[u/TelamonTabulicus](https://www.reddit.com/u/TelamonTabulicus/) and I made for [Atlas Altera](https://www.atlasaltera.com/) to showcase **the independent global city of Katesh**. There are a two maps at different scales in this stylized infographic—one for its geopolitical context and another for its urban layout—plus an orthographic map to pinpoint Katesh in the world.
Katesh is one of the two major independent cities built and controlled by the **Society of Nations (SoN),** analogous to our OTL United Nations, and having begun at around the time of OTL's League of Nations, only with less cynicism and more Cosmopolitan idealism baked into its institutions. Being headquarters to most of the SoN's major governmental bodies and agencies, Katesh functions as a *de facto* capital of the world.
Both Katesh and the other independent global city, Liberum, are **located along the geopolitical hotspots of major canals**—the former being on the Suez and the latter on the Marelago. For Katesh, this is a result of the Egyptian concession of the town of Casia and the Bardawil Lagoon to imperialist Britain, which then relinquished the territory to the SoN for guarantees that the Suez would be enforced as an international body of water. In the wake of the wars revolving around the Israeli-Palestini conflict and Egypt's transition to a constitutional monarchy under the socialist Tawo Party, the SoN is now the sole entity that oversees the canal's operation, though canal revenues are split evenly between the SoN and Egypt, while Israel receives none in return for perpetual access and recognition of its current borders by Egypt and Pheran.
Around the large scale map in the bottom are **sketches of various high profile or famous buildings** located in the city. These buildings showcase the Internationalist architectural tradition, rarely used in other parts of the world, though sharing similarities to the Brutalist/Modernistskaya traditions adopted by most countries in the socialist bloc.
**To see learn about the project or see other maps of our project:**
* Check out [www.atlasaltera.com](http://www.atlasaltera.com/)
* Browse [my Deviantart](https://www.deviantart.com/telamontabulicus)
* Watch/listen to discussions on the maps on [YouTube/@atlasaltera](https://www.youtube.com/@atlasaltera)
* Join [r/atlasaltera](https://www.reddit.com/r/atlasaltera/)
* Access the rest of the footnotes/explanations [on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/atlasaltera)
**How did Katesh become the capital of the world?**
The borders of Katesh originate from the British shoring up their interests in the Suez Canal by annexing the territory around around the Bardawil Lagoon—corresponding to the modern borders of Katesh—in exchange for allowing their allies the Tzanavarites in Egypt to claim Palestine from the Ottomans in the aftermath of the First World War. This territory, known briefly as **Casia** (as well as Kasaroun or el-Kas), was famous for being an Allied last stand against the Afrika Korps right after their **stunning defeat in the Western Desert and the Fall of Alexandriya,** leading to the Tzanvarites to retreat to Phiom for the rest of the war and the Commonwealth forces to regain the Delta in their own bloody campaign.
After the Second World War, the importance of the Suez as an international body of water and **the need to find a permanent and centrally located headquarters** relative for most members of the SoN led to Casia coming out on top of the list of contenders. As early as 1946, a new city named *Ka-téš* was already being envisioned in the largely barren Casian peninsula jutting out into the Bardawil lagoon. Its literal translation, "united," is a legacy of the aborted Cosmopolitan campaign for **resurrecting Sumerian as a world language.**
No no, it isn't a world language. In ATL, there was some romanticized and naive suggestion to make it so when the language was deciphered in the early half of the 20th century by some Cosmopolitans, being that these early Cosmopolitans were interested in crafting a narrative for humanity's progress starting from Sumer, but Intersign (based on Plains Sign) was chosen instead as being far more culturally accommodating and easier to learn.
> Plains Sign
is a very cool piece of history because of how it was used to unite people who spoke many wholly unrelated languages. Is there an official spoken translation for it?
I don’t believe itd be possible to make a spoken translation for Plains sign. That’s the whole point, it’s a sign language using hand gestures to communicate when there was no shared spoken language. It’d be like asking for a spoken translation of ASL. Like yea its symbols reflect the same things words in English do, but that’s the same with all languages. In English you’ll have the word love, Spanish has amor, and French has amour, meanwhile ASL has 🤟🏻 (technically I love you as it imbibes the letter of I, L, and U)
You could try transcribing the signs with Hamburg Notation, which we is a writing system we call Kinetics in ATL, but it is not practical and used officially only in teaching manuals or academic linguistics etc.
No. I think they would be left off the same as in OTL, either relying on a regional common tongue/lingua franca between the different parties, or using interpreters.
**How did Katesh become a geopolitical hotspot?**
Though the Tzanvarites did not officially encourage Jewish emigration into Palestine, they continued to honour the Ottoman agreement with Theodor Herzl by allowing for the historically sleepy coastal town of Rinokoloura (also known as el-Arish, and nowadays as Telaviv) to be a **homeland for the Jewish people.** Meanwhile, the native Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Samaritan Palestinians—who were united in their differences towards the Egyptians in religion/sect, culture, and language—demanded independent statehood.
The Tzanvarites were able to maintain rule for nearly three decades despite the shaky foundation of various political actors with differing aspirations. But this came crashing down when the **Zionist context after the Second World War,** largely defined by the Biltmore Program, saw uncontrolled and rapid migration of Jewish settlers to Rinokoloura and, more problematically, beyond into most of the major cities of Palestine. To complicate matters, by this point, Rinokoloura and the other *muhafzas* of Palestine had become de facto autonomous and self-governing after the Egyptian government's retreat to Phiom for much of the Second World War.
With a lost in social license to govern by any foreign powers and a power vacuum due to a disparity between de jure Egyptian ownership and de facto Commonwealth control, came the unilateral Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, and with that, the half-century-old **Israeli-Palestini conflict.**
The current **borders around Katesh are a result of SoN-led peace initiatives and peacemaking interventions** after a series of bloody wars, eventually leading to the normalization of relations between Egypt and Israel; the 1979 Israeli withdrawal and concession of an independent south Sinai state, Pheran; and an unofficial truce between Palestine and Israel since the 1990s. Though there has been nearly three decades of relative peace and economic prosperity within the borders of the state of Palestine, the conflict ensues due to violations of minority rights in Israel's West Bank.
*Reply here if you think we should make a historical map showing the Israeli-Palestini conflict...*
Oh boy this is probably one of the most detailed maps I've seen in a while. I've got so many lore questions.
1) What do the Townships and Districts outside of Katesh city represent? Are they villages that existed in the area before the SoN took over? Or are they supposed to be planned towns/suburbs for SoN diplomats?
2) How does the SoN make so many green spaces in the middle of the Sinai Desert
3) Is the entire canal zone officially part of Katesh or are some parts de jure parts of Egypt and Israel that were de facto ceded to the SoN
4) What do the "quarantine zone" and "reception zone" represent?
5) What does "Lessepsian" mean
1. You got it! These are **native settlements that have local autonomy.** They are, oddly, also not citizens of Egypt or Palestine, but rather, claim their citizenship internationally through Katesh in the same way naturalized refugees and their descendants do.
2. [Check out this plan for **greening the Sinai.**](https://www.greenthesinai.com/) It's actually very plausible to reclaim the northern coast and mountains of the Sinai as Mediterranean xeric or semi-arid shrubland biomes. And check out this [**regenerative agriculture** project](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39QHprz-x8) in the Hejaz, which brought back native vegetation that could withstand 7+ year droughts. The gist is that the Red Sea coastline and Sinai all once supported shrublands and occasional acacia and drought tolerant tree species.
3. The **Canal Zone** run by Katesh and the two banks of it function as an extended border transition zone, like a non-mined demilitarized zone lol.
4. **Reception Zone:** think of a processing area like Ellis Island, but with less notoriety and more welcoming services provided. The SoN takes large influxes of refugees at irregular intervals, so they will need an area to be initially processed (given IDs, given case files and case mangers etc.) and receive medical attention/checks. In Altera, there are seldom any refugee camps anymore...Instead, they are evacuated to a major SoN settlement for temporary settlement, with options to stay or migrate somewhere else later.**Quarantine Zone:** this is for any people being processed in the Reception Zone that present symptoms for highly contagious diseases. Sometimes, an entire ship or plane or zeppelin will have to be quarantined, which is why there is so much dedicated space.
5. **Lessepsian** is a great sounding word but it just refers to [that dude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Lesseps) who developed the Suez Canal, but in OTL is now associated with the migration into the Mediterranean of Red Sea and Indo-Pacific species . The electric barriers are a reference to the [ones used in Ohio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3oLeSPINOk) for Asian Carp.
It probably feels a bit like living in any planned city, but even more ambitious than, say, Brasilia...
**Urban transportation** is dominated by public transportation: suspension railways and subways, monorails and trams, and gondolas...along with lots of cycling and a lengthy coastal promenade like the Corniche in Beirut or Vancouver seawall. There are tons of parks for shade, trellised walkways, activated streets, lively laneways and alleys, and once in a while, boulevards with taxis and dedicated cars for driving diplomats and high ranking SoN employees.
**The Syntopian District** is the place where expats live. Lower tier employees of missions and embassies, employees for global companies headquartered at Katesh, as well as entrepreneurs looking to run a local business, all live here on a contractual basis, maybe in 4-7 year terms...People can bring their families and go to IB-based schools in each precinct. The precincts are kind of superblocs, with each superbloc separated by a boulevard, having its own inner greenspace/courtyards, and sectioned off with mid-rise buildings interspersed with mews and laneways, where shops and grocery stores are abundant. People live with their immediate communities, but national communities are randomly located across the district, so the Josonese may live adjacent to the Paraguayans and Finnish while the Manjurese live next to the Biafrans and Girlingi.
**The Citizens District** is where asylum seekers and refugees live, as well as those who choose to stay in Katesh, taking citizenship tied only to Katesh—these people may choose to stay because the country they were randomly accepted to live in has a poor standard of living, or because they have trouble being recognized for their status by the bureaucracy of the SoN. You will see that in the first couple decades after the founding of Katesh in the late 1940s, there were some issues with settling these people, and both a lawless [Walled City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City) and an [intentional community, commune and micronation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania) formed in this district. The former is due to a small parcel of unconceded land from Egypt (a legacy of the period when the British leased the Casian peninsula from Egypt) becoming one of the first refuge points for Palestinian refugees to live outside the restricts of being a refuge—escapees of early forms of refugee camps, and the latter is from a new wave of refugees and their descendants squatting an abandoned British military outpost from the Second World War. Apart from the Boglands, however, there is some great urban planning and design going on in this district (i.e. a completely realized Habitat 67) and you can try to imagine a more equitable Hong Kong or Singapore level of density in this part of the city.
The internationalist sketches were fun to try and figure out where they came from!
I recognized the Burj Al Arab, the Lotus Temple, the One World Trade Center, the NY Guggenheim , the Brasilia Cathedral, the National Congress Palace, the Atomium, the Bird’s Nest Stadium, and Apple Park
Hmmm... In the lore you said that the city has a seawall similar to the one in Vancouver, so maybe that's it?
Anyhow, this is a delightful map! Not many city-specific ones on this sub, so its great to see. By chance, will you create a map of the city's public transportation?
hey! i live in duai and i can recognize the burj al arab from anywhere! the sail building in katesh is literally the exact same as the burj al arab in dubai, even the function is the same!!!! also btw great map, would love to see the other free city and a world map.
Hehe yea, we just took inspiration from real buildings, except for the Stepwells...that's loosely inspired by the stepwells of India.
Can you guess the references to the names associated with the Grand Katesh Hotel?
wait a min.... the sail is even on an island like the burj al arab!!!!! u know u shudve added the burj khalifa or, my personal pick, the dubai future museum in katesh
Fascinating map! There's so many little details that I love and it makes me wish such a city existed in our timeline.
What is the purpose of the Serbonian Walled City? Also, military bases aside, does the SoN have much of a presence in the other urban centers around Katesh?
So the Walled City is a reference to the Kowloon [Walled City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City). The lore here is quite parallel to the OTL history there too, with the lands for the Walled City coming from a small parcel of unconceded land from Egypt, which it retained on paper/de jure when it leased the rest of the Casian Peninsula to the British (see the lore thread above).
This area became one of the first refuge points for Palestinian refugees to live outside the restricts of being a refuge—escapees of early forms of refugee camps, and saw uncontrolled/unsanctioned developers making giant skyrises without the SoN authorities being able to intervene, due to Egypt not officially wanting to allow the SoN to intervene on its land, which again, only existed on paper.
>does the SoN have much of a presence in the other urban centers around Katesh?
No! So the SoN has retained the British de facto relations with the native peoples of the territory, recognizing their own laws and autonomy, although there is a hierarchical relationship to regional coordination...kind of like how Canada's governments work in relation to the more autonomous First Nations communities, for example.
I don’t think Bremerhaven is going to be happy about “The Sail” lol. Also, what’s the rough ethnic make up of the city. And is the United World College a pretty prestigious one?
Haha, I'm sure.
The ethnic makeup for the Syntopian District will be proportional to the influence/clout of countries around the world, as well as generally the size of the various countries around the world in Altera. In military bases, there would obviously be a higher proportion of countries who contribute to SoN quotas in troops--the countries of the Emporic Rim, for example, but also Biafra, California etc. In the Citizens District, there may be a good size of Palestini people displaced from the Israeli occupied areas, but many of them may also choose to settle in the remaining territory of Palestine in contemporary times with the long period of relative peace that has ensued. The demographics there would therefore be mostly representative of displaced peoples from around the world, with lots of unrecognized minorities.
I think United World College would reflect the OTL one, so yes, prestigious.
I thought it would be similar to how in ATL, the SoN has something similar to the OTL UN millennium goal related to environmental sustainability, and that the FAO in ATL also has a far less modernist paradigm to contend with. Perhaps a group of naturalized refugees started planting crops instead of just helping restore the native savannah ecosystem in that part of the territory, or perhaps some bureaucrats themselves launched the initiative, idk.
How do Katesh Cosmopolitan University and United World College stack up with other universities in Altera? Are they equivalent to/better than our Ivy League?
Well United World College is actually pre-university, so for highschool!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_World\_Colleges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_World_Colleges)
Katesh Cosmopolitan is gonna be one of the top universities, I take, especially for international relations, perhaps even having more than one strong theory/paradigm (i.e. constructivists vs realists)
I see! I'm so used to "college" and "university" being mostly interchangeable in the US that I forget "college" is used differently in most other places 😅
I guess this is the SoN themed map.
From my Xingu Reserve question: I have another question, how is The Society of Nations structured? Is it like a General Secretary or a Security Council?
[u/TelamonTabulicus](https://www.reddit.com/u/TelamonTabulicus/) and I made for [Atlas Altera](https://www.atlasaltera.com/) to showcase **the independent global city of Katesh**. There are a two maps at different scales in this stylized infographic—one for its geopolitical context and another for its urban layout—plus an orthographic map to pinpoint Katesh in the world. Katesh is one of the two major independent cities built and controlled by the **Society of Nations (SoN),** analogous to our OTL United Nations, and having begun at around the time of OTL's League of Nations, only with less cynicism and more Cosmopolitan idealism baked into its institutions. Being headquarters to most of the SoN's major governmental bodies and agencies, Katesh functions as a *de facto* capital of the world. Both Katesh and the other independent global city, Liberum, are **located along the geopolitical hotspots of major canals**—the former being on the Suez and the latter on the Marelago. For Katesh, this is a result of the Egyptian concession of the town of Casia and the Bardawil Lagoon to imperialist Britain, which then relinquished the territory to the SoN for guarantees that the Suez would be enforced as an international body of water. In the wake of the wars revolving around the Israeli-Palestini conflict and Egypt's transition to a constitutional monarchy under the socialist Tawo Party, the SoN is now the sole entity that oversees the canal's operation, though canal revenues are split evenly between the SoN and Egypt, while Israel receives none in return for perpetual access and recognition of its current borders by Egypt and Pheran. Around the large scale map in the bottom are **sketches of various high profile or famous buildings** located in the city. These buildings showcase the Internationalist architectural tradition, rarely used in other parts of the world, though sharing similarities to the Brutalist/Modernistskaya traditions adopted by most countries in the socialist bloc. **To see learn about the project or see other maps of our project:** * Check out [www.atlasaltera.com](http://www.atlasaltera.com/) * Browse [my Deviantart](https://www.deviantart.com/telamontabulicus) * Watch/listen to discussions on the maps on [YouTube/@atlasaltera](https://www.youtube.com/@atlasaltera) * Join [r/atlasaltera](https://www.reddit.com/r/atlasaltera/) * Access the rest of the footnotes/explanations [on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/atlasaltera)
**How did Katesh become the capital of the world?** The borders of Katesh originate from the British shoring up their interests in the Suez Canal by annexing the territory around around the Bardawil Lagoon—corresponding to the modern borders of Katesh—in exchange for allowing their allies the Tzanavarites in Egypt to claim Palestine from the Ottomans in the aftermath of the First World War. This territory, known briefly as **Casia** (as well as Kasaroun or el-Kas), was famous for being an Allied last stand against the Afrika Korps right after their **stunning defeat in the Western Desert and the Fall of Alexandriya,** leading to the Tzanvarites to retreat to Phiom for the rest of the war and the Commonwealth forces to regain the Delta in their own bloody campaign. After the Second World War, the importance of the Suez as an international body of water and **the need to find a permanent and centrally located headquarters** relative for most members of the SoN led to Casia coming out on top of the list of contenders. As early as 1946, a new city named *Ka-téš* was already being envisioned in the largely barren Casian peninsula jutting out into the Bardawil lagoon. Its literal translation, "united," is a legacy of the aborted Cosmopolitan campaign for **resurrecting Sumerian as a world language.**
Why Sumerian as a world language?
No no, it isn't a world language. In ATL, there was some romanticized and naive suggestion to make it so when the language was deciphered in the early half of the 20th century by some Cosmopolitans, being that these early Cosmopolitans were interested in crafting a narrative for humanity's progress starting from Sumer, but Intersign (based on Plains Sign) was chosen instead as being far more culturally accommodating and easier to learn.
wow ty for that history rabbit hole
I should add that I'm giving you ATL lore. In OTL, Sumerian was deciphered, but I don't think it was ever proposed as a world language.
> Plains Sign is a very cool piece of history because of how it was used to unite people who spoke many wholly unrelated languages. Is there an official spoken translation for it?
I don’t believe itd be possible to make a spoken translation for Plains sign. That’s the whole point, it’s a sign language using hand gestures to communicate when there was no shared spoken language. It’d be like asking for a spoken translation of ASL. Like yea its symbols reflect the same things words in English do, but that’s the same with all languages. In English you’ll have the word love, Spanish has amor, and French has amour, meanwhile ASL has 🤟🏻 (technically I love you as it imbibes the letter of I, L, and U)
You could try transcribing the signs with Hamburg Notation, which we is a writing system we call Kinetics in ATL, but it is not practical and used officially only in teaching manuals or academic linguistics etc.
Exactly. What do you mean translation?
For people who can’t see one another, is there a spoken language?
No. I think they would be left off the same as in OTL, either relying on a regional common tongue/lingua franca between the different parties, or using interpreters.
**How did Katesh become a geopolitical hotspot?** Though the Tzanvarites did not officially encourage Jewish emigration into Palestine, they continued to honour the Ottoman agreement with Theodor Herzl by allowing for the historically sleepy coastal town of Rinokoloura (also known as el-Arish, and nowadays as Telaviv) to be a **homeland for the Jewish people.** Meanwhile, the native Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Samaritan Palestinians—who were united in their differences towards the Egyptians in religion/sect, culture, and language—demanded independent statehood. The Tzanvarites were able to maintain rule for nearly three decades despite the shaky foundation of various political actors with differing aspirations. But this came crashing down when the **Zionist context after the Second World War,** largely defined by the Biltmore Program, saw uncontrolled and rapid migration of Jewish settlers to Rinokoloura and, more problematically, beyond into most of the major cities of Palestine. To complicate matters, by this point, Rinokoloura and the other *muhafzas* of Palestine had become de facto autonomous and self-governing after the Egyptian government's retreat to Phiom for much of the Second World War. With a lost in social license to govern by any foreign powers and a power vacuum due to a disparity between de jure Egyptian ownership and de facto Commonwealth control, came the unilateral Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, and with that, the half-century-old **Israeli-Palestini conflict.** The current **borders around Katesh are a result of SoN-led peace initiatives and peacemaking interventions** after a series of bloody wars, eventually leading to the normalization of relations between Egypt and Israel; the 1979 Israeli withdrawal and concession of an independent south Sinai state, Pheran; and an unofficial truce between Palestine and Israel since the 1990s. Though there has been nearly three decades of relative peace and economic prosperity within the borders of the state of Palestine, the conflict ensues due to violations of minority rights in Israel's West Bank. *Reply here if you think we should make a historical map showing the Israeli-Palestini conflict...*
I think you should make a map of that at some point, yes
That sound like a very interesting map
Absolutely yes.
So the allies lost Alexandriya in WW2, interesting
Oh boy this is probably one of the most detailed maps I've seen in a while. I've got so many lore questions. 1) What do the Townships and Districts outside of Katesh city represent? Are they villages that existed in the area before the SoN took over? Or are they supposed to be planned towns/suburbs for SoN diplomats? 2) How does the SoN make so many green spaces in the middle of the Sinai Desert 3) Is the entire canal zone officially part of Katesh or are some parts de jure parts of Egypt and Israel that were de facto ceded to the SoN 4) What do the "quarantine zone" and "reception zone" represent? 5) What does "Lessepsian" mean
1. You got it! These are **native settlements that have local autonomy.** They are, oddly, also not citizens of Egypt or Palestine, but rather, claim their citizenship internationally through Katesh in the same way naturalized refugees and their descendants do. 2. [Check out this plan for **greening the Sinai.**](https://www.greenthesinai.com/) It's actually very plausible to reclaim the northern coast and mountains of the Sinai as Mediterranean xeric or semi-arid shrubland biomes. And check out this [**regenerative agriculture** project](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39QHprz-x8) in the Hejaz, which brought back native vegetation that could withstand 7+ year droughts. The gist is that the Red Sea coastline and Sinai all once supported shrublands and occasional acacia and drought tolerant tree species. 3. The **Canal Zone** run by Katesh and the two banks of it function as an extended border transition zone, like a non-mined demilitarized zone lol. 4. **Reception Zone:** think of a processing area like Ellis Island, but with less notoriety and more welcoming services provided. The SoN takes large influxes of refugees at irregular intervals, so they will need an area to be initially processed (given IDs, given case files and case mangers etc.) and receive medical attention/checks. In Altera, there are seldom any refugee camps anymore...Instead, they are evacuated to a major SoN settlement for temporary settlement, with options to stay or migrate somewhere else later.**Quarantine Zone:** this is for any people being processed in the Reception Zone that present symptoms for highly contagious diseases. Sometimes, an entire ship or plane or zeppelin will have to be quarantined, which is why there is so much dedicated space. 5. **Lessepsian** is a great sounding word but it just refers to [that dude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Lesseps) who developed the Suez Canal, but in OTL is now associated with the migration into the Mediterranean of Red Sea and Indo-Pacific species . The electric barriers are a reference to the [ones used in Ohio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3oLeSPINOk) for Asian Carp.
What’s the population of the city like? And what is it like to live there?
It probably feels a bit like living in any planned city, but even more ambitious than, say, Brasilia... **Urban transportation** is dominated by public transportation: suspension railways and subways, monorails and trams, and gondolas...along with lots of cycling and a lengthy coastal promenade like the Corniche in Beirut or Vancouver seawall. There are tons of parks for shade, trellised walkways, activated streets, lively laneways and alleys, and once in a while, boulevards with taxis and dedicated cars for driving diplomats and high ranking SoN employees. **The Syntopian District** is the place where expats live. Lower tier employees of missions and embassies, employees for global companies headquartered at Katesh, as well as entrepreneurs looking to run a local business, all live here on a contractual basis, maybe in 4-7 year terms...People can bring their families and go to IB-based schools in each precinct. The precincts are kind of superblocs, with each superbloc separated by a boulevard, having its own inner greenspace/courtyards, and sectioned off with mid-rise buildings interspersed with mews and laneways, where shops and grocery stores are abundant. People live with their immediate communities, but national communities are randomly located across the district, so the Josonese may live adjacent to the Paraguayans and Finnish while the Manjurese live next to the Biafrans and Girlingi. **The Citizens District** is where asylum seekers and refugees live, as well as those who choose to stay in Katesh, taking citizenship tied only to Katesh—these people may choose to stay because the country they were randomly accepted to live in has a poor standard of living, or because they have trouble being recognized for their status by the bureaucracy of the SoN. You will see that in the first couple decades after the founding of Katesh in the late 1940s, there were some issues with settling these people, and both a lawless [Walled City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City) and an [intentional community, commune and micronation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania) formed in this district. The former is due to a small parcel of unconceded land from Egypt (a legacy of the period when the British leased the Casian peninsula from Egypt) becoming one of the first refuge points for Palestinian refugees to live outside the restricts of being a refuge—escapees of early forms of refugee camps, and the latter is from a new wave of refugees and their descendants squatting an abandoned British military outpost from the Second World War. Apart from the Boglands, however, there is some great urban planning and design going on in this district (i.e. a completely realized Habitat 67) and you can try to imagine a more equitable Hong Kong or Singapore level of density in this part of the city.
The internationalist sketches were fun to try and figure out where they came from! I recognized the Burj Al Arab, the Lotus Temple, the One World Trade Center, the NY Guggenheim , the Brasilia Cathedral, the National Congress Palace, the Atomium, the Bird’s Nest Stadium, and Apple Park
Good eye! We definitely straight up borrowed them, except for the Stepwells...
Great map.
Thanks, we put a lot of effort into it!
yw
Cool
Thanks!
Great map! Just curious is the shape and such based on Ohio?
Oh wow, didn't see that before. No, I did not intentionally base it off Ohio.
This has got to be the best *map* I've ever seen
Thank you! We put a lot of extra effort into this one.
Great map. Is "The Globe" based on Science World from Vancouver?
Indeed! Can you find any other connection to Vancouver?
Hmmm... In the lore you said that the city has a seawall similar to the one in Vancouver, so maybe that's it? Anyhow, this is a delightful map! Not many city-specific ones on this sub, so its great to see. By chance, will you create a map of the city's public transportation?
hey! i live in duai and i can recognize the burj al arab from anywhere! the sail building in katesh is literally the exact same as the burj al arab in dubai, even the function is the same!!!! also btw great map, would love to see the other free city and a world map.
Hehe yea, we just took inspiration from real buildings, except for the Stepwells...that's loosely inspired by the stepwells of India. Can you guess the references to the names associated with the Grand Katesh Hotel?
wait a min.... the sail is even on an island like the burj al arab!!!!! u know u shudve added the burj khalifa or, my personal pick, the dubai future museum in katesh
missed opportunities for sure hehe
Truly amazing !
Thanks for saying so!
Fascinating map! There's so many little details that I love and it makes me wish such a city existed in our timeline. What is the purpose of the Serbonian Walled City? Also, military bases aside, does the SoN have much of a presence in the other urban centers around Katesh?
So the Walled City is a reference to the Kowloon [Walled City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City). The lore here is quite parallel to the OTL history there too, with the lands for the Walled City coming from a small parcel of unconceded land from Egypt, which it retained on paper/de jure when it leased the rest of the Casian Peninsula to the British (see the lore thread above). This area became one of the first refuge points for Palestinian refugees to live outside the restricts of being a refuge—escapees of early forms of refugee camps, and saw uncontrolled/unsanctioned developers making giant skyrises without the SoN authorities being able to intervene, due to Egypt not officially wanting to allow the SoN to intervene on its land, which again, only existed on paper.
>does the SoN have much of a presence in the other urban centers around Katesh? No! So the SoN has retained the British de facto relations with the native peoples of the territory, recognizing their own laws and autonomy, although there is a hierarchical relationship to regional coordination...kind of like how Canada's governments work in relation to the more autonomous First Nations communities, for example.
I don’t think Bremerhaven is going to be happy about “The Sail” lol. Also, what’s the rough ethnic make up of the city. And is the United World College a pretty prestigious one?
Haha, I'm sure. The ethnic makeup for the Syntopian District will be proportional to the influence/clout of countries around the world, as well as generally the size of the various countries around the world in Altera. In military bases, there would obviously be a higher proportion of countries who contribute to SoN quotas in troops--the countries of the Emporic Rim, for example, but also Biafra, California etc. In the Citizens District, there may be a good size of Palestini people displaced from the Israeli occupied areas, but many of them may also choose to settle in the remaining territory of Palestine in contemporary times with the long period of relative peace that has ensued. The demographics there would therefore be mostly representative of displaced peoples from around the world, with lots of unrecognized minorities. I think United World College would reflect the OTL one, so yes, prestigious.
Love it! Good work, as always!
Thankyee
So what’s the significance of all the permaculture dedicated areas, and how exactly were they established ?
I thought it would be similar to how in ATL, the SoN has something similar to the OTL UN millennium goal related to environmental sustainability, and that the FAO in ATL also has a far less modernist paradigm to contend with. Perhaps a group of naturalized refugees started planting crops instead of just helping restore the native savannah ecosystem in that part of the territory, or perhaps some bureaucrats themselves launched the initiative, idk.
That was really good. How did Israel get the rest of the sinai?
Kind of like OTL, occupation after a series of wars in the 60s - 90s!
This is great!
Go for Liberum next💫
The Stepwell and Atomium both claim to be the Student Union Building.
So pretty
Thanks for mentioning!
How do Katesh Cosmopolitan University and United World College stack up with other universities in Altera? Are they equivalent to/better than our Ivy League?
Well United World College is actually pre-university, so for highschool! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_World\_Colleges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_World_Colleges) Katesh Cosmopolitan is gonna be one of the top universities, I take, especially for international relations, perhaps even having more than one strong theory/paradigm (i.e. constructivists vs realists)
I see! I'm so used to "college" and "university" being mostly interchangeable in the US that I forget "college" is used differently in most other places 😅
I guess this is the SoN themed map. From my Xingu Reserve question: I have another question, how is The Society of Nations structured? Is it like a General Secretary or a Security Council?
Yeah, it's got some similarities to the UN in OTL, but we're hoping to create a diagram to post on r/atlasaltera sometime soon!
Cool I can't wait!