This article is dedicated to the geographical region named Communal Space. For disambiguation, visit the article about the polity of the same name.

Communal Space - the heart of humanity!

Well, technically, that is not really true. The heart of humanity is the Earth, which accounts for three-quarters of the human population. In truth, Communal Space, which encompasses the close neighbourhood of the sun, is not a particularly lively or developed place. It suffers from what geographers like to call the "Earth's shadow syndrome". Every single new settlement has to compete with the economy, services and relative quality of life offered by the solar system which is never more than a few dozen translations away. The Earth's shadow is precisely why systems such as Alpha Centauri or Barnard's Star are not much more than small scientific outposts. And more generally speaking it is the main reason for the relatively barren nature of Communal Space, which a witty cartographer once called "an old backyard in your grandparent's house: a familiar place, but a deserted one." Though Communal Space contains two superpowers (the USRE and Laniakea) both of them are Earth-based.

There are a few exceptions to the barren nature of Communal Space. Trappist comes to mind with its incredibly rare planetary configuration: seven habitable or close to habitable planets contained in a radius smaller than Jupiter's orbit. There is also Kapteyn's star, which houses an incredibly old habitable world, the seat of mankind's second encounter with extraterrestrial ruins.

It is to be noted that Irenian stations such as Phi Clio are often attached to Communal Space by convention.