Milan
Milan has always been a center for trade and economic growth, but in the early 90’s, the worldwide focus on marrying technology with fashion made Milan the Fashionable “It” City. Every MegaCorporation in the world was vying for space in the city center to build their European headquarters, and Milan entered a brief golden age.
The late 90s were a turbulent time. International conflict, natural disasters, and worldwide economic instability saw the collapse of a shocking number of the world’s former major powers. The United States government was under martial law by 1996, and the brief but devastating 1997 nuclear conflict in the Middle East had consequences worldwide for both the human population and the environment. Plague swept through Europe in 2000, driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, and the Food Crash of 2002 drove hundreds of thousands more out of the USSR, Canada, and Australia.
Then came the Corporate Wars. From the mid-2000’s to the mid 2010’s, enormous MegaCorporations with more money and power than most governments fought wars that spanned every continent and even stretched into low-earth orbit. This had the predictable but unfortunate effect of uprooting even more of the world’s population, toppling existing social structures and turning lives upside down worldwide.
Well-known as a wealthy safe haven, refugees from all over the world flooded into Milan. The sudden influx of foreigners caused rapid urban expansion that fast outstripped the ability of the city government to support the populace. A sharp divide grew between the high-fashion, high-life, extremely rich city center and the increasingly urbanized outer ring, where a lack of funds and infrastructure resulted in increasing poverty, homelessness, desperation, and crime.
In 2010, in a bid to increase city revenues and provide jobs, Italy legalized the mass seizure of private land to sell to corporations under agreements that jobs would be provided to the people and taxes to the government. This resulted in a sort of corporate serfdom in the city centers, pushing Italians who didn’t want to live under corporate rule out towards the already overcrowded suburbs.
Soon, this push became too much, and the people pushed back. Riots broke out in Milan in 2012, especially along the border between the corporate-owned city of Milan and the several dozen communes that surrounded it. By mid-2013, a fully militarized combat zone had developed along the city’s official border.
Borders of the combat zone constantly shifted as corporate armies steadily and ruthlessly claimed more ground for the wealthy, and pushed both refugees and native Milanese further and further out into the overcrowded outskirts. By 2020, the city of Milan had engulfed most of the Lombardy province of Italy and was home to some 15 million people, 80% of which lived below the nation’s official poverty line. Of those, probably 10-15% were living in an active combat zone.
In 2022, in an bid to get the world theater to recognize their rights as a separate sovereign nation, the Highrider “clans” of the orbital space stations dropped several dozen tons of space rock in strategic locations. One of these struck the rural areas between Florence and Genoa, and the resulting fireball, mudslides, and fallout not only severely impacted crop growth in the Mediterranean, but it cut Northern and Southern Italy off from each other for several years. Similar strikes in southern France and in the Alps cut Milan off from the rest of the world, and the city battened down its proverbial hatches and didn’t emerge again until 2025.
Unexpectedly, the isolation actually had a net positive effect on Milan. Needing a more reliable food source than airlift drops and whatever nomad caravans would brave the utterly destroyed landscape surrounding the city, large swaths of the militarized zones were reclaimed as urban farmland - especially the areas that had previously been nature preserves. Backed by corporate money and protected by corporate security, rooftop gardens, greenhouses, and hydroponics labs sprang up all through the dividing ring, and with them came new jobs for the impoverished and a much-needed shot in the arm for the Milanese economy in general.
The late 2020’s were, if anything, even more chaotic on the world stage, but the situation in Milan somehow managed to steadily improve. When the worldwide Net was utterly ravaged by an uncontrolled and fast-replicating virus attack in 2028, and the world’s governments and corporations couldn’t manage to agree on a solution for replacing it, Milan was one of the first cities to create its own CityNet, which they call “il Centro,” the Hub. The Hub was up and running by the beginning of 2030, and other cities were quick to copy the idea.
By 2032, Milan is healing. Leaders in the corporate center are increasingly interested in investing in the outer ring rather than conquering it, and the militarized zone is in the process of being reclaimed by the populace. It is in one of these formerly militarized neighborhoods that our story begins.
Geography
A mostly flat area within the Po Valley, with the foothills of the Alps to the north, and flanked by the rivers Po (south), Ticino (west) and Adda (east).
Summers are generally clear, hot, and humid, with thunderstorms and hailstorms, while winters are generally mild with much more fog than snowfall. Spring and autumn are pleasantly mid-temperature but very rainy, especially in April and May. Winds are generally mild, with the exception of the occasional spring gale-force windstorm.
Natural Resources
Milan used to be extremely polluted, but once the corporations took over the city center, the central part of the city began to get better in this regard. Air pollution levels are still higher in the winter, and higher overall outside of the city limits as inside.
Maps
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Milan
Milan in 2032.
Type
Metropolis
Population
1,000,000
Inhabitant Demonym
Milanese
Included Locations
Characters in Location
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