Yes, What on earth and just about any other planet of your choosing is the Barrens?

There's more than one in Seattle alone: Puyallup and Redmond.
It's any area (of a city, typically) that has, often because of some disaster, descended into a barely livable hellhole.

'Largly' the barrens can be though of as a third world slum, next to no sanitation, poor housing, crime ridden, etc. Do some googling on the slums on Manila, of Mexico City, or whereever and you'll have a pretty good idea.

The worst parts of the barrens can be though of as that + brain eating zombies and toxic waste.

Some handy image links:

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Here's one of Manila Bay: The government has been trying to clean thing up a bit in the last few years, you can still basically but the water into chunks though. Also note the houses in the background.

Although barrens aren't necessarily as crowded as slums, I would say, and often the housing used to be nice but is now falling apart.
Even so: pretty good analogy.

Hmm. Actually, pic #1 fits my image of SR Barrens somewhat. The others, not quite as much. Those are shantytowns. There are probably parts of the Barrens that are like that, but as I've always pictured them, the Barrens actually have a fairly LOW population density. Large numbers of large buildings, many of them vacant and some of them with squatters, while a few are actually maintained (a little) and guarded by gangs or strong-arm 'landlords'. The sort of thing you might see if a large swath of city were abandoned and most or all services disconnected, and it was left to a less numerous (and far less picky) remnant population.

The barrens (at least, in Seattle) have been there for something like 40 years as of 2070, this means something like 2 generations of batterns kid (maybe 3 for orksies).

That may be, but Puyallup and Redmond both cover huge areas, and no amount of orks going at it like rabbits will fill that space in only 40 years! (EDIT: also- huge mortality rate in these places. Huge.)

It probably depends. A lot of Puyallup is covered in ash and lava flows, and although bits of the district are probably are pretty crowded, the rest is likely to be relatively empty. I get the sense that Redmond is rather more crowded throughout, but given the huge area there must still be parts that aren't.

Puyallup would be a mix of Rural (even undeveloped land) and Hastily abandoned urban sprawl, much partially buried by ash or mud from the Ghost Dance Eruption of Mount Rainier. While Lava Flows are Canon, from a realism stance you probably want to ignore that part. Hawaiian Volcanos produce liquid flowing lava, Cascade Volcanos produce viscous exploding lava that forms Ash Columns and Pyroclastic flows.

The Redmond Barrens also include a mix of urban, rural, and wild. Rather than being hastily abandoned because of an eruption Redmond's expensive upscale neighborhoods gradually decayed as the Computer industry that supported them boomed, then was crushed by the crash of 29 and never came back.

Keep in mind that the Redmond District includes places like Carnation, Duvall, Issaquah, and Sammamish in addition to Redmond. These are small towns and suburbs, and while they are growing they aren't going to become densely packed urban sprawl in the short term. By 2014 the NAN War is going full swing and people would be trying to get away from the edges of town. The treaty of Denver in 2018 puts all of these suburbs uncomfortably close to a hostile border, accelerating the decline in property values. In 2021 you get Goblinization and then the Crash of 29. Of course this series of events is going to increase the population density in the Seattle core, plus Bellevue, Renton, Tacoma, Lynwood, and Everett where Multistory Condos and Apartments are already pushing out single family homes.

Wow... seeing those pictures... being in Kansas I've never seen anything like that... not that anywhere in Kansas is anything to jump for joy about.

'Third world slum' doesn't even begin to cover it. 'Post-apocalyptic' might.

I supose Fallout would be a good reference, neh?

Edit---internet wonkyness caused a double post.

I kind of think of them as something like Fort Apache The Bronx. Urban hell hole that has had some regrowth of more rural areas.

Considering that The United States has an infant portanlity rate worse than any other industrialized nation and worse than some third world nations, I wouldn't be surprised if the rate in the barrens was close to 500/1000

Actually, with a litter of 4-8, one has to wonder what the mother mortality rate is.

hmm, http://www.neometropolis.com/eltrain.html ...

the last part of that text is kinda interesting to try and envision Z zone...

You want to understand the Barrens?

Check here. Some parts of the article should be enough.

Rio de Janeiro has some really interesting ghettos. Even the Brazil elite police (i forget the name of their SWAT, sorry) are afraid to go into some of them.

A good moive set in one of less hardcore ones is "City of God" (check it out)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0317248/

Try and see if you can find any academic literature about urban ghettos. I recommend "The Social Organization of Street Gang Activity in an Urban Ghetto" (Venkatesh, Sudhir. American Journal of Sociology, Volume 103, Number 1 (July 1997): 82-111.) for its discussion of the role that a street gang plays in a community where many basic social services (e.g. police protection) are horribly inadequate. Academic articles tend to offer more objective and "scientific" insights than journalistic articles do, and can provide lots of inspiration for campaigns. For example, I read an article for my intro sosh class about the Black Sisters United (an all-female Chicago street gang that existed during the 1990s), and I hope to work the Ork Sisters United into any campaign(s) that I may host in the future.

The Barrens in Shadowrun's seattle are actually two massive slum-neighbourhoods: Redmond and Pullayup.

Redmond is like RL's Gaza - endless kilometers of urban decay and filth, with little or no sanitation and with horrible poverty, where everyone is armed and law doesn't really exist; factionalism is horrible, with the Redmond gangs as heavily armed as the many political/religious factions in Gaza. And when the 'Star comes, they do it like the IDF comes into Gaza IRL - APCs, machineguns, full combat gear, air support, and similarly, they can do whatever their firepower allows them to.

Pullayup is like something out of Mad Max or the Fallout computer games: post-apocalyuptic ruins and makeshift shanties sparsely spread over a huge, hostile wilderness covered with vulcanic ash. There is no law but what you make for yourself with your Remington 990; there is also a very tribal kind of squatter-society, with each island of "civilization" (read: squatted ruins) in Pullayup claimed by a squatter "tribe" or something similar.

I have to agree with stevebugge. Redmond isn't that urban. One of my PCs runs a Company team out of a couple of buildings in an abandoned office park (the rest of the park has been cleared out through bribes or violence, and a lot of it screams "BACK THE FUCK OFF" to everyone but the gangs who are on the payroll), and there are a couple of gangs who operate out of nearby abandoned gated subdivisions.

Some of my google-fu ghettos

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And this last ones fits it perfectly, i think.

Well then we need to add some rain, smog, chip heads, and a couple of ghouls. Then it would be perfect.