"The City" in one photo
 

All of us are here because cities captured our imagination more than most. But there are a lot of cities, separated by time and space. There are a lot of different visual shorthands for the idea of the metropolis.

For some, it is the skyscrapers, for others, the wide avenues or crowded hillsides. Some will picture something like London, others Rio de Janeiro, others Beijing.

Growing up in Canada at the time that I did, the border didn't matter: NYC was the city. It was the biggest, baddest place, the one where the most fantastical things could happen.

New York is still there, of course, but a lot of the particular gestures and visual quirks that I still associate with my idea of "the city" are fading and becoming anachronistic. Building footprints are becoming larger, there is a trend towards fewer independent shops, there have been a lot of changes.

For people just forming their idea of "the city", my visual footholds will be old-fashioned, but it is also different for everyone.

For me, these were the kinds of blocks I pictured when I imagined living in "the city" (old heads will recognise):

https://i.imgur.com/g6bX7Ky.png

Decades later, I find that I still kind of gravitate to places that look like this, even if they are very far away from Ludlow and Rivington... Karakoy in Istanbul, for instance, or Oranienstrasse in Berlin.

But what about you?

^ still one of the greatest single collections of music of any genre of any time period.

PB is a landmark achievement.

I remember the New York of the late 80's/early 90's when it looked like that PB album pic. During high school my only ground rule was that I was not allowed to the city because it was still bit of a cesspool but regret not being able to really experience it before the hipsters and gentrifiers found it.

For Chicago:

https://tampabaydatenightguide.com/w...4087474708.jpg

As a metropolis, the first visualization that comes to mind is the final approach to LAX (day or night) from the east beginning at the Coachella Valley in the IE (day or night).

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For the city itself, it's the city grid when viewed from Griffith Observatory (at night) where you feel like you're on top of the city, but floating within it. It's a unique perspective with a certain level of intimacy that I haven't really experienced anywhere else, not even Twin Peaks in SF or Montjuïc in Barcelona.

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Shutterstock

Aerial Los Angeles is a good one, really iconic. Endless.

Chicago: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8760...7i16384!8i8192

Now there's a block of 1983 stranded in 2021.

I raise you a final approach to LaGuardia (start around 3:00):

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Yeah, the classic city and suburbs spreading out into the valley with the hills and mountains in the background. Was my iconic picture of what California was when growing up in the East Coast.

^ Sitting in a car with a chick overlooking LA -- iconic movie scene

Somethin' happening on this island:
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mtlblog,iss
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wikipedia

New York...

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...bb9d0be2_b.jpgNYC_subway by jmancuso, on Flickr

i guess i came into the world in the afterworld following the unnamed calamity that descended.

it was all bus diesel smoke and roaring double-decker expressways smashed through midtown in
a dirty 1980s deconstruction from first hand memory.

https://www.stlmag.com/downloads/309...ae70&w=1000&h=
stlmag.com

but my mother used to catch the bus for her advertising firm job from illinois to downtown stl and so this slightly-passed the peak urban midwestern world is the one in that dream.

NOT New York City--the other coast (and I can walk there anytime I want):

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...021875/enhance
My photo

my grandma who was born in new madrid county during world war one saw st. louis at its peak and described it “as the biggest city in the world” having never seen another before it.

so in many ways is the same for me. “The City” has always been the mythological st. louis at its peak...the ghost of which my childhood world continued to orbit like a missing planet.

It was twitchy and unsafe and so alive. I started hanging out on Rivington in 1989--there was and still is a place called "Off SoHo Suites" at 11 Rivington that we loved because it was super cheap. No private bathrooms, and the rooms were tiny, but all my friends would pile into a couple of rooms on our trips down from Boston. My roomie blasted PB on the removable tape player in his hand-me-down Oldsmobile station wagon back in the day, but we never really noticed that the cover shot was from that immediate vicinity--all of the LES looked like that in the '80s and early '90s. I'm so dope, they call me mista ropa . . .

Hell of an OP.

1964: Some friends and I took a road trip to NYC. We found dirt cheap rooms in a flop house on Bleecker. Among the trip highlights was going to a live performance by Smoky Robinson and the Miracles at the Apollo Theater on 125th St.

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https://photos.com/featured/the-apol...-archives.html

The city is always open.

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They Never Close by bpawlik, on Flickr