Hamilton was built on steel, and steel is still what Hamilton tastes like. The foundries that lined Burlington Bay in the twentieth century have been replaced by advanced metallurgical facilities producing augmentation-grade alloys, structural composites for arcology construction, and military-specification armor plating. Palladian Construction and Ashgrave Materials maintain sovereign manufacturing zones along the waterfront, their territory extending from the bay shore to the escarpment face — a vertical boundary that divides the city as cleanly as any corporate jurisdiction line. Below the escarpment: industry, smoke, and the people who make things. Above: residential towers for the managers, the engineers, and the people who profit from what gets made below.

The escarpment itself — a 100-meter limestone cliff running east-west through the city — is Steelmouth's defining geographic feature and its most literal class boundary. Elevators and cargo lifts connect the upper and lower cities, and access is controlled by Palladian security at every transition point. Workers descend in the morning and ascend in the evening, their movements tracked, their productivity monitored, their bodies gradually absorbing the particulate matter that the filtration systems don't quite catch. The lower city's air quality is rated 'acceptable' by corporate standards, which means it will kill you slowly rather than quickly.

Burlington Bay has been converted into a shipping hub for metallurgical products, connected to the broader Lake Ontario cargo network by automated barge lines. The waterfront is industrial infrastructure — cranes, smelters, cargo handling systems — with no concession to aesthetics or public access. The old Bayfront Park is now a materials staging area. The residential neighborhoods south and east of the escarpment maintain a grim vitality — these are communities that have survived a century of industrial exploitation by developing an immunity to corporate promises and a talent for mutual aid. Steelmouth's people are hard, practical, and deeply skeptical of anyone who arrives with a plan for their improvement.