Tower District AKA The Slums

The Slums, officially known as the Tower District, is home to a large number of dispossessed and poverty-stricken individuals in the shadow of the Diamond Spire, a haunting, self-contained structure rising nearly 1300 feet from the surrounding wasteland.

The Diamond Spire: a History

Following the 1964 removal of height restrictions on building in Paradigm City, a novel, futurist-goaled arcology project was proposed. It was to be as self-sufficient as possible, able to support a population of 50,000, and feature a state-of-the-art university and hospital system in its upper levels.
Construction began in the early 1970s but, due to economic, technological, and social obstacles, progress faltered and stagnated, leaving the tower only partially-complete to this day. Early attention was directed in a top-down approach, establishing the primary infrastructure and finishing the elite residences and facilities at the top first, then gradually filling out the lower areas. Most of the unskilled labour involved in the construction was supplied by the convenient and inexpensive migrant workers and destitute homeless who, over time, established a sprawling community of hovels and tin shacks at the tower's base.
Towards the end of the 1970s, detection of an unknown strain of disease by the Spire's computer instigated a lockdown, its final encrypted broadcast to the outside world met with an almost-frenzied response by the larger metropolis to quarantine the Spire and surrounding land to a five-mile radius. An inward-facing high-energy barrier was established around the zone from somewhere inside the Spire to prevent any inhabitants, assumed to be carriers of the disease, from escaping; automated turrets installed by the city will dispassionately eradicate any who approach. A branch of the CDC was assigned as a task force to administer the needs of the population of the Slums, and an elite group of hazmat-suited figures now oversees a fascist bureaucracy from the fortified base of the Spire, enforcing a minimal welfare subsistence for the trapped group. As a special precautionary measure, Cobalt bombs were installed at strategic locations, primed to detonate if a breach of quarantine is ever confirmed.
The only way into and out of the Slums is a shining thread of a bridge, ten miles long, connecting the peak of the tower to the Pomona Freeway/Route 710 interchange. Heavily-guarded checkpoints lay at each end of the bridge, and an elevator bypasses the tower, leading to the heart of the CDC Special Task Force garrison. Quarantine/decontamination chambers are located at the end stations of this route, processing taking 24 hours, and the energy barrier can only be bypassed via a short-range radio key whose lock-code was sent by the Spire computer in its last transmission.
Rumours exist of ragged groups of near-feral individuals occupying the semifinished middle levels of the Spire, a zone which has over time established itself as a lawless area where thuggish brutes perpetually fight to impose individual power over each other. Whether these are former work-gang bosses, construction workers left behind, or just a myth is not known.
As far as the outside world is aware, the upper levels of the Spire are a tomb for those that were inside when the lockdown happened.
The CDC STF will occasionally enlist the aid of outside superheroes in apprehending particularly-violent individuals with apparent super-abilities who almost uniformly suffer from halucinations and delusions, noted symptoms of 'critical disease vectors'. It is of vital importance that no direct contact be made, and no communication should be attempted, as the vectors' state of mind results in spurious ideation. Vector must be restrained and turned over for proper treatment by the CDC.