Newport

Overview

Newport is a large North American metropolis which features prominently in The Longest Journey series of adventure games.  It in exists in Stark, a world of high science and technology extremely similar to the real world, only advanced approximately two hundred years into the future.  The city's exact location is never specified within the game, but in a post on his online blog, franchise creator Ragnar Tørnquist wrote:

"I just want to be clear on one thing: the city of Newport isn’t supposed to be Los Angeles; instead, it’s a (currently) non-existent urban sprawl covering parts of the Pacific Northwest, perhaps including (without being too geographically specific) present day Seattle and Vancouver (thus the steady rainfall and lack of sunshine, although these factors have obviously been negatively affected by global environmental changes, part of the back story that wasn’t really touched on) - so by ‘North America’ we included Canada as well."

The Longest Journey

Several sections of Newport are explored over the course of the first game, revealing it to be sharply divided between the sleek, futuristic amenities enjoyed by the upper class, and the filthy, dangerous slums that house the impoverished.  The street level of the inner city is littered with as many thugs and drug addicts as with trash, and the player will visit such scenic locales as a seedy theater, a decrepit Christian cathedral, and a tenement house so rundown that a functional building inspector would have condemned it years previously.  This grimy crime-ridden world is physically separated by a wall of checkpoints and armed guards from the clean, spacious, efficient municipality living in the vast skyscrapers above.

The exception to this rule is Venice, a burgeoning, Bohemian college community which has sprung up around the Venice Academy of Visual Arts.  Though the scenery is still marred by the urban blight of the past, with thick corroded pipes twisting their way through every structure, the concentration of such creative young residents has given rise to an infectious optimism.  Even the abandoned industrial park has been converted into an actual park where the students gather for some sun. 

Notable landmarks in Venice include the Border House, an old factory office building that's been converted into a collection of one-room apartments for the poor art students, and The Fringe, a trendy hangout specializing in hot coffee, cheap music, and a lot of easy-going style.

Dreamfall

When the district of Venice is revisited in the sequel, veterans of the original discovered that the once flourishing community had withered up and blown away, causing the area to collapse into near-total abandonment.  The neighborhood actually seems worse off than the rest of Newport used to be, and though the cause isn't explained outright, the implication is that the hopeful spirit of the place had been crushed by the technological catastrophe unleashed in the previous game.

The few people who remain are either too poor, sick, or crazy to go anywhere else.  The one real exception to this desolation is The Fringe which has somehow transformed itself into a surprisingly well appointed nightclub for a wealthier clientele that values its privacy.