Reid's Trunk: Mini city

So glad to be finally saying this but the minicity is COMPLETE!!
So the premise was to build a City in a bottle. I had received a Ship in a Bottle kit from a good friend and after building the kit in one work-less night I thought "I wonder if you could do this, but with a city" The way the ship "rose" in the bottle when the tieline was pulled was amazing, so i drew up some designs and started.

This is the base board. As you can see it folds up into a nice tight package which could be then unfolded and laid flat in the "bottle". I needed to get as much in the "bottle" as possible to build up a base. I say "bottle" because I had a couple laying around and just used an average of their diameter for my target. Not having a specific bottle in mind might have been my downfall...

The bottom of the base. Just electrical tape as a hinge on matte board. It worked very well.

This is the very beginning of the city layer. The terrain was cut into three strips and electrical tape hinged together. The first thing I built here was a stadium to be in the downtown area.

This is how the city layer folded, already it is showing to be very larger... much larger than the base layer when folded.

This is how the city layer would lay ontop of the base layer in the bottle. I tried a couple of buildings on hinges and tied them together but the room needed to lay them down compromised the space that would be left when they rose. I decided at this step to just glue the city layer permanently to the base layer. A decision that I stand behind for this model, and one that will most certainly lead to creation of an actual "City in a Bottle" in my future.