The Golden Age
By 2020, Night City was a rapidly growing urban region, still rife with urban violence and street crime, but with strong economic growth in the Corporate sector. It was the quintessential city of the Cyberpunk future, gritty, dangerous, but possessing an urban slick and stylish cool that made it unique. As Bes Isis, Net 54 newscaster and one of Night City's most well-known public figures put it at the time:
"
Nobody ever leaves Night City. Except in a body bag."
The "Disneyland" Zones
Keeping with Richard Night's vision, Coronado City was divided into neighborhoods, each with a different architectural style and theme, much like the original Disneyland park. Night hoped to bring a vibrant multi-cultural population attracted to each neighborhood. But with his untimely death, Night's city disintegrated into a hodgepodge of competing districts, savaged by gangs, and later controlled by domineering Megacorporations.
Japantown: An exciting Japanese cultural center and link to the Pacific Rim.
Little China: An old-style Chinatown with many fine restaurants and curio shops.
Little Italy: A traditional Italian neighborhood and stronghold of the colorful old Mafia Lords of Night City.
Northside District: An aging industrial neighborhood designed to resemble Old New York, with many interesting inhabitants.
Upper Marina: Blending architectural elements to resemble San Francisco's North Beach and Marina district.
East Marina: The old industrial and pier area, partially gentrified. Home to the Ferry Building and the Marina Yacht Club.
Old Downtown: The core of the original township of Morro Bay; a picturesque mesh of older slums and equally colorful boosters.
West Hill: An elegant, self-contained community catering to the wealthy and powerful.
- City & Corporate District
Corporate Center: Where the real power laid in Night City; home to the towering citadels of the real rulers of the City.
City Center: A City governmental nexus and hub of the Megacorps and power dealers. See your taxes at work.
Bank Block: The beating financial heart of the City, and source of the Corporate cash.
Med Center: The largest concentration of medical-related businesses in the City. Also, home to Trauma Team and other knife artists.
New Harbor Area: Home of the Mallplex, a multi-level shopping plaza and mini-arcology, and its neighbor, McCartney Stadium, home of the Superbowl-winning California Rangers.
Upper Eastside: A commercial and business zone with gang action and hot clubs.
Studio City: Home to Colonial Studios, an told-time film studio.
Charter Hill: Enjoy gambling in style in the luxurious Hacienda Hotel casino.
Night City University: An academic fortress and bastion of higher learning, supporting a lively counterculture.
Lake Park: Bio-engineered plants and animals are only two of the attractions of this spacious central park.
The Suburban Sprawls
As developed, there were six "suburbs" surrounding metropolitan Night City: South Night City (an industrial port area), Pacifica (a beach city on the coast), Rancho Coronado (the ultimate Beaverville), Heywood (light industrial and residential suburbs), North Oak (sister city to Night City, and the home of the NorCal Military Base) and Westbrook (Land of the Rich and Powerful). All these suburbs were within twenty minutes (by maglev) of Central Night City.
Home of Playland by the Sea, Pacifica was an upper-class residential area nestled between the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean and Rancho Coronado. Protected by a Militech security contract, Pacifica was a fairly safe place before the War. The newly renovated Playland by the Sea was a big hit among the amusement park crowd coming down from San Francisco and brought a fair amount of tourist traffic up from the south as well. On the cliffs at Pacifica lay the expensive condos of the Coastview development, offering a view of both the open sea, and for some a view of the bright lights of Playland by the Sea below. Pacifica was the place to kick back and relax after a hard day of battles and beatdowns in the City.
- The North Oak Military Suburbs
The home of the NorCal Military Base, North Oak's towering structures and ship superstructures were a regular sight seen across the Bay from the East Marina. In the 2020s, with the Free State Wars a relatively recent memory, North Oak was a military town and most of its shops catered to servicepeople or their families, and the majority of its population was in some way or another associated with the military industrial complex. The enormous NorCal Military Base was established as part of the deal which allowed Northern California to maintain its titular independence from the Union as a Free State. The State government didn't mind, as the Base was a deterrent keeping the roadgang scum from coming north and raiding for water. Living on North Oak's wide, oak-shaded streets could be quite agreeable. The homes were pleasant, pastel-colored bungalows with identical numbered curbs. Schools were excellent and the Base Hospital, Theater, Officers, and Enlisted Clubs and the Base Exchange shopping mall provided almost anything you might have wanted. If you liked being in or around uniforms, this was the place for you.
- The Rancho Coronado Beaverville
The Ultimate Beaverville, with all that the name implies. South of Night City on Highway 126, Rancho Coronado extended for miles, consisting almost entirely of tract housing interspersed with small, trendy mini malls. Mostly vast featureless subdivisions, Rancho Coronado was packed full of Arasaka, Petrochem, Biotechnica, WNS, and EBM employees, all neatly slotted into rows of identical, small three-bedroom homes that reached towards the horizon.
Rancho Coronado was the kind of place that made most Edgerunners break out into a cold sweat just thinking about it.
- The Heywood Industrial Zone
A light industrial area that straddled the east of Del Coronado bay between Rancho Coronado and North Oak, Heywood had a lot of everything, some housing, a little retail shopping, a few bars and the well-known Apple Valley Corporate subdivision, a primarily Biotechnica dominated Beaverville in South Heywood. But most of Heywood's rolling hills were dotted with large, sprawling factories, industrial complexes, including an Arasaka Arms factory, several Biotechnica research stations, and many other facilities. These bland, mass-designed industrial parks dotted the hills of Heywood, some underground, some above, some small, some sprawling over acres. At some point, there were so many of them that even the Heywood City Council didn't know all of their names or what they did.
This area was chiefly a heavily industrialized port city with a battered old oil refinery terminal, a container shipping port, the Night City Municipal Sewage Treatment Plant, and miles and miles of cheap, shabby housing constructed at the turn of the century by Mob-controlled contractors. South Night City was known in the 2020s as an especially dangerous place. If you weren't waylaid and dragged into a dark alley by one of the many gangs that roamed the South Night City sprawl, it was just as likely you would be shot by some trigger-happy local mistaking you for a member of one of the aforementioned gangs. It was always a good idea to travel here during the day. At night, the fireworks started, and usually the ambulances didn't make it into the area 'till the next morning. The largest employer in South Night City was the San Morro Bay Cargo & Container Port. The main loading and unloading terminal for container ships entering the central California area. From here, fruit, vegetables, processed foods, and manufactured goods flowed out of both Nor and SoCal in a steady stream, while imported goods flowed back in.
Westbrook was always a fortress, built on a naturally occurring set of hills overlooking Night City from across the Bay and North Oak below. It was just a very genteel and well-manicured fortress. Many of the Corporate rich had expensive homes there, and their expensive security made sure that nothing disturbed them. An Arasaka services contract made sure of it. All Westbrook residences also boasted specially coded, skin-implanted identity chips with at least three checkpoints on the road into the hills and several surface-to-air missile sites to make sure all air vehicles also had the proper IFF codes.
Almost all the Execs working for the largest corporations in Night City lived in Westbrook, including VPs and Execs from Arasaka, EBM, and Petrochem, as well as many prominent Night City personalities. Admission to Westbrook was only limited in one way: the ability to afford it.
In general, Westbrook was also well-known as a very safe place for Corporations to place their high extraction-risk employees. There was only one extraction attempt in the history of Westbrook, and that left three AV-4s destroyed and 24 Militech soldiers dead; it was the first, and last, attempted extraction at Westbrook through the entire 2010s. Of course, at the time, some people in the know opined that this incident was what had started the long-running rivalry between the Night City branches of Arasaka and Militech.
The Badlands
Beyond the Night City hub and surrounding suburbs, there was a wide-open space of endless dry California scrub, punctuated by the occasional abandoned town or dry lake bed. Known as the Badlands, this was an area that few Night City inhabitants willingly ventured out into, save for the hardy Nomads who crossed the Badlands in their huge and well-protected caravans.
Oh yeah. And the gogangers. Did we forget to mention the gogangers?
