Hope City

Hope City is the setting for most of the stories in this universe, including the upcoming novel hope City Stories. It is an independent city-state founded some time in the first half of the twenty-first century, on the ruins of an unnamed old city.

Politics

Hope City is divided into thirty-nine administrative districts. The citizens and businesses of each district elect three Representatives, with the exception of the Core District (which has no representation in the outer circle), and three primarily industrial districts (where the companies can select a single rep for each district, while there is a single citizen representative to represent less than a thousand people who live in those areas). There are also two Floating Reps, to represent people without a permanent address, and those who are in hospital or incarcerated but have no home waiting for them on the outside. This makes an 'outer circle' of 101 representatives are responsible for addressing the City on behalf of their district. As well as dealing with disputes between districts, the representatives then elect the City Council who are the main decision makers.

The City Council consists of a variable number of Councillors, currently twenty-seven. Each Councillor is responsible for a specific interest group, area of policy, or sometimes a region of the city if it has specific issues. The Council can create new seats through a summary meeting if they are needed, but those seats can only be filled by holding a vote among the Representatives. They can also dissolve a council seat that is no longer needed, but the Councillor in that seat retains their position and their vote for one calendar year and one day after the next election for their seat would otherwise have been held. For historical reasons, a Councillor in this position is known as a Representative Without Placard, and on their retirement there is still an election for a replacement in the Outer Circle.

In Council elections, "Dissolution of the Seat" is always on the list of candidates. If the Council has already dissolved the seat under election, this option is considered to win unless another candidate achieves a quorate majority (greater than half of the sitting representatives, and more than two thirds of the non-abstaining votes cast). In the case where the Council still believes a seat necessary, a quorate majority is required to select dissolution; and if the Representatives wish to create a seat 'from outside' they would need an absolute majority (at least seventy votes for the selected candidate).

The terms served by Representatives vary between districts, ranging from two to six years. However, city law instructs that no more than four Representatives and two Councillors can be elected in any month; in the case the normal cycle of dates would exceed this, any deceased or impeached Representatives/Councillors are replaced first, followed by those who have served the longest terms, and the remainder are postponed until the next month. The term of a Council seat is decieded by a simple majority among the Council when it is created, and cannot later be changed.

The Council officially passes all laws. However, in most cases one or more Councillors are appointed to a subcommittee on some specific issue, which may also include Representatives or citizens. Often subcommittees include representatives or representatives without placard enough to ensure that the committee's internal votes consist of Council members in the majority. The decisions made by a subcommittee are considered recommendations, which are read at the next full City Council meeting. However, the Council nearly always votes to pass whatever a committee recommended.

One Council seat that cannot be dissolved is that of the Mayor. On paper, the Mayor has only a single Council vote and is a leader in name only. However, tradition has led to the Mayor sitting on many more committees than other Councillors; the Mayor can demand invitation to any Committee meeting and cast a vote there. Over the last fifty years, there have been numerous cases where the recommendations of a "committee of one" (the Mayor; who is uniquely permitted to present recommendations to the Council without a quorate vote) have been accepted uncontested along with all the other recommendations. It is also a long-standing tradition that the Mayor may see the votes of the rest of the Council before casting theirs. But if they do not, then Councillors who disagree with the mayor's vote are expected to explain their reasoning before casting a vote.

History

Hope City was founded on the ruins left by the Blast, which happened some time in the first half of the twenty-first century. This left land considered uninhabited at the time, so when Mayor Clarke raised money to buy vast areas of toxic land, there was little obstruction to her declaring it sovereign territory. She was the only person who understood her decontamination process, so the government at the time had the choice of surrendering a city-sized chunk of land, or of continuing to be responsible for an uninhabitable wasteland which could potentially have a negative impact on the health of people living nearby.

Hope City is built on an artificial ceramic shield, the base layer, which covers underground areas, basements and caverns too complex to be easily decontaminated. These areas were treated as well as the technology allows, but there is still a chance of residue from whatever caused the Blast in some areas. Citizens are allowed to visit the sealed spaces down there, but few realise it even exists.

Mayor Clarke appointed herself mayor, selected the first City Council (now known as the founders), and gifted the land in the city to the entity she had created. Since then, the mechanisms of government have remained unchanged.