The majority of conversation around the GTA 6 map seems to be stuck on one of two questions: 'how big is it' and 'where's Vice City'. Both questions miss the more useful framing, which is that the map is best described as four regions, each with its own tempo and design vocabulary.
We apply this four-region breakdown across the board on the site. It dictates how the Vice City breakdown lives inside the all-encompassing Leonida guide, and it is how the trailer footage organises itself when you watch it cold.
Region one: Vice City proper
The dense urban core. Located in the southern half of the state. Centred around an art deco district that clearly tries to pass itself off as South Beach, a downtown that serves as a denser version of Brickell, a port/industrial district by the water, and a residential area that gradually turns into suburbs heading north. This area has the highest density of pedestrians, traffic, and interactable buildings - Rockstar's usual approach to its cities.
Much of the trailer footage that you have seen is from here. The mall, the strip clubs, the nightlife shots, the police chases through colourful streets - it's all Vice City. We document this area completely within the Vice City silo.
Region two: the suburbs and inland small towns
North of Vice City, the map eases through suburbs and into smaller towns that feel like inland Florida. Strip malls, trailer parks, gas stations, retail strips and the occasional county road dot the landscape. This area gets less play in pre-launch conversation than it deserves, partly because it doesn't get the headline-grabbing trailer moments Vice City does. It is also the region most likely to surprise people on launch day, because Rockstar's suburbs in GTA 5 housed some of the strangest, smallest, most memorable side content.
We describe the named towns we've noticed, the highways between them, and the farmland around them in articles beginning with Leonida's rural towns and the northern suburbs.
Region three: the wetlands
The Everglades-coded area. The easiest one to pick out of the four visually, characterised by sawgrass, cypress, airboats, alligators and stilt houses - all visible in Trailer 2. Rockstar has yet to officially give this area a name, but the visual markers are accurate enough that comparison to the real Everglades is appropriate.
This is where you'll likely encounter new and unfamiliar things in the flow of the game - riding airboats, missions on swamp terrain, concealed camps. The geography is covered on the wetlands map page, and the Everglades region guide covers the experience of the region itself.
Region four: the Keys
South of Vice City there's a string of islands cutting across the map - indisputably modelled on the real Florida Keys. Bridges connect the dots. It's lighter, smaller, slower living: dive bars, marinas, roads to nowhere that just end in the ocean. Trailer 2 frames them several times and you don't need us to spell out the visual reference.
We discuss the Keys analogue in the Florida Keys map page and its comparison to real Keys geography in another article. The route between Vice City and the islands over the bridge is noteworthy enough for its own article, and it gets one.
What this frame does not include
Two things. First, there is no specific neighbourhood-level structure here - that lives inside the silo articles. Second, we make no claim as to exactly where the borders between these regions sit. The line between Vice City suburbs and inland towns is blurry in the trailers, and we don't make any bones about that here. The four-region division is our working frame, not a map layout defined by Rockstar.
To those who read this and think 'okay, but this all sounds nice in theory, how do I know where one region stops and another starts': expect it to be somewhat fuzzy on launch day. Open worlds from Rockstar have always blurred transitions rather than drawing hard lines. The four regions are there to help editorially split up the map. The game itself doesn't enforce them as four separate zones.