Politics (Superpowers)

This page on the Geopolitics of the Superpowers TL is meant to outline many of the geographic and political differences between "there" and "here". For the most part, this will be done by descriptions of the geopolitical situation ATL that give a better understand of the world "they" live in. Below is an index that leads to several pages that outline various other geopolitical aspects of the world that are two large to fit in this page.

Topics

 * Megalopolises
 * Climate Change
 * Nuclear Warfare
 * Power Production
 * World Resources
 * Continents
 * Translations

World Population
Unlike in OTL, people are not only concentrated at certain geographic locations like China and India. Due to the nearly worldwide presence of developed nations there is a relatively even continental spread of populations. Within continents however, populations are found to be very concentrated in form. Unlike in OTL where large masses of people dominate an urban sprawl, the enclosed city is the most common form. Though this is not the case for the Japanese or the Mongols, all other civilizations have made some effort to outline their cities' limits and the suburbs that dominate cities "here" are almost completely non-existent in this TL.

Roman City Planning
No one has taken this ideology further than the Romans. Since the Vth century, the Emperor began to employ people known as urban engineers. Should a new city need to be founded, or an old one changed, these people would be brought in to assess the situation and decide a course of action that would be as efficient as possible. Though people with similar jobs had existed before, they never had to deal with anything near the scope of these urban engineers.

Currently, all cities are given a precisely defined rectangular area, surrounded by some kind of barrier so as to control traffic flow. Any structures that had no "social" function (i.e. factories, warehouses, etc.) would be placed in Ora Industria (Industrial Districts) on the outer edges of the city, but still within its limits. Within the Ora Habita (Living Areas) each building was forced to take up a precisely defined plot of land which was determined by whatever the municipal laws were.

The average Domum (House) consisted of 10 floors and was designed to hold two families of Plebs in comfort, the families owning each floor alternatively. The bottom floor was however taken up always by a shop, usually owned by one of the two families. This obviously forces one of the second family's floors to be the roof, which may or may not be a benefit, depends on who you ask. In this way the doma resembled the insulae of the old Empire as the single floor homes became non-existent in an urban environment.

Spread throughout this "sea" of house, were the real Insulae (Apartments). In general, they were only allowed at a ratio of 1:20 with the doma. This was however their only limitation and any single apartment could have any height it needed to have (within reason of course). These buildings had two functions, to serve as living space or to serve as work space. The structure of the insulae habitae are slightly different from OTL. No more than one family could own each floor and so each was bought as such. Prices per floor would steadily decrease as one went up the building, and so for this reason apartments were the main dwelling of the poorest Plebeians and were seen as a low-class way of living.

In the case of coastal cities, the city would be planned as a rectangle hanging off the edge of the coast, with industries both along the edges and up against the sea, usually surrounding the harbor. Artificial land built out into the sea was commonplace in the Empire and this land was actually exempt from most of the rules that limited other city districts. Apartments could be built in hordes, and would often be intermingled with factories. Building artificial land over a river was illegal and many an attempt to suggest this has lost an urban engineer their job.

Two other districts exist in cities. The Ora Laboria (Work District) was like the industrial district, except for humans. No one was allowed to actually live in these areas. The apartment laws were also not in place and often times these districts could consist entirely of apartment complexes for offices and the like. It was also here that The other is the Ora Gubernatia (Administrative District). It is here where the municipal council building is always located, as well as the Forum and city plazas. It was often filled with monuments of all kinds, interspersed within the district's many gardens. In the case of Provincial capitals, the Curia Provincia (Provincial Senate) was always located in this district.

As for the Equites and rich Plebeians, they usually reside in the Adminstrative district within large mansions of all kinds of heights and areas.

Each of these districts is rectangular in shape, their borders being usually defined by a fence, wall, signpost or the like. Very few large cities (1000+ people) do not follow this plan, particularly as to do so is against Roman Law. The only areas where this is not the case, are the Municipal Provinces of Melita and Rome. Also, certain cities that have been recently annexed to the Empire to not follow these rules despite attempts to bring them into the fold.