The City Narrows: Difference between revisions
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[[File:city narrows 5098.jpg|frame|For a good time, enter the dark alley.]]
{{quote|''Every town in the [[Multiverse]] has a part that is something like [[Discworld|Ankh-Morpork]]'s Shades. It's usually the oldest part, its lanes faithfully following the original tracks of medieval cows going down to the river, and they have names like the Shambles, the Rookery, Sniggs Alley... [[Wretched Hive|Most of Ankh-Morpork is like that in any case]]. But the Shades is even more so, a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this - even the ''criminals'' were afraid to walk the streets. The Watch didn't set foot in it.''|'''[[
In the setting of a large sprawling Metropolis, there is one certain spot that contains the dark side of city life. It will be the place where the police rarely tread and where those who attend to certain unsavory professions rely on their own methods of protection. It will have its own nickname from the locals, it may even be marked out on the official map. Its level of actual malice may vary; it could be a place where the protagonist is in constant danger for each moment that they spend in this dark corner or it could be a rather lively area with an active [[Black Market]] that forms an actual market and gamblers, whorers and dealers collect for decadent revelry. The latter is more common when '''The City Narrows''' are the [[Not-So-Safe Harbor]] district and are thus filled with pirates' and sailors' entertainment in levels that would make [[Frank Miller]] blush.
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== Literature ==
* The Shades of Ankh-Morpork on the ''[[Discworld]]''. A classic example: the cops don't go there at all (except for the werewolf), the [[Band of Brothels|Seamstresses' Guild]] keep their girls safe with a couple of ... people and each time a major character enters it's basically just a countdown for their first [[Random Encounter]].
** Arguably, Ankh-Morpork is an inversion; ''most of the city'' constitutes one of these, at least up until the events of ''[[
** Even the
*** Indeed, one of the generals is amazed to learn that the massive loss of men wasn't due to enemy action, but because they went into the Shades carrying weapons and armour - i.e. valuable loot.
* The underlevels of Coruscant in ''[[Star Wars]]''{{'}} prequel trilogy and extended universe. The planet is one huge city, so overdeveloped that the lower levels barely ever, often never, see natural sunlight. This drives the property values down and attracts the wrong sort of character (though Palpatine probably tried to [[British Newspapers|shift the blame on non-human immigrants]]).{{verify}} The ''[[X Wing Series]]'' has Gavin Darklighter from Tatooine going to the underlevels of Coruscant and thinking that "if Mos Eisely was considered the armpit of the galaxy, this part of Coruscant could be considered anatomically lower and decidedly less hygienic."
** By contrast the lower levels of Nar Shadda (The "Smuggler's Moon") are a sort of inversion. They're considered ''safer'' than the higher levels because everyone walks around armed and no one has anything worth stealing.
* Several of [[Andre Norton]]'s science fiction novels (such as ''Judgement on Janus'', ''Catseye'' and ''Forerunner Foray'') have The Dipple, a refugee camp in the planet Korwar's capital city of Tikil. The character who were born there ''always'' escape because there is no [[Happy Ending]] while you are in it.
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* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the poor lower levels of New New York in the episode "Gridlock," complete with vendors selling mood-altering substance patches.
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Suicide Slums]] in [[Smallville|Metropolis]]
* Played with in the third season of ''[[The Wire]]''. Hamsterdam (a legalized drug zone, with all of the unpleasantness you'd think that implies, and a bit more) is made as far away as possible with it still being accessible to street dealers. It's still not far enough so that
* Several parts of Honolulu in ''[[Magnum, P.I.]]''.
* While it is doubtful that any part of Sunnydale (the setting for ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'') is safe, [[Good Guy Bar|the Bronze]] (a popular nightclub frequented by the cast) is located in "the bad part of town". It does tend to be targeted by monsters rather often.
== Tabletop Games ==
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* The favela in ''[[Modern Warfare]] 2'' in Rio. There's literally an entire army of heavily-armed Brazilian criminals there who do ''not'' take well to outsiders. You know you're in a bad place when the only viable way to enter the area and locate the one criminal you're trying to find is to walk in ''shooting a weapon in the air'' so you can draw the militia out for a straight fight instead of trying to sneak through and get surrounded.
* Rapture's Apollo Square district in ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' is a fine example of this, despite the city being barely 10 years old at the time.
* ''[[Cyberpunk (role-playing game)|Cyberpunk]]'': Night City is already a [[Wretched Hive]] even by the standards of the [[Crapsack World]], but there are parts of it that are somehow even worse. In [[Cyberpunk 2077|2077]], there's the Pacifica district's Dogtown, being controlled by a Dangerous Deserter's gang and something that the cops, corps, and most other gangs want nothing to do with other than to wall it off and keep the bad, crazy people in.
== Web Original ==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131102070203/http://www.collegehumor.com/video/3896718/rape-tunnel-a-valentines-day-love-story---moon-county The Rape Tunnel.] "It actually has
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* Japan:
** [https://www.tofugu.com/japan/nishinari/ Nishinari Ward] is considered the slum of Osaka and the most dangerous place in Japan. Multiple riots took place there, and even now it remains infamous for strong [[Yakuza]] presence and the largest [[Red Light District]] in the nation. It is almost literally on the [[Wrong Side of the Tracks]] from much more upmarket Namba to the north.
** Kabukicho in Shinjuku, Tokyo, which you may have heard of from ''[[Gintama]]'' or the [[No Communities Were Harmed]] "Kamurocho" in ''[[Ryu ga Gotoku|Yakuza]]'', has long had an unsavoury reputation for sleaze and crime.
* There are places in Singapore like Orchard Towers or certain parts of Geylang where it is an open secret that prostitution, which is officially illegal in the country, is quietly tolerated as long as no one rocks the boat.
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