Mombasa

Mombasa was a collection of two cities in Africa

Old Mombasa
All this change and progress was largely confined to Mombasa Island. The area across Kilindini Harbor, on the mainland, was a different story.

The mainland districts were stifled, ironically, by their thrist for growth. During the 21st and 22nd centuries, sea levels worldwide began rising due to global warming. Port cities around the planet were faced with a choice: construct flood control measures, or drown. In Mombasa, it was decided that, rather than shore up the old docks on Mombasa Island, it would be easier to build brand new ports on the mainland, southwest of the city. So massive seawalls were built to hold back the rising waters, and new dock structures extended out into Kilindini Harbor.

For a time, these docks brought prosperity to the mainland. Shantytowns were demolished to make way for new office buildings, highways were constructed, and commerce thrived. But by the end of the 23rd century, global warming began to reverse as new technologies emerged and millions of people departed Earth for colonies in the rest of the Solar System. Sea levels began receding as temperatures dropped worldwide. In time, the port facilities on the mainland were left literally high and dry.

Unfortunately, interstellar travel was discovered just as the mainland's ports became useless. As a result, the space elevator and its attendent port system was constructed on Mombasa Island instead. Consequently, the island-city transformed into the hi-tech metropolis of New Mombasa, while the mainland area languished, closed off behind its useless seawall.

By 2552, Old Mombasa, as the mainland came to be called, had remained much the same. Its architecture is an odd hodgepodge of old and new: 16th-century Muslim arcades, aging 21st-century office buildings, looming 26th-century power couplings. Old concrete homes secured with computerized locks. Clotheslines strung next to power lines. Mechanical gates set into ancient brick walls. The culture also seems displaced; while New Mombasa is populated with industrial workers and ambitious cosmopolitans, Old Mombasa is considered to be more of a slum.



Links

 * New Mombasa
 * Old Mombasa