separate Heights can’t be canterlot cause in the comics it’s kind a lot is ruins

@Background Pony #08D7  

 
Anyone who studies the G4 map and then our own world, will realize that Canterlot and the mountain that so far had only fanon names, are located on a northwestern edge of a large mountain plateau, and that the mountain was the last of a series of mountain peaks, which may have the name “Zephyr Heights” already in G4. For me, who has traveled in Norway which has many mountain plateaus surrounded by deep valleys, it is not so surprising. The Foal mountains in the east are separated from the unknown mountain plateau by a gorge, but the Ramling Rock Ridge seemed to go down towards lower terrain to the south, and to the north the mountain plateau continues at a number of heights that become lower towards the horizon. In Norway, such a mountain plateau can have so many names in different geographical locations, that they sometimes overlap.
 
So we have the name of a collection of mountain peaks where the pegasi built its city, if the name is not known to us (do not think “New Canterlot” will be used by the proud pegasi) - and the mountain with a small plateau projection on which Canterlot was built , will still not have a name.
 
The G4 map was intended for children, and is thus greatly simplified, in our own world the maps are much more refined in comparison. Lots and lots of room for discovery and lore building for artists and writers in all generations of MLP.

@Background Pony #16D3  

 
Rome is not built in a day; The lore of G4, which is partly based on inspiration from early generations, has been developed from beginning to end, and it includes not only the TV series, it includes the G4 movie, the books and the comics, with lots of conflicting and poorly placed information that needs to be sorted out. This is the result of several hundred writers who had worked on the G4 from 2009 until 2021.
 
The many leaks six months ago about non-ponies in the future TV series from the autumn of 2022 indicate that the longma may appear, and since Faust had worked on them when she prepared the ground for G4, these are part of the “universal” lore of My Little Pony / Ponyverse, available for future writers. Bat ponies that were seen only a couple of times in the show and only seen in the company of Luna in the comics, will finally get their place in Equestria - because I think the G5 writers will not be tone deaf to the fans. There is a lot from early generations that can be used to create new lore in the G5.
 
A lot.

Zephyr Heights could be the name of the mountains where Canterlot is built upon. Over time, a neighborhood of the same name was established around Canterlot.

@GoodVibesGorgeous  
Hey Any G5 Connection To Equestria Girls?

@Background Pony #0FCC  

 
You’re right, it’s not impossible. But I feel the chances of the new show creators adopting some lore form the comics are very slim.
 
Besides I feel it wouldn’t make sense if the G4 era ponies knew almost nothing about dragons or dragon greed, yet there’s a whole dragon town in one of the larger cities.

@Background Pony #0FCC  
Which leak? What longma?

@Background Pony #16D3
 
The show has never shown Fillydelphia, so it is possible that the “Chinatown” populated with dragons is canon and can form the basis of a society characterized by East Asian culture around the kirins, the longma (Lauren Faust`s design) and the dragons as one of the leaks about G5 TV series suggest.

@Background Pony #0FCC  

 
The dragon town was a comic invention and the show mostly ignored the stuff from the comics. Remember how Sombras was revealed to be an Umbra, then turned good and went to an adventure with his childhood friend/love interest to restore the former ruler of the Crystal Empire?
 
Yeah next time he showed up in the show he was still a bad guy and none of this was ever mentioned.
 
Maybe the people in charge of the new shows plot will include more stuff from the comic. Although the Dragon Town never really fit into G4’s canon where ponies know almost nothing about Dragons. Secret of My Excess would’ve played out very different otherwise.

The Dragon Colony is not in Baltimare, but Fillydelphia - sorry for the mistake. Maybe we will see the kirins and dragons in a future Fillydelphia in the TV series, as there are rumors of East Asian culture in parts of Equestria in G5. In any case, we know very little about the east coast, but since Maretime Bay is also a resort where Sunny sells ice cream to visitors, it means that there are many larger cities elsewhere. It is possible that the three major cities, Baltimare, Fillydelphia and Manehattan, form the core of the earth pony realms that can have democratic rule - although there may be autonomous areas as with the dragons of Fillydelphia.
 
We do not know if the railway tracks will survive many centuries later, but financially all pony tribes would be very stupid if they were to reject something that everyone would benefit from regardless of hostility and isolation. Even the pegasi who may have a fleet of airships to serve their empire cannot ignore such basic facts about the desire to maintain a high standard of living. Instead, there may be more railways than before, but split and isolated from each other in the east, center and west. A modern economy cannot function in a civilization divided into three isolated tribal empires. A smartphone that Pipp uses will consist of components from the entire continent Equestria is located on. But it is obvious that the Mane 5 must stick to the country roads to avoid border guards if they have to cross the borders between the realms.
 
Even in deeper isolation, the urge to have a better life will triumph over all ambitions to stay isolated - so it is likely that mistrust does not run so deep when they have to deal with each other. In Scandinavia, the Norwegians, Swedes and Danes were in a very intense hatred relationship with each other in 1620 to 1740, yet this did not create obstacles to trade. A rumor has it that there was a recent development where a ban on non-earth ponies was imposed in Maretime Bay, which Sheriff Hitch was forced to follow. Many centuries had passed since Equestria disbanded. Zippy was quickly able to recognize a unicorn and an earth pony, while the pegasi guards “knew” how to deal with a unicorn with her sharp horn. So total isolation is an impossibility.
 
The smartphone and much advanced technology in the G5 suggest that although Twilight Sparkle`s “Friendship Empire” had disappeared with the state of Equestria, the political and economic contacts between the realms of the known world have not changed. It is as with the dissolving British Empire, that which had been created and further developed from older times in the days of the empire did not disappear until our days. And by controlling middle Equestria where several navigational rivers, important roads and climatic “nodes” meet, the pegasi will be able to control and clear the flow of goods across the continent. Then they can very easily have an empire and be richer than the earth ponies, and since they are also militaristic, it means that the pegasi have professional armies and possibly airship fleets. Queen Haven is possibly the most powerful pony in the G5s Equestria. But without magic, they cannot penetrate the deep forests controlled by unicorns and the earth ponies have both numbers and strength on their part, in close contact with non-pony civilizations, including griffons and abyssinians.
 
That pegasi could build mighty empires is not surprising; this is confirmed in both the comics and the show that they had conquered lands far away like Anugypt which became Southern Equestria, and their commitment to martial arts and military service was natural. They are in many ways the ponies’ answer to man’s warlike nomads from the past. So if Sunny wants to re-establish the friendship empire, she already has two princesses and a queen who represented a powerful power, on her side. Somewhere she has to start, and that will naturally be at Canterlot. Equestria can be reunited.

Keep in mind we really don’t know anything for certain.  
We have the map. That gives us approximate locations if not exact on some places. Anything else is purely speculation.
 
But hey, it’s fun to speculate :P
 
Also these are three sections of a map and not a full unified map.

It is not a complete map, which was marked by being reused in a fit of laziness. The three locations are a little too far apart, this is a repetition of the mistake from the G4 movie - and only Maretime Bay seems to be better placed on the map.
 
After all, the G4 map is not exactly accurate, and if Maretime Bay has taken its name from the royal sisterss home (on the east coast) Maretime Manor, we have a simple logical name development in a geographical location. Then it meant that Celestia and Luna were not far from the Crystal Sea which is probably part of the Celestial Sea in FiM # 98. By studying the map and then looking at the picture of Maretime Bay it is clear that this resort / village is located on a very large headland facing the sea between the very large Horseshoe Bay and the northern part of the Celestial Sea - at a safe distance from Baltimare which is located at an estuary. There on this river it is easy to get to the middle of Equestria or use the many roads on both river banks further west. It is possible that there is now a dragon town in Baltimare as the IDW comics have shown that there is a dragon colony there with oriental touches. Then it's easy to understand why the Mane 5 had to bypass Baltimare. I can easily understand why the earth ponies are on the east coast, these are very old lands for the ponies from long before the modern Equestria originated.   Bridlewood is difficult to place, but from the few images we have had so far, it indicates forest land far away from saltwater coastal tracts inland even though it may be on the west coast at the foot of the Smokey Mountains - and crystallized outgrowths there in the forest as yet can not be logically explained. This may indicate that the Crystal Empire had reached the northern part of the East Coast before the Crystal War when Celestia and Luna annexed what was vacant after Sombra abducted the Crystal City into the limbo. It is possible that the unicorns had taken over the northeastern parts of Equestria with the Galloping Gorge, Unicorn Range and Smokey Mountains all the way down to the White Tails Woods, and thus remained isolated.   Then we have Canterlot / Zephyr Heights. We know what the unnamed Pegasian city looks like, only the heights it lies on - and it can not be compared to Canterlot which is lower on a plateau on the west side of the mountain that forms part of a local mountain range that joined the Foal Mountains in east, and Rambling Rock Ridge to the southeast (where Tirek won against the pillars). In fact, the entire mountain top is gone. And the clouds are not so low - Canterlot is cloudless most of the year, so it means that the new city is high above the tree line all the way up to the snow-capped mountain peak. Then it was thought that the pegasi tore down the mountain top, took advantage of the many tunnels and mining runs in the mountains - and then built a new city at the same height as Cloudsdale. This means that Canterlot is either in ruins or reduced to a village or something else, but possibly without the castle. I do not think the pegasi will leave Canterlot completely abandoned, even if the unicorns were forced to flee. Canterlot was the residence of the alicorn princesses, and the pegasi cannot ignore this.   There were many ruins of cities when the Mane 6 lived, which were often no more than a few hundred years old, and it is seen that the ponies in contrast to the people of our world are not so stationary in their urbanization through the millennia. There are several thousand abandoned cities in our world, and many of these were often not far from their "successors", a good example is Gothenburg in Sweden. This city, founded in the 17th century, was only the last of several cities built, abandoned or erased from the map. At least five towns from the year 1100 to the year 1700 had existed there in the region around the river Göta älv. Only one remains, two have become smaller villages - and two have been replaced by modern cities built elsewhere.   This may be Canterlot's fate, either ruined - or a dilapidated place with a small population and symbolic buildings in the shadow of the pegasis pride. Maybe in the TV series next year we will learn more about this. But one thing is for sure; the pegasi has not built its city where Canterlot was located, the climatic conditions mean that if there are cloud banks around Zephyr heights, the city must be higher up in the mountains.
 
If Rainbow Dash is held in high esteem by the pegasi, it would be very strange if they did not take care of localities associated with memories of her in Canterlot and Ponyville. The unicorns may have access to central Equestria through the White Tail Woods while the earth ponies may possibly get there from the east coast through the river from the Baltimare area. But the pegasi can dominate the entire Equestria up to the Unicorn Range in the west and the Crystal Mountains in the northwest, and can thus have an iron grip on the trade routes through the continent. And it is possible that the pegasi have an empire that stretched far beyond Equestria even though they could not defeat the earth pony realms in the east and penetrate the deep forests defended by the unicorns in the west.

@Background Pony #2F44  
Idk why people acting surprised. We knew this already. FIM is considered ancient times for g5. So twilight’s era is ancient history. So it makes sense the timeskip is big

So pegasi kicked the unicorns from canterlot? I am up for it :P

@Background Pony #F6B4  
That’s not even related to the image

@ThePonyTheorist  
Either that, or there was some large ocean that now separates it from the rest of Equestria.

That ocean’s encroaching awfully close to the Everfree.  
Also, holy shit, the entire south of the continent is GONE. Dodge City, Dodge Junction, Somnambula, possibly the badlands…

I’m genuinely surprised that they actually showed us a map with the exact location of each settlement and made Zephyr Heights a future Canterlot. Don’t get me wrong, I like that they did it but was expecting the new show runners to keep the location of each new settlement vague so that they would have more creative freedom without conflicting with G4’s lore.

@Background Pony Number 17  
Yep. It’s very likely that most unicorns from Bridlewood Forest are descendants of the unicorns from Canterlot. It makes me wonder… From where Maretime Bay’s first Earth Ponies ponies came? Although the town was drawn on the map like Baltimare, it might actually be located where Pine Needle Barrens and Basalt Beach once stood. Promotional pictures show Maretime Bay being a town standing over a cliff that leads to a beach. Basalt Beach appears to be a place preceded by a cliff (I assume it is the place the Mane Six ended up after being banished from Mount Aris/Seaquestria).

Okay, so at some point between G4 and G5 Canterlot was destroyed, and the mountain it perched on was taken over by Pegasi and became the site of their capital, Zephyr Heights. That is an epic tale waiting to be told.

@Background Pony #2F44  
“In one of the Season 10 Comics, it is shown that Celestia and Luna have retired to a place called The Maretime Manor. It may be possible that Baltimare was renamed in honor of this place, calling it Maretime Bay (Maretime Manor + Horseshoe Bay).” That actually makes a lot of sense! Maybe it was even renamed within the Mane Six’s lifespan.

@Background Pony #FEC9  
Someone suggested Ponyville may be in ruins based on early G5 leaks, given the consistency of leaks so far, that may be possible, but of course, leaks are never a for sure thing.
 
It’s entirely likely we’ve had a very large time jump.
 
Places may have been renamed due to being under the control of new nations, or simply as a new generation of ponies decided to call it something new for some reason important to them…
 
In one of the Season 10 Comics, it is shown that Celestia and Luna have retired to a place called The Maretime Manor. It may be possible that Baltimare was renamed in honor of this place, calling it Maretime Bay (Maretime Manor + Horseshoe Bay).
 
It may also be possible that we won’t get a solid answer.

I literally hadn’t realized there was a map in the background when I saw this picture for the first time. Awesome! So some places are renamed versions of cities we saw in G4? Interesting. Certainly better than the theory I had (my headcanon is that Maretime Bay, Bridlewood Forest and Zephyr Heights were in the Undiscovered West).
 
(Yes, it’s the same comment I just wrote on Equestria Daily. I’m too tired to think about something new to comment here!)

But will they still have a ponyville right?