The Special Economic Zone of Ecuadorian New Los Angeles is perhaps the fastest growing city in history. It began in the Ecuadorian jungle as nothing more than a manufacturing plant to launch the 'Beanstalk', but is now one of the largest metropoles on the planet. Everything that goes up or down goes via the Beanstalk, which means it flows through New Angeles. The sudden rise in commerce made it a magnet for anyone keen to make a new life (or discard an old one), and the city is a melting pot of risties, disenfrancistos, G-modders, cybermodders, clones, bioroids, cops and criminals, small-time bangers and organized crime syndicates, private eyes and bounty hunters, war veterans and Martian spies, and every race, culture and creed under the sun.
The town of Cayambe was the nearest to the Beanstalk building site and is now subsumed into the mega-city's districts.
New Angeles is the homebase of several corporations, including the megacorporation Jinteki, and the NBN offices in Broadcast Square. Major landmarks include the offices of Humanity Labor and Monroe and Associates, the Memories of Green entertainment complex, the campus of Levy University, and the cathedral of the Starlight Crusade. New Angeles is large enough to support travel by drop-pod as well as hopper. The Skyway connects the ritzy west side to the seedy east side.
Power in the city is shared between many groups. The city is helmed by Mayor Wells at City Hall and Commissioner Dawn of the NAPD. The many organized criminal associations include the Mafia, 14K, the Yakuza, and the Los Scorpiones drug cartel. The infamously violent labor movement Human First, fronted by the legal advocacy of Humanity Labor, brings a lot of pro-worker, anti-android pressure against the government. The wealthy families of James Levy, Director Haas and other social elite use their money to buy political power of their own. Powerful members of the Starlight Crusade church and the secretive association known as the Order of Sol can also influence events. And although several thousand miles from DC, New Angeles is still US soil, and the FBI have agents on the streets. With so many shadowy groups in play, conspiracy theorists abound in New Angeles.
Famous runners such as 'Noise', 'Mac' and 'Whizzard' reside in New Angeles; each could be considered a power-broker on their own.
Statistics[]
- Official Name: Special Economic Zone of Ecuadorian New Los Angeles
- Sovereignty: Unincorporated Territory of the United States of America
- Population: approximately 500,000,000 officially registered
- Land Area: 62,000 km2
- Demographics: 22% Latino, 19% White, 14% Black, 9% Indigenous / Mestizo, 9% Asian, 23% Multiracial, 5% Other
- Android/Simulant Population: Estimated 5-10 million
- Government: City Council + Mayor (Ignacio Wells)
Districts[]
Each of New Angeles' twelve districts have their own origins and local personalities. Several of them grew out of the organic sprawl of the other Ecuadorian cities and merged into each other, while others formed out of infrastructure built to support the Beanstalk.
(The following descriptions are transcribed from the New Angeles rulebook.)
Base de Cayambe[]
- Main article: Base de Cayambe
Base de Cayambe lies in the literal shadow of the Beanstalk, crawling up the slopes of the Andes. Also the metaphorical shadow of the Beanstalk, a curious port-town with no water or coast.
It’s got slums. It’s got warehouses. It’s got flophouses and gambling dens and tattoo parlors and red light districts. It’s got everything a spacer could want on his first visit to Earth in 18 months, everything an Earther could need before hurling herself to Mars for the rest of her life.
Although just about as poor and crime-ridden as Guayaquil, Base de Cayambe is generally safer. There are crooks everywhere, but they keep the peace and keep business running as usual. There are also a smattering of artists, students, entrepreneurs, writers, and others attracted by cheap rent and an astoundingly diverse populace, so Base de Cayambe is even moderately trendy.
Chakana[]
- Main article: Chakana
Chakana is the Beanstalk and the Beanstalk is Chakana. The Space Elevator is tethered at Earth Station, also called the Root, on Volcán Cayambe, and from there it rises into the heavens, a silver thread to the stars visible from a half-dozen countries.
Okay, maybe I’m getting a little poetic about it, but come on! It’s the single largest structure ever built by human beings and it unlocks the stars. It is the key to space and maybe the salvation of the human race. If thinking about it doesn’t make you misty, I don’t even know that you’re human.
It also makes the corps more money than god, and if anything were to happen to Chakana it could, in fact, trigger another Worlds War. So, you know. It’s important.
Esmeraldas[]
- Main article: Esmeraldas
Esmeraldas is the most active, vibrant, forgotten hinterland I’ve ever seen. It’s in a strange place, commercially, being the third- or fourth- best district at just about everything. Third-best port, third-best farms, fourth-best factories, fourth-most-populous, and on and on. The whole district is more or less ignored by the risties as an also-ran.
But for the middle class — for what’s left of the middle class, anyway — it’s a happening night spot. You got Eat Row, you got Roxy HT’s, and of course there’s the Blue Sun Stadium (go Giants!). Maybe Esmeraldas isn’t flashy and ritzy, but it could be a lot worse. Not a great tagline for your district, though, huh? “Come to Esmeraldas: it could be a lot worse!
Guayaquil[]
- Main article: Guayaquil
Guayaquil used to be the biggest city in Ecuador. Now it’s the biggest slum in New Angeles. Whole sectors of the district are no-go zones for the NAPD, and even once-vibrant landmarks like Jack Weyland Arcology are showing their age and crumbling away.
But for all that, it’s still the most populous district in the city. It’s got the biggest port, it’s still got some money, and so what if most of that money is in the hands of orgcrime? It’s not like there’s an appreciable difference between them and the corps, from the point of view of José Q. Público.
Heinlein[]
- Main article: Heinlein
Heinlein is on the Moon. It’s part of New Angeles on paper, but honestly? New Angeles is closer to Beijing than it is to Heinlein. If you’re born in Earthside New Angeles, it is literally easier to visit a foreign country than to go to Heinlein, and it’s not like the Loonies think of themselves as New Angelinos, you know? New Angelinos don’t get billed for the air they breathe or need to wear an enviro-suit at all times just in case. It’s no wonder most people forget that it’s the twelfth district.
La Costa[]
- Main article: La Costa
It’s easy to think that the biggest city in the worlds must be nothing but starscrapers, marching from the Root down to the sea, but it just isn’t true. New Angeles is huge, and there’s still, even today, open land and green growing things. (Well, mostly green; the acid rain notwithstanding.)
Most of that land is in La Costa. There are actual farms and orchards, here! And towering megafarms, the agroplexes that are methodically exterminating all other farming by sheer efficiency.
Laguna Velasco[]
- Main article: Laguna Velasco
LV is the hoitiest and toitiest of all the districts. It’s home to City Hall and Levy University and the NAPD HQ, but most importantly it’s home to lots of rich people. The lake, Laguna Velasco Ibarra, is the choicest real estate with the best arcologies nearby. But the really, really rich people don’t live at the top of kilometer-tall towers, they live in rambling mansions with gardens and only a handful of floors, you know, like the old days. Devoting that much real estate to a single family is so wasteful and so luxurious it’s almost unbelievable. Which is probably the point.
Manta[]
- Main article: Manta
Manta is white sand beaches and high-rise hotels, rich brats and dilettantes. It’s also a high-tech district clustered around the HB HQ and progressive rings of lower- and lower-rent residences the further from the coast you go.
On the whole, Manta is one of the nicer districts. Good tourism, a vibrant tech hub, and middle- and lower-class housing, all in the same district. Just don’t rock the boat.
Nihongai[]
- Main article: Nihongai
Nihongai is immaculate, kept that way by legions of very polite and well-behaved clones. It doesn’t have quite as much open green space as La Costa, but it does have its share of parks. And it has gardens. It has gardens integrated into its arks and shopping districts, it has gardens that spill down the sides of buildings, it has gardens hidden around blind corners or down below the slidewalk — just everywhere! Most of these gardens are made according to Nipponese sensibilities, owing to the large proportion of the district that has its origins in Japan.
When Jinteki Biotech moved its headquarters to Nihongai a while back it must have felt not that different from Neo-Tokyo. More Spanglish in the streets, maybe, but at times it does feel that Jinteki has managed to just import their home country wholesale into the parts of the district they own outright.
Quinde[]
- Main article: Quinde
The big, beating heart of Quinde is JQ Station, the enormous rail and tube-lev hub that feeds the factories of Quinde district. The district is its factories, its smelters, its power plants. It sure isn’t its human workers, who are more and more being replaced by androids. Hell, the androids are being built in one factory and walking across the street into the next to take another human job.
It’s no wonder that Human First recruiters trawl the streets here, finding angry men and women to join their movement.
Rabotgorod[]
- Main article: Rabotgorod
They call it “Robot City” now, both because the Russian name is hard to pronounce and because of all the androids that live there. Dwell there? Are warehoused there? Whatever, a lot of the old buildings that were once filled with Russian émigrés during the Project days are still standing, and rather than repair them up to code, the slumlords who own ‘em rent them out to androids and android owners. There’s still plenty of flesh-and-blood humans in the district and all the necessities and businesses and industries that come with that, but all anyone ever talks about are the androids.
Rutherford[]
- Main article: Rutherford
You ask anyone in the worlds to close their eyes and picture New Angeles, chances are they’re seeing Rutherford in their mind’s eye. (Except for people with aphantasia, but, you know.) It’s not as hologenic as, say, Laguna Velasco or Nihongai, but it is home to NBN and the worlds-famous Broadcast Square.
Rutherford is New Angeles at its most New Angeles. It’s full of dreams, fulfilled and broken (but many, many more of the latter). Atop the glittering arcologies, the rich live and play, and deep in the undercity, people and androids dwell in the worst poverty imaginable. It’s also a financial and media hub, as powerful and important as any district.
Quotes[]
"New Angeles is the jewel of modern civilization and its government is the envy of nations" - Mayor Ignacio Wells