Street Level: Intro

This is the new idea I have for a cyberpunk campaign. More corps, new guns, vehicles, etc. will come out of this later...right now, a basic idea.

The world's population has been growing quickly, and as a result, the government has been buying up land to use to grow foodstuffs and corn for ethanol processing. On the east coast, 100,000,000 people live within 100 square miles....
Or rather...5000 cubic miles. The majority of people have been moved into Astropolis, a massive city 100 miles square, that extends 10 miles up and anchors 40 miles down. This megarcology is filled with bustling streets, highways, shops, office buildings...but the majority of the population lives at lower levels. Due to the high density and high demand for space, the city is almost entirely controlled by a massive architectural development firm called Street Level Developments, Ltd. SLD has so much clout in city politics that it has its own police force, and it's own city officials which interact with the government there. Due to the cozy relationship with local government, high level corporate and government officials get preferential treatment for housing, while everyone else pretty much gets screwed. SLD is not the only powerful corporation in the game, and in the long run, it isn't the most powerful, either. Its clout is restricted to within city limits, and once you leave Astropolis, three gigantic agricorps rule the land. Valdez Energy Consortium, Federated Land Holdings, and Agricultural Management all hold some portion of the massive fields and forests taken by eminent domain for cultivation. Nearly all farmable land is farmed as such.
Past the Rockies, the story is a little different. There are small communities on the California coast that exist for managing the farms. This is different because whil the cornfields of the midwest are there for ethanol and Hydrol production, the fields and vineyards on the West Coast are for growing food. About 10,000,000 people live in about 2,000 small corporate-subsidized communities along the California, Oregon, and Washington coasts.
The rest of the world, with the exception of Russia, is dependent on either the American corporations or the independent Russian agridomes for food. The Russian agridomes are huge sealed communities of 2,000,000 or so, often holding 20-50 square miles of cultivation land around the central dome, which occupies 10 square miles above ground, and usually has a huge complex underground as well. Each dome community acts as an independent city state, as most of them were built before the Soviet Union was nuked by the United States and Europe. The massive hyperelastic domes that had radii of nearly 20 miles have long since collapsed under their own weight, but they lasted long enough to keep the cultivated land safe from radioactive fallout.
Life in Astropolis is unique. Space is at a premium, unless you live in a corporate penthouse, 45-50 miles above the ground. You could have your own bedroom and common room, and even a bathroom and kitchen, an amazing luxury considering that the majority of workers live in a cube or a small studio with a communal bathroom. Communal bathrooms and even unisex bathrooms are ubiquitous in most living areas, which has made rape an issue in some poorer areas. Many women now carry small stilettos in sheathes on their thighs, weapons that, because of their common use in bathrooms and locker rooms, are now known as "dick-slitters". In general, the small corridors are cramped, uncomfortable, and dangerous, but the majority of people have access to open-air walkways and pavilions. In the underground levels, there's actually a bit more room, though for the most part, underground is not residential, but the majority of people work at a workshop, warehouse, or factory below ground.
Transportation occurs mostly by massive elevators integrated into the huge support columns. Also, grav transport is common, with the average gravbike costing only 30,000 credits, affordable to someone living comfortably, or outside the law. The edgerunner economy is bustling, as transactions that happen at ground level rarely are known of by any authorities even 2 miles up.
Because of the lack of living space outside of Astropolis, almost no one is allowed to leave unless they can prove intent to return to their domicile. Despite this, nomads live in the forests that could not be converted to farmland, mostly around the Appalachians and the Rockies. The human smuggling rate is high, and next to drugs, one of the only forms of organized crime the corps care about.
In reality, the corps are generally too busy worrying about European markets...with genetic engineering getting more bizarre, it's possible that the agricorps will lose their market dominance. Who knows what happens to Astropolis if globalization resumes...