Bridges District

The Bridges district is one of the last districts developed in the city. Originally it was a rough area: fifteen steep hills, deep ravines, and two 'lakes' (which are sink holes that often fill in with water). Most people saw it as an area to 'go around', a blight that interfered with a more perfect civic plan.

Originally some poor people 'squatted' in the hills. They lived in a few ramshackle shacks here and there on the hills or in the ravines. They never stayed over long as the weather and the conditions often made them move on. However, some more enterprising souls took to living in the hills as well. Searching 'cheaper land' they built real buildings on the hills. The city, needing the money to pay for other 'grand projects' like the concert hall simply accepted it. The people began to properly cut the trails along the hills that had been used infrequently through the years. Some were even paved and reinforced. Along the way steps, often stone but sometimes packed reinforced board steps, were made leading up to houses or to various trails, where convenient to link with existing city streets.

As the story goes, early in the building period, the Hallens and the Corbens who lived on two facing hills were joined by the marriage of their respective youngests. Since travelling down the hills, along the ravine, and back again was long and difficult, the two homes were linked by a long rope bridges, creating the first of the bridges that the district has been named.

The idea caught on. Soon dozens of bridges linked various stairway streets and trails. The building boom began, the number of houses dug into the sides of the hills exploded.

Nearly a century later, the Bridges District is completely filled with homes and businesses linked with cat walks, stairs, bridges, knotted ropes, basket systems. This 'blight' has become one of the things the city is famous for (in addition to The Quadrangles, The Blue Flag's Game Field (like 1478), The Sky Tower (an ten story building with its famous elevating platform - based on the lifting baskets of the Bridges District) and The Grand Temple).

The city adapted and so did the people. The children in the district (and limitedly the rest of the city) are adept at
running on rooftops, down cables, and bouncing off buildings. This leaping and bounding is called 'bouncing' by the locals. (Thus leading to a slew of slang related it, 'To Bounce' is to go, 'To bounce with a partner' is to be intimate, 'bad bounce' (to go splat or have a terrible event), and so on.). In fact some of the greatest acrobats in The Lands have roots in the Bridges district.

For those that are on foot and in good shape, cutting through the Bridges district can halve the time it takes to cross the city.