Little Italy
A low rent district of the City, nudging up against the towers of the Corporate Center. It roots run deep into local history; it was from Little Italy’s assorted small storefronts and backroom vice dens that the Mob of 2005 launched its bid to wrest control of the city from developer Richard Night.
Northside
Warning: If you live in Northside, you’re dealing up front and personal with gangs. Home to many successful businesses in the last few years, a constant gang presence still threatens the area’s welfare, and makes this one of the city’s worst areas for gang violence. The gangs are involved in a constant turf war, after being pushed out of the Corporate Zone to the south and the civic complexes to the east. The Northside District is responsible for a full forty percent of the gang-related fatalities in the downtown area.
The City Center
Governmental nexus and hub of the City. From its stately modern buildings and halls filled with bustling officials, originate the decisions that shape Night City’s municipal destiny.
Upper Eastside
One of the commercial sections of Night City, has suddenly found itself in the trenches of the war against urban decay. Here you’ll find the oil and water mix of heavy metal and soft velvet: hard rockers who’ll crush your skull and soft corps who’ll crush your life.
Upper Marina
Before the 2020's, this was the home of numerous local private yachts and a sizable fishing fleet. Now, the Upper Marina has become a seedy industrial district characterized by low rents and a few businesses requiring large amounts of space.
The East Marina
The East Marina was the original home of most of Night City‘s commerce and shipping through the mid-20th century. The original township of Del Coronado (on which Night City was built) included a number of finger-style piers suitable for unloading the obsolete break-bulk freighters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, shipping traffic in 2020 is usually in bulk or modular cargo vessels; as a result, most incoming shipping is loaded and unloaded at the newer container port in San Morro Bay to the south.
West Hill Gardens
Not all of Night City is decaying slums, corporate towers and roving boostergangs. Elegant living is the order of the day at West Hill Gardens, as is sophisticated shopping at the boutiques in Pinewood Bazaar. West Hill Gardens takes its name from the luxurious pine trees and shrubbery blanketing the grounds around the executive apartments. Pinewood Bazaar is an underground shopping center, illuminated in the daytime by glass domes set in the pine garden. Together the apartments and bazaar make an integrated community, complete with fitness center and an Episcopalian church, that provides the best in urban living to a pampered corpzoner few.
Corporate Center and Coporate Plaza
Like any modem metropolis, Night City is always in a state of flux. Over the years, most neighborhoods and districts wend their way through a tortuous cycle, alternating between fashion and disrepair. But one area stands as an exception. It is all landscaped plazas and sculpted architecture. There are no cracks in the sidewalks, the street lights always work, and there is always a police officer around if you need him, although he may not draw his salary from City Hall. From these wide, orderly streets rise the skyscrapers, lofty and serene over the chaos that is most of the urban ground level, spearing dagger like through the grey smog above.
The Bank Block
The Bank Block is the financial heart of the City. For while it’s true that the corporations run the city; they couldn’t do it without the aid of the banks. It has been said that if the corporate center is the “brain” that runs the city, then the Bank Block must be the ”heart”. It pumps the stuff that keeps the brain functioning: cash.
The Medical Center
This section of town is known as the Medical Center, thanks to the concentration of health-oriented businesses found here. This area is one most crowded in the city. Filled with offices, the two-building Convention Center, the Transit Center, Crisis Medical Center, etc., the human traffic in this area is of such a volume that the city has started constructing a vast skyway which will interlink this block and the rest of the city to allow a greater volume of traffic.
Old Down Town
Originally the center of the township of Del Coronado, the Old Downtown area has since fallen to urban decay. Only the solid presence of City Medical has prevented this area from turning into a slum. Gangs are common, and night time is dangerous, especially when the Rangers are playing a home game.
New Harbor
This is not so much an area, as a pair of leviathan constructions, separated by a small canal. The Stadium is a favorite stomping ground of all sorts of violent people, and the Mallplex is the favorite stomping ground of violent people who suppress it well.
Night City University
Night City University began as Richard Night University, and was built in 2014 to be the academic center of his model city. He placed the campus on the western edge of beautiful Lake Park to balance the thriving corporate sector on the opposite side. Together they form the city's Yin and Yang of commerce and higher learning. On warm days, the campus end of the park teems with students studying or enjoying the sun.
Lake Park
Designed by Richard Night to be the playground of his model city, the City government officially dedicated Lake Park to his memory. The grandstand that was built in 2034 to commemorate his death still bears a bronze plaque with his name on it; one of the few items of metal in the Park not yet pried off it's fixture and sold by an ambitious punker.
Japan Town
The streets never rest in this section of Night City, whether it's the scum that surfaces from the Park at night, or the glitzy corporates visiting the Bodukkan to see the newest from the Nakagowa Kabuki troupe. In a city that never sleeps, Japantown (or J-town) provides the antidote for the late night blues. If you're a high level corporate, or streetscum looking for a score, this is where you find what you're looking for. The corporate security keeps the JTown streets clean and pleasant, but the Park belongs to the night.
Little China
Little China is a neighborhood of light commercial properties, retail shops, and apartment complexes to the eastward, between the central city and it's eastern waterfront. Some of the oldest buildings in Night City can be found in this part of town, many dating back to before the inception of Richard Night's original urban plan. With the completion of the urban plan, the area known as Chinatown has been pushed steadily southward by encroaching development. Many of these small shops and buildings have been marked for demolition and urban renewal, but have been ignored until recently, thanks to larger concerns like the Collapse and the Mob War.
Studio City
This is the home of Colonial Studios, an older flat screen movie studio which achieved some fame in the years just after the Collapse. Founded by avante-garde director Franscesco Cippolina and his partner Greg Lukasian, Colonial produced the now-classic films Wife of the Lady Xanadu, Destiny Over Damascus (with its memorable tribute to Orson Welles‘ Third Man), and Messiah of the Endless Sea, before descending into trashy obscurity with drive-in double bills like Killer Mechanoids From the Amazon planet and Demon in a D-Cup.
Charter Mill
Charter Mill is a small section of the city between the crowded streets of Little China and the sludge-slicked waters of Del Coronado Bay. Charter Hill was originally zoned as a residential area, and was much like the larger area to the south (or the "Combat Zone", as it would later be named).
The Combat Zone
Every modern American city has one; Night City is no exception. A burned-out sprawl of tenements, abandoned factories, boarded up offices and trashed shopping malls, occupied only by the desperate, the devious and the dead. During the light of day, the Zone sleeps under its industrial strength pall of smog. But at night, the Zone comes alive, for it is only then that it‘s most feared residents venture out of their sweltering sewer holes and rat-infested hovels to howl and prowl.
The Suburban Sprawl
There are six "suburbs surrounding metropolitan Night City: South Night City (an industrial port area), Pacifica (a beach city on the coast), Rancho
Coronado (ultimate beaverville), Heywood (light industry and residential suburbs), North Oak (sister city to Night City, and the home of the NorCalMilitary Base) and Westbrook (Land of the Rich and Powerful). All of these suburbs are within twenty minutes (by maglev) of the City.
