Rood
Directly west of the High Square, the Rood is mostly full of high-rise apartment complexes, corporate housing for those who work in the High Square but cannot afford to live there.
"The Rood had come late to the financial revitalization game during the First Tech Boom, and was one of the few central City developments to miss out on most of the funding from the Life & Commerce Act of ‘28. For the first half of Gaia-19, the neighborhood featured a unique mixture of Mezzi, Doshiru, and Sotovarese communities, resulting in dozens of popular “Mix-Folx” cultural events and products that more established industries would spend the Magic Thirties copying or outright stealing. The area experienced a strong economic downturn following this corporate theft, which called out to real estate developers like a stinking corpse to vultures.
"Maddus Frehan's father Torgald was one of the masterminds behind the Rood’s transformation into the young executive housing farm it was today. Having missed out on the 'free money' of the Life & Commerce Act, Torgald Frehan was determined to build a new paradise for the C-Suite class in the Rood by the sweat of his own brow. That sweat manifested when he, along with several of his friends in the industry, prevailed upon the City Council to standardize several credit monitoring systems employed by various banks, creating the Vesperian Credit Score, which realtors could rely upon when evaluating who qualified for a housing or development loan, or even just access to a rental property. Since credit was closely tied to generational wealth, the rampant racial stratification of Gaia-18 had effectively been resurrected with a veneer of ‘objectivity’ slapped on it. The High Square itself was slow to take advantage of this newly-relegalized discrimination, giving Torgald and his firebrand friends in the Rood a decided advantage. They sold and rented to up-and-coming young Hessonites and Nurishmen that had grown up in isolated suburbs, rendering them terrified of anyone whose complexion gave the impression that they occasionally went out in the sunlight. This gave Torgald and his friends a massive market of naive, rich, and motivated buyers, and the Rood’s future was secured. A handful of regulations were passed during the Frugal Forties, mostly against the market-fixing rather than the poorly-veiled racial exclusion, but such regulations were scattered and toothless, and the new era of invisible discrimination carried on." - Prospertine & the City of Light CH 9
Type
Neighbourhood
Location under
Comments