He paused at an edge to smoke, staring out at the vast, brightly colored minutia of concrete urbanity so as to be One with the most complex of entities.

If he closed his eyes, he could have been anywhere in the world.
He had lived in old New York, until the great Freeze had ruined everything on the Eastern Seaboard.

Los Angeles, Paris, Istanbul, Cairo, and Morocco too had eventually lost all their exotic appeal, although Morocco now flourished. The ice of Miami now rolled a continuous conveyor belt of moisture across the Atlantic to West Africa’s thirsty shores.

The “lonely as a cloud” bugs me – personal prejudice. I know it’s from a famous poem.
He had lived in old New York also- Umm, also? This makes no sense to me at this point. I don’t know enough about him to accept this.
More – like – maybe -- He had lived in old New York until the great Freeze ruined everything twenty years ago.

I think you have a lot of good stuff here, just out of order. Also you could do more setting with a few glimpses of specific details. Also – and this is harder for me to explain and it’s just something that I’m working on for myself, I guess – but I try to make ideas make sense(?) in the order they are presented. Like the monorail and the cigarette and the idea of the wire halo.

Abraxus stopped pacing to light a cigarette. He held one hand one hand over the lighter shielding it from the wind as another monorail passed by. Tokyo was covered in monorail tracks like a wire cage holding all its concrete and steel in place. He closed his eyes and exhaled the smoke – at One with the world’s largest and most successful city. New Tokyo, he thought, what part will you play in my empire?

He had lived in old New York until the great Freeze ruined everything twenty years ago. Los Angeles afterwards, but its appeal had quickly failed. Recently, Istanbul, Cairo, and Casablanca. The Freeze which proved the kiss of death to America’s northeast was a breath of life to the Sahara. Now, Tokyo had....

I do have a reason for that reference, aside from the obvious fact that the character is really high up, but it comes in later, and if I could pack a world into thirteen lines, I'd a be the reincarnation of Ms. Dickinson, whom, incidentally, I believe kissed heaven's fierycoals and spoke the burning truth of the brain.

Taking your considerably insight under consideration, I have modified my entry. Tell me what you think. In the meantime, I'll keep plugging away, trying to trace out a world that never was, and probably will never be excepting in my own, and in yours, if I can lure into reading the rest of the story.

Here's to compactness in the composition of caballeros,