Greets,

I was thinking on opening up a thread where we could share world visions of what do you think our city would look like in Shadowrun's 2070.


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City of Oulu

Oulu was founded on July 20, 1605 by King Charles IX of Sweden opposite to the castle built on the island of Linnansaari. This took place after favourable peace settlements with the Russians, which removed the threat of attack via the main east-west waterway, the river Oulu. The surrounding areas were populated much earlier. Oulu is situated by the Gulf of Bothnia, at the mouth of river Oulujoki, which is an ancient trading site. One source for the name Oulu is a word in the Sami language meaning 'flood water', but there are other suggestions. Oulu has been the capital of the Oulu Province since 1776.

In 1822, a major fire destroyed much of the city. The architect Carl Ludvig Engel, chiefly known for the neoclassical (empire style) buildings around Helsinki Senate Square, was enlisted to provide the plan for the rebuilding of the city. With minor changes, this plan remains the basis for the layout of Oulu's town center. The Oulu Cathedral was built in 1832 to his designs, with the spire being finished in 1844.

From being a town known for wood tar and salmon in the past, Oulu has evolved into a major centre of competence in the field of high technology, particularly IT and wellness technology. Other prominent industries include wood refining as well as paper and steel industry. The University of Oulu is located six kilometres north of the city center. The Oulu Airport, located in neighbouring municipality of Oulunsalo, is the second busiest in Finland.

The municipality of Ylikiiminki was consolidated with the city of Oulu in 2009-01-01.

Oulu in 2070 is probably the last major city in the north of Finland after Rovaniemi. Oulu has gone through the great changes of becoming a city where people stay in the winter even when the harbor is closed due to the ice in the 1930s, of having one fourth its population German in the 1940s, going through a national urbanization process in the 1960s, to having its first wave of foreign immigrants in the 1990s, to that of goblinization and awakening.

Finland initially thought that goblinization was possibly a bioweapon being unleashed by a slumbering soviet republic, as the borders were closed and people still changed, and the Russian bear did not wake and people went back from the cold war mentality of opposition to that of uncomfortable acceptance.

Today Oulu is not only a town which focuses on the IT sector, but also into biotechnology and medicine. It also prides itself in being diverse by having large metahuman populations inside of itself. Only some of the smallest and oldest clubs like Sarkka (the oldest bar in Oulu), does not have AR. The majority of the clubs and bars are heavily wireless as is the rest of the city. In actuality it is very hard for you to be anywhere in Finland without Wireless Access.

However, there is no active racism in Oulu, just the passive kind. Orcs have become their own little group as have the elves. Often enough it is claimed, especially in the local e-zines that elves, specifically those with swedish last names and good church affiliations get all the jobs.

Medical costs are heavily subsidized and most people still enjoy the use of public health centres and the Oulu University Hospital. Bioware still demands being implanted by a private doctor, unless important for the wellbeing of the patient. Going into the city centre you ave numerous shops from which you can select which implant you want to buy and even the shop will involve a two year guarantee including the cost of implantation. However, one of the disadvantages in Oulu is that while biotechnology is readily available the prohibitive cost often drive many to go abroad and get the work there. Finland recently placed into effect legislation that only alphaware and above could be legally sold. Second hand units are to be either destroyed or can then be repackaged to be sold as development aid like to Lagos. Headware commlinks are not only considered normal in Finland, but its lack indicates someone who chooses to be a social outcast.

Regions outside of Oulu

Hailuoto was the location of a fight between Corporate Forces and the primary base of Winter- . Currently nature has taken back the island by force and is now designated as a nature preserve, what were once quite slow currents have recently become quite agitated. There are also rumors of a wind shaman who has taken residence there. The University of Oulu still maintain a remote operated weather observation station on the island.

The semi-autonomous region of Lapland still exists and many of the centuries old practices thought to have been lost are coming back to the fore. Finland, Norway, and Sweden still maintain their agreement in recognizing the northern people as having its own autonomy. The police and customs in Finnish lapland work closely with their Scandinavian and their awakened Sami counterparts. The University of Oulu has expanded their Giellagas Institute to also cover shamanistic practices of the Sami.

There is no major shipping industry in Oulu rather it all runs through the expanded port of Raahe (60km south of Oulu), which has rail connections through-out Finland and into Russia as well, hooking up with the Murmansk line.

i'm afraid Hamburg is pretty close in the way it's depicted in shadowrun actually . .

Give it a shot anyways.

the old bunker in the middle of the city will probably be centre of whatever para-military organisation gats to try and uphold law and order in the big wet willie.
the big graveyard(seriously, one of our graveyards has 3 to 5 own bus stations . .) will probably be infested with all kinds of nasties, especially ghouls and the such.
the subway tunnels will most likely be flooded completely, with maybe some closed off pockets of . . if you wanna call it air do so, i certainly won't . .
but no, not big enough for small submarines to use them as sneaky paths for smuggling. more like more nasty thingies living down there . . things like kraken and the such *brrrr*
wilhelmsburg? the big willie? yeah sure . . no! . . that one's gonna sink completely below the water i guess . . of the foundation were better and not just sand, most of the higher houses would still be standing and fortified to keep doing to. . build some bridges between them or on the roofs and you're basically all set to more or less keep living as you do now over there O.o
the higher up rail-ways will keep working, as long as the stilts are being maintained, keep the parts of the city interconnected at least to a certain degree. maybe we'll dig out the old big hover-crafts again, to kep connections between the more outside regions of the hamburg state. there probably won't be a monorail ever . . boo to that <.< . .
our power-plants? they need cooling water, so they are buiilt close to our big ass river, the elbe . . nope, they probably won't make it either, so hamburg is going to need mucho energy from new/different sources. folloing that, most heavy industries will move away, because they need frigging huge metric boat ass loads of energy to function propperly. and prices will rise, so they will go find somewhere else to sit, where energy is cheaper.
the harbour? well, if they manage to keep THAT operational, that will make many of the bigger traders very happy. people want to get the elbe deeper for bigger ships even today, so when the water rises, that will have pretty much the same effect. maybe if the water rises enough with the added benefit to drive smaller ships where they would today run ashore . . if they can't keep it working? that's gonna be the killing stroke for hamburg. in the harbour area, most of hamburgs true market-power is situated. if that goes down the drain, pretty much half of hamburg will lose their jobs and the other half will lose the money they invested there.
hagenbecks tierpark . . will probably just be closed and made home to some people who wanna hide. or more ghouls again. i don't think anybody is going to try and keep that one open. certainly not to show off critters and the such.
our main rail-way-station is built frigging close to the water. as is most of our city core, due to hamburg originating from the river haven . . most of that will go down the toilet too. especially since the rail-ways are below ground level and not above . . harburg, our out-post in bavaria(everything south of the elbe is bavaria )? if the water does not get that far, they will live . . if the water decides it wants to travel south? they're pretty much flat land, not very high above sea-level and not far from the elbe . . but that would not be such a big loss in my opinion ^^.
Altona, our other big Rail-Way-Station? won't live out the water either, due to the rail-ways being more or less around ground level and not elevated enough too. same for the air-port. especially the luthansa basis will suffer, because they are directly on the elbe and only flat fields as you'd expect from an airport.
Dammtor, or at leasth the rail-way-station there could live, due to being one of the few elevated rail-stations and i think actually the only elevated inter city train station. it's only 2 plattforms for inter city trains though, so that won't be much to use . . and i think the only trains from there go up north. and there probably won't be much left anyway . . but it could work, because for the most part, at least in the city of hamburg, i guess the rail-ways are elevated one or two stories above ground . .
south east of hamburg? well, they are far from the water, but not far up above water-level, so it really more or less depends on the way the wind blows i guess . . new tideland i guess . .
all in all? hamburg will probably be a ghost town about 50 years after the water comes . . next stop? Bremen! the big ships can reach them now, they just have to build their harbour to become the new/second hamurg . .
that's it from me. i am sorry my write up is not quite as nice as chrysalis own, but i am le tired ._.

I think NYC is already covered, & Long Island was pretty much turned into Edo-West in the novel Steel Rain.

This has got me thinking. I'll definitely do a writeup on Melbourne, Australia. I was never quite satisfied with the treatment in Target: Awakened Lands.

- J.

I'd respond, but we have a couple of books on where I live already.

The problem with Australia in 2070 is that it is mostly the same - heavily fortified enclaves with rationed everything and more racism than you can shake a stick at.

At least Sydney is no longer a part of my country then, damnit!

I will reply to this now that I am finally a member. I will probably add something about Birmingham (England).

But before all that, has there been anything significant written about the UK since the London sourcebook in the dim dark distant past? There is more to the UK than London *RAGE*
Links to anything worth reading would be awesome.
cheers

Wait, are you discounting the content in Shadows of Europe or do you not know of it? It's extremely important that you clarify this, because you've used "significant" and that's a rather subjective turn of phrase.

I might have a stab at doing the Birmingham in a bit depending on how the revision and exams go in a week or so.