I live in Stanley, which with more than 100,000 inhabitants is one of the largest cities on Mars. Stanley was built on the slopes of Mons Olympus, mainly because of the Orbital Launch Sled, which my Dad help to design. That's why we live here.
Olympus Mons is located in the Tharsis bulge, a huge swelling in the Martian surface that bears numerous other large volcanic features. Among them are a chain of lesser shield volcanoes including Arsia Mons, ,Pavonis Mons and Ascraeus Mons, which are small only in comparison to Olympus Mons itself. The land immediately surrounding Olympus Mons is a depression in the bulge 2 km deep. Note the purple on the contour map of the region below.
Looking at the map you will notice how high the region is The top of Olympus Mons is a staggering 21 km high.
Stanley is one of the more modern cities, built under the Marvelon domes. Marvelon is a clear, self healing material that was invented just over 20 years ago. Since then most Martian cities have been domed in with Marvelon, at least in part. Now you will find thousands of sqaure kilometers of the martian surface have been covered with domes, allowing a huge increase in agriculture. Because of this Mars has become self sufficient in basic foods, though exotic foods are still sometimes brought from Earth.
Not only are we self sufficient in food, we have to be self sufficient with energy, water and air. We get water from mostly from aquifiers, these are machines that dig into the ground amd melt water ice, if it's present in the soil. We also get water from the North Pole as it is mostly water ice. We also recycle all our water. And I mean all our water. You got it.
We make oxygen in a few different ways. We can liberate it from oxides in rocks, get it by electrolysis of water and we use plants to make it. Now a days we can recycle CO2 with Atmosphere Regenerators if we have to.
Energy is a lot easier. Mars gets much less solar radiation than Earth as it's twice as far away. However the atmosphere is so this that the actual amount of sunlight reaching the surface is the same. The amount of nasty ionizing radiation is much higher, though and we have to take precautions to avoid over exposure. During solar flares we have to be much more careful.
The largest city on Mars is Aries Prime, which has nearly a quarter of a million people living in it. It's located on the northern edge of the Valles Marineris. To the east of Ares Prime is Ares Central, located on the floor of the Valles Marineris, in the wide bit. Aries Central is smaller and older than Aries Prime. Between them lies Gagarin Spaceport, also on the northern side of the Valles. All up the population of Mars as of 2169AD was just over two million. About a third are settlers, another third are Martian born and the remaining third are workers from Earth, usually on contracts.
Major cities on Mars:
Anatolia
Ares Prime
Ares Central
Armstrong
Nuevo Paris
Koftsok
New Hong Kong
Babylon
Pavonis City
Elysium Nova
New Penang
New Granada
Industrial
Vostok
Branson
Spacewerks
Stanley
Large Mining Towns
Blacktown & Blacktown City
Boonetown
Griffin
Grisson
Ho Chi Min City
Deliverance
Jewelton
Молоток Марса
Three Dragons
Putingrad
Red Star
Tilak
Xian
Research Towns
Bradbury
Newton
