aesthetic/quality" value to terrain tiles.  Each has a certain zone of effect/aura that increases their value around it.
2. Generate initial seed residential buildings (where the population would most like to live given they just arrived).  With "rich" residents getting first pick.
3. Given the likely task each resident group will perform, plop down workshop and other service buildings.
4. Redistribute residential building based on the quality change caused by the new buildings.
5. Repeat 3 and 4 a few times.

[Sowelu]

I suspect that'll be a lot easier to do once burrows/boroughs are in.

[Capntastic]

This is pretty much destined to happen once there are actually social classes.