Liberty City now numbers 17,000 citizens in the city proper. While Colony Island maintains its status as the original epicenter of the city - indeed, linking Algonquin in the West and Broker in the East - it is losing its prominence. For example, a 17-story condo complex has sprouted up in eastern Broker, meaning wealth and population alike are looking in the vast, open expanses of Broker and Algonquin. Colony faces usurpation by the very settlements it spawned!
Algonquin is developing an interesting character - while there are some shoreline industries in Fishmarket, most of the island is commercial or residential in nature. There are zonings for large-scale tenements should the need ever arise, but for now, those areas are occupied by lavish estates. Manufacturing and polluting industries make up the industrial complex on the east side of Algonquin, while increasingly, crowded apartments take up the residential space. A few lucky souls - even some lower class - have their own private plots of land, but the majority of residences across the city are part of apartment blocks. Only the wealthy can hold out against the tide of demand, and even then, there's plenty of other wealthy ready to uproot them.
In education, the southern tip of Algonquin - increasingly known as "Castle Gardens" because of the majestic, almost castle-like university there - has become the home of the city's community college, as well as its own upscale university. In a nutshell, the college is for the less fortunate students, while the university is for the wealthier students, as the trend is rapidly becoming.
Meanwhile, the city has used a loophole to allow the establishment of a legal casino on the tiny island southeast of Happiness Island. The Casino, named Kenji's, has become the epicenter of Yakuza activities in the city, quite fitting given the Yakuza's semi-legal status. The casino has made and broken many people, but it has definitely improved economic activity, while the body of water mitigates criminal costs in the area. Kenji's currently is the tallest building in the city, though that is sure to change.
Healthcare, education, and fire protection are increasingly being extended across the city, but the Mayor has had to keep an eye on finances due to the fact the city once bottomed out to nearly 20,000 Simoleons and is steadily recovering that with a surplus of 600 simoleons per month.
Well-placed avenues, as well as supporting network of buses and even some subways, have kept the city virtually traffic-free. The surplus is a healthy 7200 simoleons per year, which will enable the Mayor to continue slow, sustainable expansion.
The city is growing, but advisors keep saying that establishing some outside contact would probably assist immensely. As such, citizens are being tasked with building smaller towns around the city's edge, towns that can enrich Liberty with resources beyond its wildest dreams. In particular, farmland is a hot commodity - Liberty's citizens either have to import food from far away, slaughter animals they come across, or, primarily, feast upon the many fish... and given the pollution, fish are starting to taste funky.
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Despite growing economic power, pollution has decreased since its peak 30 years ago, from 450 units to 250. This may be due to not only a better mass transit system reducing automobile usage, but the fact many of East Hook's dirty industries have been run out of town by cleaner, wealthier high tech and manufacturing industries.
Once at a low of 10 EQ, education levels are now at 60 EQ. Plenty of room for improvement... but a much better statistic. Life expectancy has steadily grown from 50 to 62. Income has grown from 17 to 27,000 per capita over the course of 40 years, and while much of it has been inflation, there was still a noticeable increase in real value. As a final factor, income and expenses used to be dangerously close, but increasingly, there is a gap between revenue and expenses... and it is growing! A healthy bank account will allow investments to strengthen the economy of the entire city.