Todd Howard says that Starfield's New Atlantis is the biggest city Bethesda has ever built.
There are four major Starfield cities, as Howard tells IGN. New Atlantis, which we saw during the gameplay reveal at the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase on Sunday, is the biggest among them, and bigger than anything Bethesda has previously made. Oblivion's Imperial City, Skyrim's Solitude, and Fallout 4's Diamond City can all make room for the new king of big towns. The Starfield map was obviously going to be big, but it's the detail to all the scale that will be interesting .
New Atlantis "has all the services you would expect, and you can work on your ship there, the factions touch that," Howard says, referencing Starfield ship customization within the game. "But that’s also the headquarters for Constellation, which is the faction that you join that is the last group of space explorers - kind of this NASA-meets-Indiana Jones-meets-The League of Extraordinary Gentleman [group]."
Much of Starfield's main story features Constellation, so you can expect to return to New Atlantis many times as you progress through the 30-to-40 hour (not counting side quests) campaign. Naturally, there will be plenty of side quests starting in New Atlantis, too, and it serves as the capital of the United Colonies faction.
Plenty of additional details have come out since the big Starfield gameplay reveal, including information on the balance of handcrafted versus procedurally generated content. If you're concerned about the 1000 planets thing, maybe that'll give you a better idea of what to expect. The game's also drawing some inspiration from FTL and MechWarrior for its combat systems, especially in space.
