Midtown
Despite being the smallest district, the red light district is the most active. It takes up about 30 blocks between uptown and downtown, and although it has precious little housing most people on any given Friday night could be found in the red light district.
Because real estate prices in the red light district are relatively low and due to all of the competition for night life entertainment it encourages business owners to keep their prices low, making the red light district very accessable to people of all classes.
The Red Light District is known for having it's fair share of crime, perhaps less in your face than that of downtown, but plenty in the way of scammers, pickpockets, and drug dealers.
Industry & Trade
Best known for it's night life, midtown has many bars and clubs. Other types of businesses make up a very small portion of the businesses within midtown. A large majority of these businesses are customer facing.
Although the height of midtown creates more rental space, most businesses in the red light district are reliant on foot traffic, making the lowest "layers" of midtown prime retail space and spaces above it better suited for residential rentals or non customer facing businesses. This combined with the small size of midtown, retail rentals are always taken as soon as a business shuts down. Retail rental spaces are valuable and, likewise, expensive. Additionally because most of the businesses operating out of retail rental spaces are bars or restaurants, there is a lot of competition within midtown.
Chain companies (and companies owned by chains) make up about 40% of the commercial businesses in midtown, with the other 60% being small local businesses. Tourists often prefer chains to the local businesses, however locals to Eternity are typically very loyal to the small businesses in midtown which manages to allow them to stay in operation even as large corporations try to move in.
The limited retail space, competitive nature, retail rental costs, and reliance on foot traffic has allowed food carts to thrive within midtown. There are a wide variety of diverse food trucks in midtown, usually multiple carts on a single block. In densely populated areas, the number of food carts on a single block in midtown can go up to eight. The carts provide cheap, authetic food from around the world which have played a huge role in turning midtown into the cullinary hotspot of Eternity.
Tourism
The red light district is the tourist hotspot of Eternity. Teeming with nightlife, entertainment, and shops, people from all over the city come to spend their nights off. In fact, very few people live in the red light district. Almost all of the people who frequent it come from elsewhere.
Architecture
There is a sense of layering in the red light district. While it was previously zoned for low buildings, the building height limit was raised around 60 years ago. Following that change, realtors figured it would be a waste of time and money to remodel all of the exteriors, and instead opted to built new buildings on top of old ones. In fact, there are raised platforms and bridges in the red light district to grant people access to businesses and buildings built on top of others
Photo Credit: Liam Wong
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