Editing The City (section)

==Geography/Description==
The City's location is roughly equivalent to the [[Wikipedia:Northeast megalopolis|New York - Boston corridor]], but further offset to the northeast, where [[Brockton Bay]] and its portal were located.<ref>We’d bled into the areas surrounding the portals.  Brockton Bay had been the first, but we’d had a few in a few major cities and New York was a big one.  The cluster of settlements around the portals in the northeastern US and people’s desire to have ready access to that cluster and the resources, community, information and security it afforded had played a big part in the megalopolis forming.<br/><br/>One blob around New York, one blob around the New Brockton settlement, clusters south of New Brockton, near what would or should be Boston, and everything had spread out or extended from there, mostly hugging the coast and connecting to one another. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2017/11/14/daybreak-1-2/ Excerpt] from [[Daybreak 1.2]] </ref> 

At the second year it already had a population of roughly 50 million<ref>Gimel has five major points of settlement, with civilization finding its foothold around these points.  The City, as of yet unnamed, is the primary US point of settlement and one of the primary waypoints.  The City is a megalopolis with a commonly cited population of fifty million. - [[Glow-worm P.6]]</ref> (something around the half of the North-American survivors).<ref>Of the five people contending for mayorship over the city, where roughly half of the North American survivors of Gold Morning were staying, he polled in fourth place. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/04/07/shadow-interlude-5-x/ Excerpt] from [[Shadow]] [[Interlude 5x II]]</ref> The city grew rapidly, with new stores and skyscrapers every day,<ref name="P.2e1">[A18 11:11:47] Moonsong: And your family? Your parents? I liked them when I saw them.
 [A18 11:12:00] Cap: alive. we’re in the city. they’re trying to come to terms with things<br/>[A18 11:12:35] Cap: things are really coming together like crazy. new skyscrapers every day, new stores. good and almost like a city in Earth Bet but it isn’t really home<br/>[A18 11:15:08] Moonsong: It isn’t. We’re in the city too.<br/>[A18 11:16:17] Cap: You and your folks?  they’reokay?<br/>[A18 11:17:40] Moonsong: They’re good.  Dad is taking a shot at mayor or councilman.  We’ll see what happens - [[Glow-worm P.2]]</ref> so bright yellow construction equipment and the gold-tinted windows of skyscrapers dominate the skyline,<ref name="II.1.1e1">The skyline was a half-and-half mix of skyscrapers and buildings in progress.  The latter were skeletons of tall buildings in the process of being filled in and put together, and hazard signs, tarps, the materials that made up the countless cranes and the painted letters on steel girders were all in bright yellows.  The completed skyscrapers were paneled with mirrored or reflective glass that were tinted in that same hue.  All put together, the light that bounced off of the city and reached skyward gave the clouds linings that were gold, not silver. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2017/09/11 Excerpt] from [[Daybreak 1.1]] </ref> despite the implications attached to that color from [[Gold Morning]]. The city growth radiated outwards from the portal from Bet, with pockets of dense housing clustering around the portals in Gimel Northeastern US, foremost among them Brockton Bay and New York, with smaller clusters around the Boston Area<ref>https://www.parahumans.net/2017/11/14/daybreak-1-2/</ref>. It took half a day to get from the west end to the east end of the City, and three quarters of a day to get from the southwest end to the northeast.<ref name="16.2IIe1"/> 

The strung-out nature of the City led to a new nomenclature - strips of development that ran east-west were called "spans", those that ran north-south were called "stretches", those that didn't run in a cardinal direction lacked these descriptors. Regardless, regions were usually named after whatever settlement was in the equivalent area on Bet, although there was sometimes conflict over what to name them after.<ref>“In terms of the bands that rope everything in together, we go by the cities and locations that were there beforehand.  If you look at where Norwalk would be on a map, that’s the name for the region we’re heading to.  If it’s east-west it’s a span.  If it’s north-south it’s a stretch.  But it’s all a part of the city.”<br/>
“What if it’s both?” someone asked.<br/>
“Then it’s neither,” Jasper said.  “You just give it a name.”<br/>
“More accurately, you try to give it a name and end up in a heated, months-long debate about what to call the area, with way too many emotions tied up into things,” I said. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2017/11/14/daybreak-1-2/ excerpt] from [[Daybreak 1.2]]</ref>

Streets and parks of city are filled with numerous memorial pillars, honoring lives lost during [[Scion|Scion's]] rampage.<ref name="II.1.1">[[Daybreak 1.1]]</ref> Due to lack of city planning road traffic is quite bad. 

Although refugees lack a proper government,<ref name="P8">We have no authorities.  We have no system of government.  We have no national cape team or licensed heroes.  We can’t even agree on a name for Gimel’s megalopolis! - [[Glow-worm P.8]]</ref> there was mention of a Mayor and city council,<ref name="P.2e1"/> as well as functioning, although understaffed on periphery, police force.<ref name="II.1.1"/>

The inner, urbanized parts of the city had standardized rents, but not the sprawl, which was mostly farms<ref name="P6">'''► Venturain'''<br/>Replied on August 22nd, Y1:<br/>the corner world places aren’t inherently bad tho, right?  we (my family) just got into the city one month ago.  right away pressure pressure.  we can move into city but standardized rent and we need to earn wage and we may be asked to move.  best option is to move to city periphery and farm.  they say they will give us tools and resources to get started but good spots are taken or very far away and farming isn’t easy<br/><br/>corner worlds are closer in a way.  go to noon, go to wherever from there.<br/><br/>if we aren’t reconstruction or farming we aren’t wanted.  so why become cogs in the city’s machine?  we can strike off on our own.  minor risk but total freedom - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/glow-worm-p-6/ Excerpt] from [[Glow-worm P.6]]</ref> and tent cities. Distinction between urban centers and rural periphery is somewhat blurry — need for proper housing is still high, so people settle in apartments instead of private houses even in "rural" areas.<ref>We’ve got these long narrow bands of mingled city and agriculture connecting the primary settlement points, to the point it’s hard to say where one thing starts and the other ends.  And instead of building five big houses they’d rather build an apartment building that hosts twenty, which makes things fuzzy with the distinctions of urban and rural. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2017/11/14/daybreak-1-2/ Excerpt] from [[Daybreak 1.2]] </ref><!--- Hurried construction means that houses and apartments are often poorly insulated.<ref> - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/11/03 Excerpt] from [[Polarize 10.4]]</ref>-->

Two years after Gold Morning, large sections of the city were still without power routinely at night.<ref>[[Shadow 5.7]]</ref> As such, candles returned to widespread usage as light sources,<ref>[[interlude 5d II]]</ref> and were presumably a sound economic investment.

The dominant currency in the City is the Trading Dollar, which was set up by the [[Number Man]].<ref>So many things were reliant on resources.  Money- they handled money and they had money.  Kurt had arranged the trading dollar and he’d made it work.  A city couldn’t run on barter, and a megalopolis was far more involved than a city. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/04/07/shadow-interlude-5-x/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 5x II]]</ref> A separate currency, the [[New Dollar]], is also in use in some parts of the City, but has decreased in value.<ref>“I wasn’t happy about it being New Dollars,” Durbin volunteered.  “She was nice about giving me more when the value dropped.”<br/><br/>Anelace nodded, looking at me.  Unconventional currency for the unconventional settlement of Wailings.  The Trading Dollar was the dominant currency across the Megalopolis.  Other currencies were tied to natural resources, to other Earth currencies, but they had their issues.  The New Dollar had its issues, but it was still used in places, on the fringes. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/06/09/torch-7-6/ Excerpt] from [[Torch 7.6]]</ref>