The Cities of Nationstates – an Overview [part I]

The cities that a civilisation builds are it’s face. In a very real sense, the methods used by a group of people as they congregate together are a product of it’s culture and technology. From the sprawling megasuburbs of Port-Allanea, to the hive-like towers of Griffin, to the green domes of Pilon, cities are the highest expression of a nation’s architecture, engineering, and government. The following cities are examples of their own cultures, thus included here as part of our Nationstates city tour.

Allanea – Port-Allanea shares many of the features of Vinyatirion of the elves, however, the architecture is less advanced, and the teleportation circles. This both because the Allaneans have extremely varied tastes of architecture, and because they lack the magical expertise of the elves. The other main difference is the lack of tall buildings favored by elves. With the exception of the main business district, Port-Allanea features little skyscrapers, rather looking like miles and miles of urban sprawl.

This is even further augmented by low fuel prices and lack of automobile and property taxes on one hand, and absence of government subsidies on the other. Traffic problems are partially solved by the presense of Moller-type vehicles, and also extremely wide roads and intracity vehicle carrying trains run by Taggart Transcontinental.

The Allaneans have no laws regulating business from an ecological standpoint. This means Allaneans often resourt to civil suits against companies whose pollution is outright harmful to others, this serving as de-facto regulation. Still, factory chimneys are a part of the Port-Allanea landscape, poking up from among the cottage roofs. Allaneans do not consider this ugly, rather viewing that as a symbol of national productivity.

Of course, as with everything Allaneans do, there’s an exception to every rule – some subgroups of Allaneans do favor tall buildings, and Trek-Town, a small part of Port-Allanea near the business district inhabited by various Star-Trek fans – about 10-25 thousand in population – is testimony to that fact.

Pilon – Pilon, being entirely a Martian nation, houses most of its population in monstrous domed arcologies. The expertise of the Pilonese in applied genetics lead to that the domes are grown rather than built, and so are their vehicles. Due to the fact Pilon invests money and research in diversifying it’s population. Everybody from elves to orcs it present in the cities, and while Pilonese pretend not to care, they do point out how tolerant they are to any foreign visitor that cares to listen.

The Pilonese expertise in applied genetics has also solved to eliminate the problems of pollution in their cities – nearly all personal vehicles and power sources used are biological in nature and, of course, are gengineered not to pollute.

The Ctan – The subjects of Mephet’ran, like the Allaneans, enjoy great freedom, and see no need to shove into megacity complexes themselves. Rather, they spread out across the homeworld, making themselves very comfortable, utilising antigrav transportation tecnology to become the near-ultimate free state.