Citizens of Elseways are free to use whatever measurement systems they want (Ringoid Labs keeps to metric, internally), but the Corps bases its city planning on binary fractions of a standard mile. 1/16 of a mile is a “block”, which our street grids are based on, and then ¼ of a block is the edge length of the square individual buildings are based on. They go all the way down to 65,536 “binary inches” in a mile, which works out oddly well; one binary inch is 0.967 regular ones.
It’s close enough that they also define 32 binary inches as a “pace” and base houses around a grid of those. It’s a bit narrow for my tastes, not to mention lots of citizens can’t fit through something that small, but that’s what double doors are for, I guess.
A binary inch is about 24.5mm, a pace 786mm.
@Felthry There's also a ×3 area up in the Near Wild, and I know a few dinosaur families who live up that way. They're some of my favorite clients; a tyrannosaur makes for a really good study in usability.
@Felthry Yeah, it's a good point. Most of us are roughly human scale, and anyone within about 50-150% of average won't need too many special accommodations. Based on the Corps' experiments, factors of 3 have felt about right for making special smaller or larger versions of things; there are neighborhoods out there built to 1/3, 1/9, and 1/27 scale, and Wyrmsborough has ×3 scale areas. It's a balance between meeting people's needs with the resources we have, which are still limited (for now).