San Francisco

San Francisco's most famous landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge circa 2016

**San Francisco** is a large city within the United North American States on Earth. As of 2182 it was highly regarded as one of the planet's crown jewels, and one of humanity's most diverse and open-minded cities.

## History

Prior to the environmental collapse of the 21st century, the city of San Francisco was regarded as a beautiful, if expensive place to live. While important to its area, it was ultimately overshadowed by on the rise megalopolises in Los Angeles and San Diego, stagnating in growth for a span of several decades.

However, thanks to a serious turn of luck, along with excellent city planning and foresight, San Francisco prospered where many earthen-cities began to stagnate and rot. From its position in Northern California, it was spared from the worst of the desertification that afflicted the Southern Hemisphere, while levees and sea-walls built in 2062 by the well-beloved mayor, Akshey Bundera, were instrumental in preventing flooding in the coastal areas of the city. Not long after this, as the Bay Area began to receive an influx of migrants from more badly-affected regions, ordinances were put in place to try and prevent the ugly urban sprawl and clutter that had become terrible in modern megalopolises.

All in all, these reforms were actually remarkably effective: the city streets were wide, clean, and well policed, and housing in a variety of sizes is widely and cheaply available in any one of the city’s great-many living towers. Downtown San Francisco, in particular, has evolved into a budding, beautiful area, filled with massive, cutting-edge skyscrapers, in equal measure with several small public parks and historical sites. The entire area is powered by sustainable solar-energy, all derived from the sweeping Sacramento Solar Fields to the east. All of these factors lend to the city’s general reputation as safe, clean, and rich, as well as it’s standing as one of the most prosperous megalopolises on Earth, beaten only by Tokyo-Chiba, Vancouver, and London in the Alliance’s 2182 general prosperity-survey.

## Facets

The two most unique elements of the city are most definitely its marked galactically-cosmopolitan nature, and the abundance of surviving marine life in it’s preserved bay-area. The former aspect is one of San Francisco’s greatest bragging-points (and, according to some, one of its greatest drawbacks.) Other than Vancouver, it boasts the highest permanent non-human population in the entirety of the american continents, the third highest in the world, overall. Following the establishment student-exchange program between the University of Serrice’s xenobiology department and the San Francisco State University’s extremely popular marine biology department, in a gesture of good-will after the First Contact War, the city was hit by a gradual influx of alien immigrants, following as they usually did in the footsteps of the asari. In modern times, the student-exchange program has evolved into a full extension-campus, attended by thousands of asari and non-asari students every year. As would be expected, students were followed by professors and families, and soon an entire commune of alien culture had sprung into being in the heart of San Francisco, with especially-high non-human density in the Sunset and Chinatown localities. Notably, the entire Lakeshore-Plaza block was converted into a cross-cultural megamall in 2174, featuring a full 192 stories of public-markets filled with alien merchandise. It is one of the most popular tourist-sites in the entire city, trafficked by well over, 150,000 people every day, supported by several internal hotels and an entire private security force. This last measure, unfortunately, was implemented following an eight-victim string of violent anti-alien hate crimes in reaction to the Skyllian Blitz of 2176.

## Systems Alliance

This cosmopolitan nature is one of the reasons that the city was chosen as the secondary-headquarters of the AIS, the high-alien population, and its general remoteness from the alliance capital of Vancouver providing perfect cover for agents and those in the witness-protection program. Notably, San Francisco is gifted with a relatively-large batarian community, providing a comfortable cover for those seeking asylum from the tendrils of the Hegemony.

## Underworld

Underneath all the cosmopolitan culture and the beautiful buildings, however, San Francisco’s criminal underbelly thrives, riding the same prosperous wave as every law-abiding citizen in the city. Well hidden in the open markets of Chinatown and the harbors of east-side, illegal drugs run rampant through the veins of the city’s commerce. Even worse, a good few of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful people have their fingers in pots on the wrong sides of the law, subtly influencing the comings and goings of the town behind the scenes. As of 2182 there was even a rumor, hanging like a dark-black cloud, that some of the anti-alien sentiment present in the city is encouraged, in part, by one of them.

## Notable Locations

* Lakeshore Plaza Galactic Complex
* Ocean Beach
* San Francisco Zoo
* Serrice - San Francisco State University Student Center and Museum