Mos Espa Spaceport is one of relatively few cities on Tatooine, born out of the desert and built piece by piece over many years. Domed buildings protect the citizens against the sun and the scorching heat. Among the dwellings, work spaces, and commercial operations of many bizarre kinds there are also entertainment areas, including some of colossal scale. The largest of these can hold an audience almost as large as the city's entire population.
Most of Mos Espa's inhabitants are settlers and subsistence earners who scratch out a meager living as best they can. The only real wealth in Mos Espa is tied up in gambling and off-world trade, especially in the lucrative black market beyond the trade laws and controls of the Galactic Republic.
Slavery persists in Mos Espa, though it has long been banned within the Republic. Live slaves function more as prestige possessions than cheap laborers, and owners part with them only reluctantly. Slaves can even find themselves used as capital in business transactions. The true powers in control of Mos Espa are wealthy gangsters, who find slavery a useful institution for their purposes. Far from the justice of the Galactic Republic, criminal underlords find little opposition to their chosen methods of rule in the outworlds.