Midgar



Midgar is the captital city of the world of Final Fantasy VII and its spin-offs. It is the most technologically advanced location ever constructed on The Planet. Built by the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company, it is home to the corporation's main headquarters, the Shin-Ra Building. Thanks to the eight Mako Reactors the city's massive power demands are easily met, but at a cost. The surrounding countryside has is a wasteland of perpetual night, without any vegetation. Being ruled with an iron fist by the police-state Shin-Ra and with its dark atomsphere, Midgar easily fits the vision of a dystopian future. It was largely destroyed by Meteor after the defeat of Sephiroth.

Design


Midgar is divided up between two main sectors, the paradise above the Plate, and the miserable slums below. Above the plate, the richest and most powerful men in the world run most of the world's affairs. These include the Shin-Ra executive's, along with the de facto world leader, President Shin-Ra.

Being surrounded by massive walls and divided up into various sectors, Midgar is difficult, if not impossible to travel through on foot. The two sectors are completely cut-off from each other outside of hidden paths made of junk. Instead, commuters have to use the extensive rail system to go to other parts of the city. These rail systems are heavily monitored by the city's security system. Those without proper ID will be instantly arrested by the authorities.

The city was built over eight tiny villages, the names of which have now been lost. These eight towns make up the eight sectors of the slums.

Miles underground the city, Shin-Ra's darkest secrets lurk. There is an entire hidden city that is home to their Deep Ground Soldier program. After Meteor hit, the subterrean soldiers would be trapped beneath the suface for three whole years.

The Slums


Unlike the metropolitan and cosmopolitan top, the Slums are home to bitter poverty. Do to the "pizza" plate hundreds of feet above their head, the people of the Slums can go their entire lives without ever once seeing the sky above. While the top is designed with cobble-stone paths and fine archetecture, the Slums' buildings represent the severe desperation of its population. Buildings range from perminant strutures like houses and cottages, to crude edifices such as mobile-homes and huts. The homeless have to make do with whatever shelter they can find.

The Slums are filled with junk of all sorts, ruins of the days when they once were seperate towns. Monsters roam the abandoned areas between the sectors. Crime flourishes in this rough environment, especially do to the lack of law and order. Criminal Syndicates, like that under Don Corneo serve vices of all kinds - and of all preferences. The Wall Market especially is home most every perversion imaginable. Shin-Ra allows such practices to go unregulated thanks to the Don being a vabulable informant for terrorist activities based in the Slums.

AVALANCHE led by Barret Wallace and made up of eco-terrorists and mercenaries like Cloud Strife, is the organiazation out to save the Planet from Shin-Ra's draining of the world's lifeforce are a dangerous prescense in the city. Largely ignored before, the organization managed to blow up the [[Sector 1 Reactor, causing 1 Billion Gil worth of damage.  Later attempts on the Sector 5 Reactor were less successful.



Despite the crime and perversion, all is not misery in the Slums. Aeris Gainborough being a Cetra was actually able to grow flowers in the almost impossible climate underneath the plate. Her church was a sign of hope for the citizens, even beyond her death. Her ghost can still be seen by children who continue to visit the place long after Aeris left Midgar with Cloud and his party.

Tifa Lockhart was also able to scratch out a life with her bar, the 7th Heaven. It functioned as the main base for AVALANCHE until Shin-Ra destroyed it and the rest of Sector 7 by dropping a section of plate upon it.

Shin-Ra Headquarters


The Shin-Ra Building dominates the Midgar skyline, easily being much taller than any other struture in the entire city. Being in the center, it is the heart and soul of the metropolis. Mayor Domino, supposedly in control of the city, works in the upper floors of the building. Rather he is little more than a libraian, instead President Shin-Ra himself rules the city on the top floor. His executive, Reeve Tuesti is in charge of the urban development of the city.

Neo Midgar
"Neo Midgar" was an idea thought up by President Shin-Ra. It would be built in the legendary Promised Land, and would be an improved model based upon the current design of the present Midgar. Because the Promised Land was so full of Mako that it would not even need to processed beforehand, it would clearly be a better location for the Electric Power Company's headquaters. Because of plans to move to Neo Midgar, Sector 5 was not rebuilt after it was destroyed along with most of AVALANCHE.