Despite the Earths population exceeding 65 billion people, most of the land had reverted, or been converted, back to primal wilderness. Settlements were generally either huge megalopoli of tens (or even hundreds) of millions of people living in arcologies on/under a relatively small area of land, or small hamlets in the wilds, linked to elsewhere on the planet by teleportation systems and grav vehicles.
Architecture was unrestrained and exuberant, sometimes grav-supported, built with an eye for harmony and beauty. Cities were clean and generally aesthetically pleasing; most insignificant buildings were demolished, built over, or grown over in the new wildernesses. Buildings like elegant spires or trees of metal or multicoloured crystal, looking as light as air and fragile as fine crystal, despite being nearly indestructible, and kilometres in extent.
Many arcologies had forests and trees on their exteriors, as well as snow caps (as well as much life inside, too, in the form of parks and the like). Some were disguised to look like mountains or other natural features. A few took more fanciful forms, such as vast castles or temples.
Individual houses could be (and were) built almost anywhere, including mobile grav-houses using fusion cells or total conversion for power, and nanos or teleportation technology to provide food and the other necessities of life.
The three completed orbital towers were used for massive and non-urgent cargoes, or simply to take in the view. At least one of them was visible over the vast majority of the Earths surface, along with portions of the incomplete Geosynchronous Ring. At their bases they towers expanded into vast cargo handling and industrial complexes.
The sky glittered with flitting vehicles, flying superhumans and bright holograms.
There were many vineyards and similar cultural and national institutions and traditions.
Near-Earth space (to somewhat beyond the Moon) was filled with more than one hundred thousand settlements forming the homes of more than two billion people, forming the 'Terrasphere', the 'suburbs' of Earth, glittering and twinkling in the night sky.
Most national borders had been reduced to what were essentially administrative divisions.
Property was of essentially nominal cost; space was the main expense (with cost roughly proportional to the population density there). On the general minimum wage a person could have a reasonable apartment on Earth, or fund an expedition to take whatever they could find in the cometary halo.
A huge diversity of cultures existed across Earth and in space; every known historical culture and as many invented ones existed somewhere and were free to grow as they saw fit (subject only to not offending their neighbours sufficiently for them to act against them), inhabited by humans, AI's, near-humans and non-humans of all kinds.
These made up the more than thirty thousand independent nations which were known to exist, all but two hundred or so of them in space. In population these nations ranged from billions down to less than ten with, in the main, the Earth nations being much bigger than those existing in space. In addition to these, there were an additional unknown number of nations existing in secret (usually deep in the cometary halo) for reasons of their own.
There were a number of political arguments which were hotly discussed by and between many societies across the Solar System. These included: