Mapping Chiba City of Neuromancer

Look at the first section of the book: "Chiba City Blues." What information are we given about the city: Is its representation ageographical or geographical? What do we learn about its culture? Inhabitants? Institutions? Space? Borders? What are the most significant aspects of Chiba City, according to the narrative of the first section? What are the major differences between Chiba City as a fictional construct,
and our own world?

Chiba City is a city in Japan and not that far away from Tokyo. In chapter one of Neuromancer, Chiba City sounds as if its representation is geographical. It is not an unknown place on the map and the real world because it can be pointed out. The names (like Ninsei, Chatsubo, Chiba, etc.) they placed in the book are actual places of Japan; and the people and the area that are described in the book seems the same as how it is described in the real world. Chiba City in the book is like an abandon city where it was just found and that the people living in Chiba City is filled with low life beings that are homeless, burglars, hustlers, druggies and drug dealers, etc. The aura of the city is dark and saddening where "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" (Gibson).
While searching through the Internet about the real Chiba City, the city has become government designated base. Like how the book described it, Chiba City is developing a technology called "Cyberspace" or the "Matrix" which is a computerized program that manipulates the digital world.  They built technologies that aren't really spread out to the outer world but to themselves. Chiba City is like their hidden underground base to make those technologies. The city is historical and old but it still wasn't deleted from the world."There were countless theories explaining why Chiba City tolerated the Ninsei enclave, but Case tended toward the idea that the Yakuza might be preserving the place as a kind of historical park, a reminder of humble origins. But he also saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its in- habitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself." (Gibson).
In chapter one, the characters do whatever they want in Chiba City. They left humanity behind and went against the world. They do whatever they want by killing people to get their money, they sleep wherever they want, they eat whatever they find to survive, etc. But these characters have something that we don't expect now but maybe in the future of the real world. They are implanted with technology in their living parts. Like Ratz, he has mechanical teethes that could probably break through anything he bites on. There are robberies and deaths . There are dirty trashes laying around in the city (sounds like NYC). The protagonist, Case, is described in a way of an anti-hero. He is a hustler, a thief, a druggie, etc. He has a mind set of wanting the cyberspace that he once used to remember how to hack into the program and get the details of it. But because of stealing from one of his employers, his central nervous system of cyberspace was erased with mycotoxin. But he tries to find his way back to get a cure to remember cyberspace, his life.  His lifestyle shows the future or what Gibson wants us to understand what's going to happen in the future.

Geographical

Ageographical