The JD Strip is Talaris’s primary population corridor, the band of city along the sheltered East Shore between the deep-water harbor and the slopes of the Andunawan Range. The name is short for “Joint Development,” a reference back to the original US-Philippine Compact. Its districts are officially “Compact Barangays”: barangays, the Philippine unit of local government, renamed with the Compact’s alphanumeric zoning codes. Locals ignore the codes in favor of nicknames.
Downtown Core and Civic Plateau (CB-01)
The Downtown Core is the “administrative and financial heart” of the city and, in its own promotional language, “the absolute triumph of corporate dominance in a hyper-free market”: neon office towers, luxury arcologies, and immaculate streets, with a river running through it to the sea. For years its street level was nothing but drop-off zones for autonomous vehicles, and life happened on third-floor skybridges and in the first basement level. In 2025, after PWRCORE-1 came online and The Optional Work Week began, the street level was given back to pedestrians, and it is now the liveliest part of the Core. Among executives striving for status, the Optional Work Week remains mostly a rumor.
Above the Core, on top of the cliff, is the Civic Plateau. VD Tower is built into the cliff face below it (see Vulpine Dynamics).
- Torus is a bagel shop founded by a former quant who optimized dough hydration and boiling times until he could promise the same bagel every time in 45 seconds. It reproduces the styles of different cities, from dense, chewy New York bagels to sweeter, wood-fired Montreal ones, for expats who want a taste of home.
- The Umami Ring is the bolder alternative: neon-lit Asian-fusion bagels like black sesame with yuzu-scallion cream cheese, or togarashi crust with miso-cured lox.
- Starpups Coffee is on what feels like every other corner, and Fang Inasal and Jollibeast keep their busiest storefronts here and at the major stations.
Old Town (CB-02)
Old Town is the oldest and most Filipino district, just north of the river near the foot of the cliff. See Old Town.
University of Talaris and Tech Park (CB-04)
The University of Talaris is “the intellectual engine of the city” and “the birthplace of IO Fox’s early VDMH-1 cold-fusion work.” Its population is international and privileged, and its cafés host intense prototyping and fierce arguments about the ethics of the city’s hypercapitalism.
- Barako Bear imports strong barako beans from the mainland and rejects the sleek look of the rest of the campus for a warm, messy, unmistakably Filipino room. It is where counter-culture engineering students argue about corporate sovereignty over very bitter espresso.
- FluffCakes serves Japanese soufflé pancakes with Filipino flavors, most famously halo-halo with ube cream, sweet beans, and macapuno, with bottomless coffee. It has gone viral several times. Its off-menu Fox Menu collects the requests of its best-known regular, IO Fox, including protein pancakes and his favorite, eggnog pancakes.
Tranco (CB-07)
Tranco is officially Compact Barangay 07, the “Mid-Level Commercial & Residential Transit Corridor,” and to everyone else The Canopy or Tranco. Locals reclaimed the bureaucratic label as a nickname, and the district’s own designation for itself is the “Arts & Queer Transition Zone.” Above ground it is a pedestrian labyrinth of narrow streets under enormous tropical trees and warm string lights, built at human scale on purpose, and it is the city’s center for independent creators and queer culture. Its streets slope downward through the limestone until they become Shibs.
VD Garden, the city’s largest stadium, anchors Tranco’s coast.
- PWR Records is IO Fox’s own record store, separate from Vulpine Dynamics.
- Balahibo, a salon and grooming studio, takes its name from the Tagalog for fur and feathers.
- Catnip is the district’s best-loved bar, and Bark After Dark its biggest club.
The seam where Tranco slopes into Shibs is where the first Japanese families settled in the 1990s (see History of Talaris).
Shibs (CB-14)
Shibs is officially Compact Barangay 14, “South Port,” and is known as Shibuya by the Sea, Shibs, or Sibuyas (Tagalog for onion), the last a joke at the expense of developers who tried too hard to copy the Tokyo district. It is “the cultural, entertainment, and vice epicenter of Talaris.” Its official designation treats it as leftover military infrastructure. The southern part of the island is limestone and reef rock, and in the late twentieth century the US military expanded its caves into a network of bunkers. When the military moved out of them, locals and developers moved in.
- The surface is layered neon, holographic billboards, and pedestrian plazas, family-friendly by day: arcades, ramen alleys led by Kemono Menya, Fuwafuwa Sushi, and Korean barbecue strips.
- The oceanfront is a white-sand beach and a promenade of flagship stores, among them Pawlenciaga, Barkteryx, Louis Mutton, and Furragamo.
- The markets include the Talaris Grand Palengke, an open-air wet market where seafood arrives fresh before the Core’s restaurants get it and the haggling is loud and respected, and Bayanihan Hardware, a family shop with aisles barely wide enough to walk, whose owner knows which dusty bin holds any out-of-production part a customer asks for.
- The Undercity is the deep levels, decommissioned bunkers that shade from commerce into unregulated nightlife level by level. Ryker’s Rampage is its loudest club, and the old military hangars are where Analog Drivers race.
Across the Strip
- 6/21 and Pawson konbini are at every station, alongside Borkury Drug pharmacies.
- Pawblix and Roostan’s are the supermarkets; Old Town still runs on sari-sari stores.
- Alpha Wan gyms were the chain Vulpine Dynamics partnered with for the launch of the VARYON Dumbbells.
- Foxelerate, an energy drink from IO Fox’s own label, separate from Vulpine, fills the konbini fridges.
- Taiga Wireless, part of Taiga, is a phone carrier.