Provisa

Provisa
Capital City
City of Provisa
The Zallos River and the Bridges of Provisa
Motto(s):  The City of Hopes and Dreams
Country	Belhavia
Founded	1401 (As Provisum)
Seat of Government	January 15th, 1454
Founded by	Asher Eruk
Government
• Type	Strong Mayor-Council Form
• Body	City Council
• Mayor	Tom Roth (Conservative)
• City Council President	Isaac Levitt (Conservative)
Population  (2016)
• Total	1,496,665
Demonym	Provisan
Ethnic groups
• Belhavian Jews	47.7%
• Western Jews	13.5%
• Rodarian Jews	10.6%
• Oriental Anikatians	9.4%
• Eaglelander Orthodox	8.8%
Time zone	UTC+2 (WPT)

The City of Provisa, commonly referred to as Provisa, is the capital capital and seat of government of the Empire of Belhavia, as well as a major metropolitan urban center. The city is self-contained as its own province, though this functions similarly as a capital territory in other nations. Provisa is the X-largest city in Belhavia by area, with a total population of nearly 1.49 million in 2016.

The Greater Provisa metropolitan economy is an estimated 2016 GDP of $524 billion and is among the largest for urban areas in the world. Besides serving as the capital city, Provisa is a major port city on the navigable Zallos River that is a bustling hub of international and interior trade. It is the home of a well-regarded urban culture of fine arts, gourmet restaurants, beautiful architecture, and universities.

Geography

Climate

Provisa is in the Central Highlands subarctic climate of Middle Belhavia. It typically experiences long, extremely cold winters, with moderately cold and chilly springs and falls, with short, cool-to-mild summers. Blizzards occur about five times a year, during the winter and occasionally in the late fall and/or early spring seasons.

The city-province receives very little precipitation, usually between 12 and 16 inches per year.

Cityscape

The original city of Provisum was founded in 1401, and evolved organically in an ad hoc manner of the course of the 15th through 18th centuries. However, during the Great Rebellion of 1751, the city was almost entirely devastated by a failed uprising by rebellious nobles against His Majesty the Emperor.

Modern Provisa was a planned city, emerging from the ashes of the 1751 Rebellion to be rebuilt using neoclassical-influenced logic, orderliness, linearity, and geometry. The city is organized into clean-looking grids delineating various neighborhoods and the commercial and residential districts.

The old stone Bridges of Provisa were among the few pre-1751 surviving edifices of the city, and broad, open "grand boulevards" were built around them, oftentimes over the old, 17th-century cobblestone roads.

Large, expansive parks filled with transplanted, imposing conifer and taiga trees and winding, flagstone paths dote the city at specific intervals.

The architecture of the city is dominated by Neo-Imperial and Peterian styles, though preserved buildings from a minor building boom in the late 19th and early 20th century are characterized heavily by Neo-Gothic design.

Famous Neighborhoods

The Government District holds most of the Imperial ministries and is the seat of government. The downtown Business District is the commercial hub of Provisa and is home to powerful and notable institutions such as the Provisa Stock Exchange and the headquarters of Zalleran Pharmaceuticals & Drug Company.

Kings Hill is a moneyed, exclusive historic neighborhood where national and city elites from politics, the media, popular culture, and corporate Belhavia reside.

The city also has a plethora of ethnic and foreign nationality-oriented neighborhoods.

Demographics

The Imperial Census Bureau estimated the city-province's current population as 1.49 million on January 1st, 2016, a 6.7% increase since the 2010 Imperial Census. The province is ranked 21st out of the 25 Imperial provinces in terms of population, having more residents than Raffen, Arkania, South Adrania, and the Weissland Islands.

The city has a higher average of non-ethnic Belhavians than the country as a whole, with nearly 35% of the city-province's residents being of Westerner, Emmerian, Rodarian, and Ulthrannic descent. Subsequently, there are larger communities of faith that practice religions other than Judaism. Each of the four largest communities of Belhavians of a non-native nationality or ethnic background has its own neighborhood(s) throughout the city, including Little Emmeria, New Viridia, San Verona, and Ulthrannic Zona.

Media

Provisa is a prominent center for national and international media. The city-province's media market is probably most notable for its coverage of national and international politics and Belhavian culture and finance. It has the third highest readership among metropolitan areas in 2014, trailing slightly behind Freeport City and Dakos.

The Provisa media is led by the KMG-owned flagship national newspaper the Provisa Times, which receives its namesake from originating as a newspaper of note from the city. The Times has competition in the form of the Provisa Herald and the Kings Hill Journal.

Smaller media outlets include the Imperial Weekly magazine, the City Journal of Finance, and the Independent Intelligencer.

Government & Politics

Provisa is considered a swing province. Unlike most central-northern Belhavian cities, it is considered relatively politically centrist, with pockets of both strong conservatives and liberals scattered throughout the city. This may be because of zoning laws, much of surburban and exurban Provisa - which lean conservative - are included into the city-province, balancing out the heavily liberal sections of the city center.

The current mayor is Tom Roth, a Conservative.

The Conservatives and Libertarians have a narrow 8-6 governing majority coalition on City Council.

Reflecting its diversity of ethnicity and foreign nationalities, Provisa City Council has three non-ethnic Belhavians serving, including an ethnic Oriental-Anikatian (Sae Lyang), an ethnic Eaglelander (Konstantinos Papadopoulos), and a mixed-ethnic individual (Samuel Hunter), who is half-white Emmerian and half-Belfrasian. The most recent former mayor, Ryan Weston (2007 - 2015), is an ethnic Westerner.

City Council Membership

District	Member	Party	Last Election Results	Urbanicity	Notes
1	Harold Bar-Lev	Liberal Democrat	78% - 18% - 4% (Lib Dem - Tory - Libertarian)	Urban Provisa	Elected in 1982. Considered a City Hall icon and an Callan-era liberal.
2	Sae Lyang	Liberal Democrat	84% - 9% - 7% (Lib Dem - Tory - Libertarian)	Urban Provisa	Area is the poorest in Provisa. Sae is the first ethnic Anikatian on City Council. He is also an outspoken liberal activist.
3	Jessica Rachelson	Liberal Democrat	54% - 44% - 2% (Lib Dem - Tory - Libertarian)	Urban Provisa	Area includes the Government District.
4	Tal Margolis	Liberal Democrat	66% - 34% (Lib Dem - Tory/Libertarian1)	Urban Provisa	A freshman Councilman elected in 2014 to succeed outgoing Councilman Daniel Cohen, who gave up his seat to run (unsuccessfully) for mayor, losing to fellow City Councilman and Tory Tom Roth. Margolis ran his campaign as an outspoken liberal.
5	Konstantinos Papadopoulos	Libertarian	56% - 43% (Libertarian/Tory1 - Lib Dem)	Urban Provisa	Area contains the heavily ethnic Eaglelander neighborhood of "Little Konstantinople" as well as the historic Westerner neighborhoods of "Little Viridia".
6	Samuel Hunter	Libertarian	65% - 34% - 1% (Libertarian/Tory1 - Lib Dem - Left-wing Third Parties)	Urban Provisa	Area contains libertarian-leaning young voter-rich University Hill.
7	Andrew Leibowitz	Liberal Democrat	54% - 46% (Lib Dem - Tory/Libertarian1)	Urban Provisa	Considered most conservative Lib Dem on City Council. Represents mostly working-income conservative Democrat-leaning neighborhoods where many police officers, fire-fighters, and their families reside.
8	Elazar Greenbaum	Conservative	81% - 19% - <1% (Tory - Lib Dem - Libertarian)	Urban Provisa	Area contains heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of "Crown Heights" and "King's Point." He is a back-bencher known for his mastery of parliamentarian skills.
9	Aaron Cantor	Conservative	50.3% - 49.7% (Tory/Libertarian1 - Lib Dem)	Urban Provisa	Area contains the Business District. Wealthy, liberal East Side is balanced against the very conservative, trader-filled Business District, producing a very balanced and perennially swing district.
10	Benjamin Friedman	Conservative	64% - 33% - 3% (Tory - Lib Dem - Libertarian)	Suburban Provisa	Hub of senior-level government officials, high-ranking City Hall servants, and white-collar professionals.
11	David Goldwater	Liberal Democrat	49.5% - 47.8% - 2.7% (Lib Dem - Tory - Libertarian)	Suburban Provisa	Moderate Lib Dem who is often a swing vote on the City Council. He represents a suburban Provisa district that is populated by young professionals, small businesses, and city commuters.
12	Elijah Katz	Conservative	55% - 45% (Tory/Libertarian1 - Lib Dem)	Suburban Provisa	Katz is the only licensed doctor serving on City Council.
13	Isaac Levitt	Conservative	68% - 32% (Tory/Libertarian1 - Lib Dem)	Exurban Provisa	Area consists of most of the exurban fringe of the city-province. Levitt is the longest-serving Tory on City Council, being elected in 1978. He is the current City Council President.
14	Dovid Levy	Conservative	59% - 39% - 2% (Tory - Lib Dem - Libertarian)	Urban Provisa	Wealthy, urban exclave that includes the historic and exclusive elite neighborhood of Kings Hill. It is the most conservative district in the city-province. Levy was elected in a special election in early February 2015, succeeding Tom Roth, the current mayor, who resigned his seat on January 1st, 2015, to take the mayor's seat after winning the November 2014 mayoral election.

Notes:
1. Cross-endorsed by both the Conservative and Libertarian parties.

Swing Districts

Districts 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 12 are the seats regularly targeted by both parties, though only Districts 9 and 11 have been extremely competitive in the last two election cycles of 2010 and 2012.

These districts tend to produce members who are more moderate and deviate much more from their party's orthodoxy. For example, for the 2013 - 2014 term, Goldwater, Leibowitz, Cantor, Katz, and Papadopoulos were the most likely to vote less with their respective parties compared to "safe"-seat incumbents on votes taken this term.

Urbanicity and Political Geography

The level of urban development distinctly influences political voting patterns. Using 2012 election data, the Lib Dems have a decisive edge among city voters (51.2%) compared to the Tories (37.8%) and Libertarians (10.3%). Among suburban voters, the Conservatives have a firm advantage (53.3%) versus the Lib Dems (42.5%) and Libertarians (4.2%). In the city-province's exurban fringe, the Tory advantage blossoms to nearly a supermajority (63%) compared to the Lib Dems (32%) and Libertarians (5%).

However, because of the city's fusion electoral laws, parties can cross-endorse candidates on their party lines on the ballot. Dating back to the 1974 "Settas Accord," the Conservatives and Libertarians usually cross-endorse each other's candidates, especially in districts where a divided vote would empower the Lib Dem to win. The Accord laid out the principle of "Larger Voter Bloc Takes All," where under a cross-endorsed situation, the party will more voters in the coalition candidate's district will be the party of choice if the candidate wins and is seated on City Council and/or the Mayor's office. However, cross-endorsed candidates occasionally identify with the "minor" of the two cross-endorsing parties out of personal or ideological preference.

Since 1974, the Tories and Libertarians generally cross-endorse most City Council candidates, and can narrow the edge of the Lib Dems among city voters to a slim 3.1% margin (51.2% - 48.1%) and grow the Tory's suburban and exurban margins even more.

In districts 5 and 6, because Libertarian voters outnumber Conservative voters, the cross-endorsed candidate in those districts almost always identifies as a Libertarian when seated on the Council. However, elsewhere, the cross-endorsed candidates usually identify as Conservatives because Tory voters vastly outnumber Libertarian voters in those districts.

More frequently than not, in some districts (especially heavily Lib Dem ones), local fights between the district Conservative and Libertarian Party organizations over ideological, policy, or leaders' personal differences leads to them to decline to cross-endorse and they will run their own candidates.

Education

It is home to the elite Imperial Provisa University and its graduate schools, notably the Imperial Provisa University School of Law.