Freeport City
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Freeport City | |
|---|---|
| City of Freeport | |
| Panoramic view of city harbor and downtown. Panoramic view of city harbor and downtown. | |
| Nickname: "City of Industrious People" | |
| Country | Belhavia |
| Founded | 1657 |
| Port Town for Foreign Trade | 1657 |
| Free Port (informally) | 1680s |
| City of Freeport | 1745 |
| Founded by | Zevulun ben David Charles Stamford (Belfrasian merchant) |
| Provincial capital | Freeport |
| Government | |
| • Type | Strong Mayor-Council Form |
| • Body | City Council |
| • Mayor | Avi Moskovitz (Liberal Democrat) |
| • City Council President | Jacob Klein (Liberal Democrat) |
| • Minority Leader | Evan Bloomberg (Conservative) |
| Population (2015) | |
| • City | 3,861,474 |
| • Metro | 4,765,088 |
| Demonym | Freeporters |
| Ethnic groups | |
| • Belhavian Jews | 64.0% |
| • Western Jews | 11.2% |
| • Rodarians | 10.6% |
| • Emmerians | 9.0% |
| • Belfrasians | 8.3% |
| Time zone | UTC+2 (WPT) |
The City of Freeport, commonly referred to as Freeport (also a province), is a metropolitan port city in Freeport province, situated in the north-central Belhavia.
It was founded in 1657 as a Port Town for Foreign Trade by the King, but as early as the 1680s was being referred to informally by Lusankyan merchants as Freeport. In 1745, the city was renamed to this longstanding "nickname" out of its pervasive use, and it remains the distinction of being the only city in the country to be named from foreign influence.
It is a bustling seaport that is third behind Dakos and Tel Nafesh as a hub of shipping and ship-building. Beyond its extensive port facilities, Freeport City hosts a decaying but still-existing industrial core, with automobile manufacuturing a dominant industry with companies such as the Western-based Common Motors and Emmerian-based Hunter Motor Company retaining production plants in the city.
Being a maritime center, the city hosts a litany of civil and military shipyards, as well as firms and institutions of higher education that focus on marine engineering and naval architecture. It is also notable as the global headquarters for the Kalian Media Group and the start and hub of the Cross-National Rail Company's private commuter, passenger, and freight transport rail network.
History
Geography
The city of Freeport has a natural harbor, which was the site of a medieval walled city during the Grand Duchy of Provisum. A few years after the establishment of the Kingdom of Belhavia, the area was selected as an open port for foreign traders, especially Lusankyan merchants ships from the Kingdom of Belfras, the Papal States, and other early modern states.
Climate
Freeport is in the coastal continental climate of North Belhavia, in a climatic band similar to other cities such as Dakos. It typically experiences medium, mildly cold winters, with chilly-to-warm temperate springs and falls, and prolonged warm and wet summers. Central Ocean storms are a frequent occurrence, and provide above-average precipitation in some years.
The city receives heavy precipitation, usually between 46 and 60.5 inches per year.
Cityscape
The ruins of the original city, Tel Talia, is maintained near Mount Lev, and is referred to as the "Old Quarter". The shoreline is the site of miles of port and ship-related platforms and facilities. Near the so-called "Old Harbor", a robust downtown and harbor walk-promenade is maintained.
In the Northwest and North of the city, an urban industrial core remains from the early-to-mid-20th century. Until the 1830s, the city grew and evolved in an ad hoc manner; after this, city leaders implemented planned city principles.
After decades of urban blight in the 1930s through to the 1980s, the mayor and city council in 1988 decided to start a citywide beautification program and used eminent domain to bulldoze whole sections of rundown and blighted neighborhoods and rebuild anew. These "Rejuvenation Zones", mostly clustered in the South and Southeast of Freeport, were designed according to neoclassical city planning theories in vogue at the time, and many streets have parks and tree-lined medians interspersed at regular intervals. Likewise, the neighborhoods are particularly grid-like and geometric, aligning with similar (but older) designs in cities such as Provisa.
Demographics
Similar to other coastal urban enclaves in North Belhavia, Freeport City and its metropolitan area is a super-majority Jewish (approx. 64%) but over a third of its residents are of non-Jewish ethnicities or foreign nationalities (36%). The city, because of its distinct neighborhoods and patterns of historical immigration, is heavily ethnoreligiously-segregated.
Dating back to the city's founding in the 1650s, there remains an ancient community of Belfrasian heritage. More recently, the city hosts areas catering to ethnic and Romulan Catholic Rodarians, white Christian and Persian Muslim Emmerians, and ethnic Western Jews.
Within Freeport, people of various backgrounds have taken jobs stereotypically-associated with their groups. Belfrasians by and large work in the maritime industries, Rodarians in the working-income industrial jobs that remain, and ethnic Jews, Emmerians, and Westerns in so-called "knowledge economy" white-collar service jobs.
While foreign-based sociologists have criticized this workforce breakdown as 'perpetuating economic inequities', most Freeporters seem to have no issue with it. One poll by the Freeport Daily Herald polled citizens in 2008 on the issue, and 76% agreed that 'our city's workforce breakdown by ethnicity and foreign nationality is just fine', compared to 19% who agreed that it was 'problematic and an issue local leaders should address.' One Arthuristan labor economist, Sir James O'Keefe, called Freeport "a walking corpse of inequity and stereotypes."
Economy
Freeport City Economic Sectors by Share of Exports and Sales
The economy of the city is one of a few areas of Belhavia that is still primarily industrial, being focused on export and manufacturing. Automobiles and ships are the chief industrial export goods, followed by other finished-goods such as steel and construction vehicles.
Mount Lev has extensive metal-mineral mines, producing a large industry focused on transforming metal ore into refined metal alloys for industrial and commercial uses. Freeport City hosts the 8th-largest concentration of metal refinement industry in the country.
Culture
Media
The Freeport Daily Herald is the paper of record of the Freeport City metropolitan area. It provides an emphasis on local news and reporting, as well as business news. Its editorial board is generally pro-business but it leans center-left politically.
The city is the headquarters of the powerful Kalian Media Group, whose main building is located in the downtown and employs over 2,000 staff at its Freeport location.
Overall, cable TV dominates the television market, with approximately 69% of households having them compared to 30% with satellite TV.
The main city-centric tabloid magazine is Metro Intelligencer & Daily News.
Government & Politics
Freeport City is considered a liberal city. Like most central-northern Belhavian cities, it is considered politically liberal, though it has pockets of strong conservatives scattered throughout the city. Unlike Provisa and some other cities, its zoning laws restricted the political boundaries to the urban core, excluding the more conservative suburban and exurban metropolitan areas, such as wealthy and right-leaning towns like Avalon.
The current mayor is four-term incumbent Avi Moskovitz, a Liberal Democrat.
The Lib Dems dominate the city's 15-member city council, with a commanding 12-3 majority. The minority Conservatives have two seats on City Council, and the last non-Lib Dem is an Independent.
Reflecting its diversity of ethnicity and foreign nationalities, Freeport City Council has 4 non-Jewish Belhavians serving.
City Council Membership
| District | Member | Party | Last Election Results | Urbanicity | City Region | Quarter | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ian Barclay | Liberal Democrat | 98.7% Lib Dem 1.3% Write-ins |
Urban | Southwest | Maritime | Leader of the ethnic Belfrasian community with rumored ties to "Old World" transnational criminal syndicates. |
| 2 | Jacob Feinstein | Liberal Democrat | 81.7% Lib Dem 10.2% Tory 3.4% Libertarian 4.7% Independents and Write-ins |
Urban | Southwest | Maritime | A former major labor leader among Jewish dockworkers, Feinstein joined City Council to bring taxpayer monies and projects to his district. |
| 3 | Ronald Preston | Liberal Democrat | 61.4% Lib Dem 37.9% Tory 0.7% Write-ins |
Urban | Southwest | Maritime | Part of Barclay's faction, his family has controlled this council seat since 1909. A member of the Board of Directors for a large maritime firm, he fights for pro-business and pro-maritime industry policies. |
| 4 | Norm Cohen | Liberal Democrat | 51.2% Lib Dem 23.8% Tory Independent 21.9% 1.9% Libertarians 1.2% Write-ins |
Urban | Southwest | Old Harbor | A former Small Business Coalition city chapter president, Cohen is a former co-founder of several downtown tech startups. One of the youngest members at age 33. |
| 5 | Moshe Litt | Conservative | 57.6% Tory 41.8% Lib Dem 0.6% Write-ins |
Urban | Southeast | Military | A former Imperial Navy commander and a current professor at the Freeport Military Academy, Litt leads the small non-Lib Dem opposition. |
| 6 | Schlomo Glasser | Conservative | 47.5% Tory 43.1% Lib Dem 4.9% Independent 4.0% Independent 1.2% Write-ins |
Urban | Southeast | Military | An Orthodox Jew and staunch conservative elected from a mixed military-Orthodox Jewish district. |
| 7 | Esther Berman | Liberal Democrat | 59.3% Lib Dem 40.5% Independent 0.2% Write-in |
Urban | Northeast | New Town | |
| 8 | Claudiu Daciana | Liberal Democrat | 96.5% Lib Dem 3.5% Write-ins |
Urban | Northeast | New Town | A leader in the large Rodar-Catholic community, he is a conservative Liberal Democrat. |
Education
The main campus of Freeport Provincial University, a private for-profit university that is the dean of higher education institutions in the province, is located in the city's downtown.
The elite and prestigious Freeport Military Academy, which trains military cadets from all the service branches, is located in the city's Southwest, which is considered unofficially as the 'Military Quarter'.
The city is home to a number of yeshivos, for both the high-school, college, and post-married age cohorts.
Infrastructure
The Cross-National Rail Company, which operates the largest private commuter, passenger, and freight transport rail network in Belhavia, operates the hub of its rail operations and lines out of the city. Over a million rail passengers pass through or stop in Freeport City on a daily basis, marking the city as the most-trafficked passenger rail center in the nation.
The city has five different multilane highways and turnpikes that intersect or surround the city, which has earned the name "the Crescent Beltway" for the "crescent moon"-shaped circuit of highways that ring the outskirts of the city on the map.
The city is particularly known for its aggressive and prolific neighborhood and residential district private road maintance companies that will enter into contracts with neighborhood, city, or private community organizations to build, maintain, and service local road needs in return for monthly, semi-yearly, or even yearly charges and fees paid by local residents.