Looks like Melbourne Victoria.
In the context of the movie, the third world is violently trying to invade the USA. WW3 had already occurred, and its participants opted out of nukes to use chemical warfare instead. The fascist imperialist government in the movie could have been a prediction by Carpenter. In reality, it just took a hard left rather than a hard right. He was pretty spot on with these things. If you watch the deleted introduction sequence from EFNY, the money Snake stole form the Denver Federal Reserve basically looks like government credit cards with a bitcoin-type of emblem on them (cashless society). There's one bit in the beginning of EFNY where this loud-mouth pinko broad killed the aircrew on AF1 and is parroting some workers party message before crashing into NYC. It isn't portrayed as glorious nor should the audience intend to feel sympathy for these leftists in the EFNY world. As the intro explains, crime has risen over 400%.
Also in "They Live" which has been discussed here a lot I don't need to get into, it was a critique on Reaganomics, materialism, along with the elite of the 80s (also jews and sellouts to the elites, likely applies equally to the elite of today, both neo-cons and globalist marxists). Going further back to his original "Assault on Precinct 13" you see a bunch of mixed-race gangs go on all out warfare and a murder spree on people in California, and its just a brutal movie overall, but we see this nowadays with media-backed riots, largely ignoring the crime it spurns on whilst castigating those who defend themselves. I would say no matter what political affiliation the police goons are in his movies, they are often portrayed as faceless masses of jackbooted soldiers. With the exception of the sheriff in Precinct 13 and the detective in Christine. You never really see their faces, only a black visage on the helmet and all black uniforms (or in a scene in They Live where Roddy lets one human cop live while he kills the alien cop). I would pin John Carpenter as an old libertarian / classical liberal type, but definitely not of the commie ilk that are screwing with everyone today. He even admits that he would probably be someone who is deported to LA in an interview on the making of "Escape from LA" were it a real situation. We don't really see the police cracking down on people in any of his movies except for the one scene in They Live but its somewhat even-handed and an actual shoot-out (lots of "cops" get killed), unlike our reality where there never has really been any gun battles of groups vs police forces except for the build up to civil war, outlaws in the old west, and gang activity in major urban cities throughout the last century.
I would even say Carpenter is even spot on in religious hypocrisy, particular of the Catholics with the bishop character in "Vampires" selling out because he "is afraid of death" a likely reason why men in high clerical offices sell out to elitist agendas given their shallow faith (like the current anal pope). He then bolsters a true priest by showing the bravado of the "padre" character who refuses to submit to evil, and guns down the heretic bishop for engaging in a black magic satanic ritual with a vampire. Also for a take on faith, watch his movie "Prince of Darkness" to see that Carpenter never truly dissed the church, but often used its intricacies woven into his scripts to make the movie better. In that film, science is shown to be a mediocre defense, if at all, against true evil, and though there are some controversial themes particularly on the genesis of "satan" in one conversation in the film, it does a good job of showing the evils of possession and trying to attack dark forces with worldly instruments.
I wish this guy would have made more movies, but what we got is good enough.
