Term for futuristic 'areas'

I'm looking for a futuristic sounding term to use in place of 'street / road'.

'Zone', 'District', 'Sector' have been done to death. 'Band' is a possible, but I'm not sure it has the right ring to it.

Thanks in advance.

 

We already have a lot of words for these kinds of things - street, road, lane, boulevard, alley, way, avenue. Not sure why we'd use yet another one in a futuristic setting? To be fair I also don't see how zone/sector/etc are synonymous with street, so maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for.

 

Streets and zones are 2 different things. Street is more like a pathway while zones are more of a large area.

So which one?

 

I did consider this - futuristic terms for the sake of it etc - but as soon as I got to a line where I needed to refer to an area I automatically searched for a fresh term (go with your instincts and all that).

As for failing to see the connection between streets and zones, my thinking was that street names no longer exist. Only zones. Except 'zones' is a bit cliched.

Having said that it's unlikely a person would be able to locate a particular building when told it's in 'Zone five'. That zone would have to be no bigger than a street to make it feasible.

 

Eh, I still can't say I get it, but maybe you could overlook the term entirely and just refer to areas by name/number? Eg "It's in Sixteen" or "Over in (on?) Raynor"? It might be a bit too vague or confusing without proper context, but hey, that's your job.

 

It's worth noting that in the real world we very very seldom actually label things that people have to live in "Zone 1". Even in the Soviet Union they didn't make cities like that. They still had names for streets and names for neighborhoods and districts. In fact the only place where I can think of where there are zones that are just names zones is on the London tube map, and that's because they are really big but really weirdly shaped areas (it's sort of concentric circles the further you get out from the middle with zone 1 in the middle) and you can't really give a name to an area that covers a bunch of other areas a name so they stay as zones. But when places are more coherent then they have an identity. It's really hard for people to remember things like Zone 69141 as opposed to Zone 69143, you know? So even if that's the official designation people will use names just out of necessity. People can somewhat cope with numbers where it's less than about six or seven, but any more than that and it's just going to fall apart and really quickly. I was at a hospital yesterday; all the wards were named, so were all the buildings. In fact even if you go to a decent shopping center then you'll find that the car parks are assigned something more useful than numbers. At Bluewater just up from me the carparks are numbered but each number also has an assigned colour and an assigned mascot type thing (birds I think?) to make them easier to remember. Even in a military context it's very seldom used, definitely not with large numbers of zones. Some ships have numbered decks, but even then people still refer to the named areas of the ship more than the deck. They say something is just up from the mess, not on deck thirteen you know?

So that's what I would do. Forget what you call the areas exactly. Just call them by names and you don't need a name for exactly what those areas are; even if you do need to occasionally call them zones or districts (or towns as some might say) then it'll be a really neutral word, an administrative word that is just what you would logically call them without any story weight. You'd have:

"There are uprisings in six districts!"

"Good god, which ones?"

"Varple, Snort, Skunt, Daker and Bepoke!"

"Ah those damn Skunts have tested me for the last time!"

 

I like this very much. I know you don't fully understand, but this is the kind of thing I was looking for.

 

@LostThePlot - thanks for reply.

I like your thinking, too, so much so I think this is the method I'll use.

The 'zones' are not integral to the plot and will only crop up occasionally. I just wanted something that, when used, set it apart from the now.

 

I remember playing No-One Lives Forever way back in the day; it's kinda a parody of James Bond style movies; sexy spies doing sexy things and with lots of funny stuff in it. When you go to the bad guys awesome space station the decks are called (off the top of my head) Vermilion, Cerulean, Goldenrod, Emerald and Puce. And the night club is called "The Big Pink Space Lounge". And while they are decks and people call them decks, it's the funny names that really stand out. The deck part kinda sets that it's on a space station and that's nice for flavor but it's the names that always stand out, you know?

For such minor words I wouldn't worry too much. If you think for a second; "What would we call towns in the future?" has a very simple answer. Towns. And while that doesn't quite immediately set something in the future we probably would still call them towns. Just as we have counties and cantons and various other names for things that don't mean a lot really but it's just what we've always called things.

That said; if you want a word that has the sense that it was enforced on people by a dystonian government I would go just with "Area" for everything. Doesn't matter how big or small, everything is just an area to them with no distinguishing features at all. It's population and even it's physical size means nothing, these are just values in a computer database. Everywhere is just an area. Some are small, some are big, but they all get the exact same treatment like it doesn't even matter what is inside it. Could be just some wasteland, could be a city with millions of people, and the borders run in straight lines and no-one cares if they run right through your house. Just squares. Nothing else. Everything is just an area. Even Evil HQ is just Building #12923 in Area #58341, just the same as if it's a block of flats or a factory.

 

Parish, province (I realize it's bigger), quarter, section, block, extent, enclave, precinct, section...

Or the locals could have names. I used to live in an area in St. Louis commonly known as "the bird cage" because all the streets had birds' names, and there may have been (I was 4 and not driving a car) a faintly circular vibe about their layout.

 

@ChickenFreak - I like 'block'.

"He lives over on block five."

There have been many suggestions that work well and I'm sure it will be one of these I will use.

 

If your story is more in the dense city (like Chicago or New Orleans) you could use 'ward'.

"More and more people are fleeing the 7th ward as the robot uprising takes a foothold" or something like that.

 

Consider what is the function. For example, if this world uses Vertical Take Off Vehicles they might refer to an air field as a lift field. A transport vehicle could be called a conveyor. The utility of something can be a source of inspiration.
Godspeed!

 

So, I've settled on a way to define areas, but my fear of writing about places I know nothing about, stops me from giving my main city a real name.

In my heart my setting is America, but I'm terrified of locking this down by naming my main city New York or LA, because when I begin to describe the setting in more detail it will become obvious I know nothing about the place.

The future setting gives me a little freedom and artistic license, but we're talking near future here (50 years or so) meaning things aren't going to be much different anyway, in terms of place.

I suppose what I'm asking is would you as a reader be irritated by the fact the country's identity is hidden behind a fictitious city name?

 

So blocks can have names but streets can't???

 

I don't understand. Where's the 'name' ?

 

lol, are you serious???

"block five"

You just named it. Unless you think 6th avenue does not have a name as well.....

 

Well that's an interesting question. 76th Street and 5th Symphony and 1st Infantry have become names but in a sense they aren't really names they are designations. If you referred to your son as "2nd Child" then you'd probably get reported to someone; that's not really a name. The only time that we use those kind of 'names' is when we have so many of a thing that individual names are going to be seriously hard to remember and where, from your point of view as an administrator, one is very much the same as another. And that's what makes them good 'names' given the context of the question; because they are so totally impersonal, so totally divorced from and human feeling to them. But to say they are names? Well that's certainly arguable. Over time they become names; as events happen in connection to those numbers then people get attached to them. Regiments pick up nicknames and the number of a street acquires character to it. 5th Avenue now means something that it originally didn't. And that's why we don't change them now, because they have become names. But when they were made? The idea was mostly to make a nice easy list and then figure out what to actually call them later.

 

Lol, not if you know what words MEAN (aka the definition of the word)

Let's see, the FIRST definition from google search:
name - a word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to.
^ Yes, what I said is EXACTLY CORRECT

My whole point in the responses is that it is utterly stupid to think that names for places will not exist in the future. Every area that you want to specify is going to need a name. And if you want to name it "the hill in the middle of three burning trash piles" guess what? You named it.

 

No; what we call things can become a name but that doesn't mean anything you call something is a name. You sometimes call you pet "cat", you sometimes call your child "kid" but those are clearly not their names, are they? They are nouns but they are like high-order nouns that could refer to any child or any cat. Now they could become names. I'm sure there are some people out there who are named, or at least nicknamed, Kid and I know there are some cats out there just called Cat; but can you see the difference here? The capital letter; a proper noun. That's important.

And, in the examples I gave the jump from being "the seventy sixth street in New York" to "Seventy Sixth Street" was one that happened over a very long time. There is a street next to the Bank Of England called Threadneedle street; formerly known by the delightful name of Gropecunt Alley (guess what profession inhabited it?) but it was known by that name as a functional designation for what happened there. It then got (slightly) PCed decades later and given a proper name that it's referred to by forever even though the reasons for that name have passed. Throughout history we have seen a million "the street of bakers" in cities; and eventually those become "Baker Street" even when no bakers work there anymore; the first is not a name, not a proper noun, it's a description just the same as "cat" is a description of your cat.

And, when we talk about this stuff, can see you the difference between "What is your name?" and "What do people call you?". If I ask for your name you'll give me what it says on your drivers licence, or at worst a diminutive based on it. But what people call you could be something else, you could be Spider or Lurch or Mutley. But that still isn't your name.

Names are way more than just "any word that has ever been used to describe this thing". And that's kind of the point; these designations that aren't names work very well for some dystopian future. Names have the sense of humanity and normalcy to them. They have character; they come with a weight of history. Removing the old names and replacing them with something totally flat and meaningless is not giving them new names. That's the point.

 

I feel as if you're sort of making two contradictory points here.

First, you seem to narrowing the concept of "name" to the habitual word or words that a community has, by consensus, used to identify something. So you don't seem to acknowledge 76th Street as a name just because it's officially referred to that way--probably up to and including street signs. In that sense, it seems to me that Spider or Lurch or Mutley would be a name.

But second, you seem to be narrowing the concept of "name" to the formal, official name given to something. In that case, it seems to me that 76th Street is a name as soon as it goes on a map and/or a street sign.

I would accept both types of name. So to me, the name on your driver's license, or 76th Street, or Spider or Lurch or Motley, or the improper name for the street, or the official name for the street, are all names. A single thing can have multiple names.

 

Man, do you get heat up about nothing! Try Valium.

At the risk of you exploding I'm going to counter your argument. 'Block Five' is not a name, just as your '6th Avenue' is not a name. This is why I asked, 'Where's the name?'

'Railway Street' or 'Osborne Road' are names, street names. The 'names' being 'Railway' and 'Osborne'.

Now sit down and take some deep breaths before you reply.

 

"Partition"

It's reminiscent of partitions on computer disks.