Low World

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, the characters are on the run from the Security Police and we are shown aspects of the future society through which they run but I wish that they did not have to run for such a large percentage of the novel.

Low World:

total decay;
patched broken windows;
sooty walls;
gaping doorways;
angry, obscene, semi-literate graffiti;
a ragged beggar;
squabbling women;
shrieking children;
a mumbling older man;
hooting younger men;
a man who might attack until he sees that Kyra can defend herself;
Kyra's reflection that state-run economies produce poverty but that free enterprise does not guarantee wealth;
shouts, horns, drums and machinery;
an impoverished flea market in "Quark Fair";
a rusted, twisted broken skyscraper;
lurid signs;
a Palace of Horrors;
a place where people risk their lives for excitement.

With high technology, such poverty should not exist and, later in this future history, it does not.