Here's the map with this week's neighborhood marked:

So this week we'll be taking a look at the City Center, a mixed residential, commercial, and infrastructural neighborhood between the Old City and the forest. The City Center gets its name not primarily from the fact that it's in Lüm's approximate geographical center—though that's true—or because the city's government is centered there—many government offices are in the City Center, but others are in the neighborhood of Narthorn—but because it's the city's main transportation hub. Not only do several highways converge here, but it is also here that the eastern train line meets the main north-south line, and four different ghostway lines meet here as well, two terminating here and the other two passing through.

All these train and ghostway lines meet in a large structure called Midtown Station. Hundreds of thousands of people pass through Midtown Station each day, though most do not set foot in the neighborhood outside the station. Of those who do, most do so only to visit the shops or government offices within a few blocks of the station. Beyond that, parts of the neighborhood is decidedly impoverished, seas of tenements and hovels with a few cheap neighborhood shops scatted about. Many of the inhabitants of these areas work in Midtown Station or in the shops around it; others work in local establishments or commute to other neighborhoods; but some do not work at all, either due to failure to find employment or due to preference for other lifestyles. The city guard mostly keeps the unhoused out of Midtown Station, but they are common elsewhere in the neighborhood, sleeping wrapped in blankets or inside makeshift shelters in alleys and underpasses.

Still, even if the outer parts of the neighborhood may be squalid and uninviting, there are places worth visiting near the station. The city's largest library, the Lüm Central Library, is here, as well as the main offices of the City Clerk of Lüm, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Education, among others. Notable places to shop in the City Center include Draddelin's, the city's largest lathery; the World Market, with foods and some other wares from all over Curcalen; and the Wonderfair, a famous toy and game store.

By far the neighborhood's most prominent landmark, however, is Midtown Station itself. This five-story building is almost a miniature city in its own right, with multiple shops and restaurants within the station and even its own hotel. The Station's architecture is somewhat eclectic, but in the main intended to evoke a somewhat romanticized version of Lüm as it was a thousand years ago, with faux stone facings, complex tilings, and airy architecture with lots of freestanding arches and flying buttresses. Maps are provided in multiple locations to help visitors orient themselves in the sprawling station; even so some visitors inevitably get lost. Midtown Station may be the single most visited structure in all of Lüm, though, again, many of those visitors are only passing through.

[Hm, if I were short a neighborhood maybe I'd give Midtown Station its own week instead of lumping it in with the City Center. But I'm not, so I won't.]