The vast majority of humanity lives in or around nine cities, all of which were created by the conglomerates around the beginning of the 22^nd century for the better management of society. Most of the cities are surrounded by farming regions, as shown on the map, and these too sustain population in small settlements. There are in addition further-flung installations – power plants, mines, algae farms, sea-bed facilities, clean-up details and so on – all over the place, generally temporary structures occupied only by their workers and families. This is called OUT-working. But each of these people would think of themselves as being an inhabitant of one or other city. At the management level, of course, people move around between cities much more, and the conglomerates encourage their high-fliers to think of themselves as custodians of the whole world, not just of one region.

All nine cities have a presence for each of the three conglomerates, although some dominate locally as indicated. Also, because of the movements forced upon humanity by its tribulations, members of almost any ethnic group can be found in any of the cities, although again some are skewed as indicated. Absolutely everyone, though, has English as their native language: other languages survive only as intellectual and social curiosities.

Within a city, people live in domiciles (‘doms’), self-contained family units; or in habitations (‘habs’), semi-communal living quarters for large numbers of individuals, like apartment blocks with shared facilities. Both kinds are made of highly standardized and modular prefabricated units, so that a specialized team can disassemble a dom and replace it with a different model in just a couple of hours: and staying in a hab in a new city, you’re likely to find the water taps and the holo feed in exactly the same places as those in your old home city. This makes for a cosy familiarity about living arrangements: the conglomerates are very fond of shuffling people about within the city, to minimize the formation of enclaves, so communities tend to be ready to welcome newcomers.

Since the cities were formalized at the start of the 22^nd century, movement between them has been rare, apart from for management types, who must undergo very thorough decontamination and health screening. This helps ensure that viral contagion will not endanger humanity once more.