New Kowloon - The Floating City (wip)

When the Pacific eco system failed, the fishermen were out of work. With no income and no new jobs, their boats were all they had. Many had to live on their boats when the banks took their houses. The ones lucky enough to keep their houses, sold their boats.

US Courts ruled that ports were not residential and kicked the ex-fishermen out to sea where they met the drifting Chinese and Japanese boats in the same situation. Many small clusters formed around the brand new wind farms off the coast of florida with a few entrepreneurs taking boats out to them with food and other essentials. Red cross gave sparse handouts and the US put their nationals on unemployment benefits.

The economic crash that followed stumped tourism in the pacific and across America leading to cruise liner companies to go bust or reduce the size of their fleet. Some were stolen before they could be taken apart for scrap, others sold to 'investors' who rented space onboard to the growing numbers of mortgage defaulters. Some small clusters became towns made up of old oil tankers (now defunct due to depleted off shore reservoirs) and cruise liners.

As the US and Japanese economies strengthened again and more jobs became available, many of the small clusters dissipated back to land. A few floating towns however grew in size as the few boats left behind in small clusters had to join onto other larger clusters in order to receive food and benefits.

These floating towns were self policed and generally un-governed. Boats came and went with no checks. Crime was common but rarely seriose. The areas were so close knit and cramped that violence rarely escalated to deaths. The few cases where it did, the perpetrator was executed by the self appointed police who had the best of intentions but were not by any means incorruptible. 

As time went on the floating towns merged into bigger communities of ships. An infrastructure of inports was made, power distributed and high-speed internet connected. Through the growth of the towns, jobs were made to support the communities and a leadership emerged.
These floating towns were a safe heaven for political dissidents and morally questionable businesses. It was rumoured that many of the larger ships had their lower decks converted into server rooms by the chinese government to attack it's enemies servers. There was no evidence that it was Chinese or even agressive but this was largely true. The main source of these servers was from middle class activists hackers and the, now mythical, Anon.

By 2087 it was evident that Anon ruled the largest cluster of ships known as New Kowloon. Anon brought justice and order to the city, even if their methods were questionable...