Editing A Necessary Evil VISITOR'S GUIDE to Freedom City

[[Image:Freedom-City---MAP 1.gif|frame|Freedom City, once a hub to world commerce. Proud to be the home of the world's greatest heroes. It now remains shattered but not destroyed. One of the few remaining living cities in the world.  Why the aliens left Freedom alive is unknown.  <br> [http://64.17.155.164/files/FreedomCityMap.pdf Freedom City MAP 1st Edition] <br> [http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Freedom_City_Map Freedom City MAP 2nd Edition]   ]]

Freedom City is a sprawling and diverse place. Its various districts and neighborhoods offer experiences from the most ultra-modern downtown to the Old World charm of Riverside or the ethnic neighborhoods of the West End. Here's an overview of what you'll find as you explore Freedom City.


==DOWNTOWN==
The central area of Freedom City features ultra-modern buildings, many of them created by Dr. Metropolis. The remaining buildings in the city use the finest modern construction methods and materials, making downtown Freedom one of the greatest North American metropolises.


===The Waterfront===
The city's waterfront is located along the tip of the peninsula, lined with piers that handle Freedom City's shipping traffic, along with warehouses storing goods being shipped in and out of the city. The Waterfront is considerably cleaner and more prosperous than many similar areas in other eastern cities, a source of civic pride.


===Riverside===
South of the Waterfront is the bohemian, Old World charm of Riverside. The area features several small parks, tree-lined streets, and brickwork buildings. The neighborhood is popular with young people, particularly students and artists, for its relatively low rents and loft apartments and studios. Riverside is becoming pricier, but not as quickly as parts of Midtown or the western suburbs.

A number of the side streets in Riverside, such as Ditko Street, are closed to all but foot traffic (and the ever-present locals wearing rollerblades), making them popular places for afternoon strolls and shopping. In the evening, Riverside offers a number of bars, coffeehouses, and nightclubs, many with open-mike nights showcasing local talent.

Riverside Park, along the waterfront, is home one of Freedom City's greatest landmarks, the massive Sentry Statue, dedicated to the fallen hero Centurion.


===Wading Way===
Running along the northern side of the downtown area is Freedom's business district, centered on Wading Way. The street is lined with brokerage houses, banks, investment companies, and other businesses, all of which exchange billions of dollars on a daily basis.

The city monorail runs along the outside edge of the business district, carrying many to and from work each day. Most of the office buildings have extensive underground parking garages as well. Street parking can be difficult to find and the streets are nearly always lined with cars. The sidewalks bustle with businesspeople, often talking on cell phones, as they make their way between offices, as well as messengers, and other people going about their business.


===City Center===
The heart of the downtown area, City Center rises around Centennial Circle, a traffic circle where the city's diagonal roads converge. City Center is home to Federal Plaza and governmental buildings, including the towering Federal Building. It is also the location of City Hall and Freedom Hall, the local headquarters of the Freedom League.


===Midtown===
The central area of Freedom City, bounded by the monorail lines, Liberty Park, and City Center, is called Midtown. Among other things, it is the largest downtown residential area and features a number of high-rise apartment buildings and condominiums.

Midtown is also home to shopping with the massive Millennium Mall and numerous other stores. There are a number of fast-food restaurants as well as more upscale establishments, small bistros and the restaurants of the fine hotels in the area. One of the most popular eateries in Midtown is the original Champion's franchise, located next door to the Super Museum.

On the spiritual side, Midtown has a number of churches, including St. George's Cathedral, located on 52nd Avenue across from Liberty Park. That avenue features expensive townhouses and private clubs, such as the Cape and Cowl Club and the Midnight Society.

Finally, Midtown is the location of the Goodman Building, the home and headquarters of the world-famous Atom Family.


===The North End===
The North End lies north of Liberty Park and the monorail line, centered on the campus of Freedom City University and focused on high-tech companies like ASTRO Labs. Small businesses catering to students and people in the tech industry are found throughout the area, including computer stores, clothing shops, small cafés and coffeehouses. It's a contrast to nearby Lantern Hill.
Parkside

The strip of land between Route 6 and Liberty Park, hemmed by the North End and the Theatre District, is called Parkside. It resembles Midtown but tends to combine the high-tech feel of the North End with the artistic sensibilities of the Theatre District.

Parkside is home to a number of high-rise apartments and condominiums overlooking Liberty Park, priced for those with money to burn. Most are home to up-and-coming businesspeople working in the North End and Wading Way, along with some well-off artists and media personalities. A Parkside address is a sure sign of someone who's arrived on the Freedom City scene.


===The Theatre District===
South of Parkside is the Theatre District, a neighborhood of small apartment buildings clustered around a number of local theatres and clubs featuring some the best nightlife in Freedom City. Entertainment ranges from Broadway-style plays and opera to avant-garde productions of performance art and rock concerts.

The eastern edge of the Theatre District, where it meets City Center, is home to the massive Liberty Dome, which holds sporting events and concerts. The Theatre District also features many small restaurants and eateries, open late to cater to the after-show crowds.


===The Fens===
The Fens are a corner of the Theatre District on the shore of the South River. Originally a marshy area, it was filled in years ago to allow for the expansion of the city and to eliminate disease-carrying insects. Now a new sort of disease is infecting the Fens. The area becomes progressively more low rent with each block away from the heart of the Theatre District and toward the river and Greenbank.

The Fens are home to sleazy porn theaters and adult bookstores, a large number of waterfront bars, and relatively cheap housing. More than a few have commented that it is unfortunate the Fens have been largely spared the damage inflicted on the rest of the downtown area by super-battles. Of any of the areas of Freedom City, it's one that should be leveled.

==NORTH FREEDOM==
North of the Wading River, Freedom City is strongly influenced by the image of "the city of the future" combined with an appreciation for the structures of the past. The North Freedom area is made up of communities involved in education and high technology along with some of the wealthiest and most influential areas of the city.


===Hanover===
The largest area of North Freedom is Hanover, covering nearly as much area as downtown. Much of Hanover is focused on small high-technology businesses, particularly Internet "e-business". This is enhanced by the presence of the Hanover Institute of Technology, one of the nation's most prestigious schools for technical education. The district has a "college town" feel to it, with the area near the HIT campus catering to the needs and interests of students and young technical professionals.


===Kingston===
The Kingston area, between Route 4 and the Interstate, is more upper middle class than Hanover, progressing away from student living to places owned by technology professionals. Despite being close to the city, Kingston still retains a suburban feel, something local residents value and fight to maintain. Property values have increased over the years, but people in Kingston resist over-development, wanting to keep the charm and pleasant aspects of their community intact.


===North Bay===
From the bay-shore to Route 9 is the North Bay area, a posh district of expensive waterfront homes and historic mansions owned by some of Freedom City's wealthiest families. North Bay features exclusive yacht clubs and beachfront property, with few stretches of public beach. During the holiday season, North Bay's stately mansions are beautifully decorated and there are tours to see them.

==WEST FREEDOM==
The area of the city west of the Wallace Expressway comprises West Freedom. It's a contrast between old and new, progress and old-fashioned ways of doing things. It includes some of the older intact neighborhoods of Freedom City, as well as newly developed areas that expanded the outskirts of the city.


===Lantern Hill===
The north side of the peninsula along the Wading River rises to a hill that is the site of some of the oldest settlement in the Freedom area. The garden apartments and row houses are still wonderful examples of 18th and 19th century architecture, many of them having undergone modern renovations. The neighborhood has a distinctly colonial flavor with narrower, tree-lined streets, brick-front buildings, and small garden plots or window boxes of flowers.

Lantern Hill is home to a number of historical sites, from the home of Revolutionary War hero Major Joseph Clark to the Lantern Hill Cemetery and one of Freedom's oldest houses of worship, St. Stephen's Church. It is better known as the haunt of the mysterious Lantern Jack, mystic watchman of Freedom since the days of the Revolutionary War.


===The West End===
Flowing down from Lantern Hill toward Greenbank is the West End of Freedom City. The West End was originally a number of small ethnic communities settled around the end of the 19th century. Today, they have blended together into an overall community, although pockets of the original cultures can still be found, along with a number of newcomers to the area.

It's a boisterous, mostly lower middle-class, area. Row houses and apartment buildings are common, along with garden-style apartments with common courtyards. Due to cheap housing in its infancy, the West End became home to Irish, Italian, Greek, and Jewish immigrants. African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians followed in later years. The West End features the best ethnic restaurants in the city, particularly delis and pizza places.


===Greenbank===
Greenbank, in between the West End and the South River, was best known as a railroad stop where goods moved in and out of the Freedom City area by train. It is filled with warehouses, rail yards, and shipping companies, where a lot of West Enders used to work.

Greenbank is centered on the old Union Rail Yards, where trains move in and out of the city. It's occasionally used for smuggling and clandestine meetings, so the police (and heroes like Foreshadow) keep a watchful eye on it. Abandoned warehouses, train yards, and roundhouses have also served as hideouts and headquarters for heroes and villains alike.


===Ashton and Grenville===
The bedroom communities of Ashton and Grenville are fairly new, having grown up over the past twenty years. Both are clean, modern suburban communities only barely keeping up with the demand for new homes from the people moving into the Freedom area. Although some think the new communities are too "uniform," with their six or seven styles of single-family homes, most find Ashton and Grenville pleasant, with new neighborhoods, schools, shopping, and the like. Many of Freedom's middle class families live in the area, with more moving in all the time.

==South Freedom==
South Freedom lies on the other side of the South River from the downtown area and is the area that may face the greatest challenges in Freedom's future. Parts are affluent or middle class, but others are stricken with poverty and plagued by crime, particularly the influence of organized crime. Wealth and poverty stand side by side in the area and the government hopes to make a difference there. It only remains to be seen if it can.


===The Boardwalk===
South Freedom is best known for the Boardwalk, running along the shore of the South River between the Wallace Expressway and Route 4. The boardwalk is lined with hotels and casinos, since gambling is legal in the area (but not in other parts of Freedom City, by local ordinance). Originally built during the heyday of gangsters in the 1920s, some of the hotels show their age while others have been recently rebuilt or renovated.


===Southside===
South of the Boardwalk is the Southside district of the city, bounded by Route 4 to the east and Route 6 to the west. Southside is mostly middle- and lower-middle class, but growing pockets of poverty and crime have been eating away at the community for years.

The southernmost area of Southside remains the safest and most middle-class, centered on the Freedom College campus and Jordan International Airport. However, property values near the airport tend to be low, creating a kind of "buffer zone" of cheap housing.


===Lincoln===
West of Southside is the neighborhood of Lincoln, built up in the 1950s and 60s. Lincoln has been a predominantly African-American area from the beginning and remains so today, although with a fair number of Hispanics and other ethnic groups. Many of the people living here work in places along the Boardwalk, but many young people also become involved in gangs and criminal activities as a way out of the poverty of the neighborhood.


===Bayview===
East of Southside is the community of Bayview, between Route 4 and the Interstate, bounded by South Bay Road on one side and the South River on the other. Bayview is a more affluent community than Southside, resembling Kingston, on the other side of the narrows. It goes from waterfront property toward the higher ground near South Bay Road, known as Bayview Heights. Property in Bayview is more expensive than average and there is community concern about crime filtering in from Southside. Neighborhood watches are becoming more common, along with contracts with Stronghold Security.


===Port Regal===
Port Regal is similar in many respects to North Bay, but it's somewhat less affluent and some of the old mansions and Victorian-era homes have been sold to businesses or turned into bed-and-breakfast inns. Port Regal clusters around Lake MacKenzie and the peninsulas jutting out into the bay. The lake area features more upscale homes, particularly those with lakefront property. The lake is a popular place for recreation during the summer and fall, replete with boating and other water activities.

Further north, the demographics become solidly middle-class with the Ocean Heights amusement park located at the end of the peninsula. Off an out-of-the-way seaside road stands Providence Asylum, the sprawling Victorian mansion of the Phillips family that became a mental hospital in the early twentieth century and continues in that role today. Some of Freedom City's most infamous criminals are committed there.


===Lonely Point===
The most isolated point of land in Freedom, Lonely Point is named for its rocky and desolate terrain. There are sandbars and scrub plants, but little else along the narrow peninsula. Lonely Point is home to a United States Naval base, and a single road leads out there from Port Regal. The Naval base sometimes serves as a drop-off or pick-up point for prisoners moving to and from Blackstone Island and often works in cooperation with the Space Control Center on Star Island.



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