Cities that have more in common than not

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Razor

Ha..Reading this invoked a visual.A great lakes flotilla. Chicago would be the aircraft carrier.

ah, yeah i guess in a classic fleet setup.

although i think the midwest would be a battleship battlegroup sans carrier with a lumbering almost excessively long iowa class battleship as chicago.


cdn10.picryl.com

[Steely Dan]

We never had battleships on the great lakes (too big to get through the seaway), but we did have two training aircraft carriers on the lakes during WWII that were converted from old paddle wheel steamers built on the lakes.

The US Navy needed a way to qualify pilots for deck landings, and the great lakes were seen as the perfect body of water to simulate an ocean environment for carrier training, while still keeping the ships safe from enemy submarine attack.

The bottom of lake michigan is littered with hundreds of WWII fighter planes that didn't make it onto the deck.



USS Sable


Source: wikipedia

[Centropolis]

heres the shipwreck of the ww2 uss inaugural at st louis. at low winter river levels you can walk up to it sometimes - i have a photo of myself hanging out by it. theres some small cruisers that docked at st louis during ww1 i believe for recruitment. nothing to the extent of what was able to get into the great lakes but its kind of interesting that there was/is technically a seaport in missouri of all places.


atlas-assets.roadtrippers.com

[fleonzo]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Because what is there to talk about?

DC is an imperial capital. It grew/became rich because of U.S. postwar hegemony. It houses the largest federal apparatus in global history.

^^^^EXACTLY what I was thinking! People who don't follow history don't realize that a lot of the cities in the U.S. will still be here long after there's a "United" States but DC will most likely not be one of them (Newsflash! Countries, governments, States, don't last forever and most don't last much past 200 years! Even European countries have had several governments and state structures come and go over their history). If there's a historical comparison to DC it would be Carthage. Today you can see the ruins in modern day Tunisia. When a city's sole purpose for existence is to extrapolate from the governed- it never has a long term future in historical terms. This is not a political statement but merely a historical observation.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by fleonzo

^^^^EXACTLY what I was thinking! People who don't follow history don't realize that a lot of the cities in the U.S. will still be here long after there's a "United" States but DC will most likely not be one of them (Newsflash! Countries, governments, States, don't last forever and most don't last much past 200 years! Even European countries have had several governments and state structures come and go over their history). If there's a historical comparison to DC it would be Carthage. Today you can see the ruins in modern day Tunisia. When a city's sole purpose for existence is to extrapolate from the governed- it never has a long term future in historical terms. This is not a political statement but merely a historical observation.

Rome, Constantinople, London, Paris, Beijing, among many others are great counterexamples to your point here. Once a city reaches a critical mass of size, it doesn’t really matter what the original raisin d’etre was for founding they can find other means of survival.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Rome, Constantinople, London, Paris, Beijing, among many others are great counterexamples to your point here. Once a city reaches a critical mass of size, it doesn’t really matter what the original raisin d’etre was for founding they can find other means of survival.

Those were/are all human settlements that developed into seats of government. Washington is the opposite.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

The quickest and simplest way to get a sense for the relative sizes of pre-war areas is to look at metro area population figures from before the war.

1930 metro area population:

1. New York ---- 10,901,000
2. Chicago ------- 4,365,000
3. Philadelphia ---- 2,847,000
4. Boston -------- 2,308,000
5. Detroit -------- 2,105,000
6. Pittsburgh ----- 1,954,000
7. St. Louis ------ 1,294,000
8. San Francisco - 1,290,000
9. Cleveland ------ 1,195,000
10. Montreal ------- 1,023,000
11. Baltimore -------- 949,000
12. Minneapolis ------ 832,000
13. Buffalo ---------- 821,000
14. Toronto --------- 810,000

So toronto was certainly a "big city" back then, but in a different class than chicago.

Additionally, toronto's impressive commuter rail system has mostly been built up in the post-war era, so you don't find nearly as much of that older pre-war railroad suburbia like you see in chicagoland.

You forgot metro Los Angeles, which in 1930, already had 2,208,492 people (LA County population), which would put it above Detroit and below Boston in 1930. And interestingly (for me, anyway), that would mean that in 1930, LA County's residents comprised 39% of California's total population.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Rome, Constantinople, London, Paris, Beijing, among many others are great counterexamples to your point here. Once a city reaches a critical mass of size, it doesn’t really matter what the original raisin d’etre was for founding they can find other means of survival.

I could see DC going the Vienna route were the US to no longer exist: No longer the seat of an empire, it'd likely wind up a regional capital with an outsized grandeur.

[edale]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

You forgot metro Los Angeles, which in 1930, already had 2,208,492 people (LA County population), which would put it above Detroit and below Boston in 1930. And interestingly (for me, anyway), that would mean that in 1930, LA County's residents comprised 39% of California's total population.

Yeah, I was wondering where LA was on this list. I knew it'd certainly be in the top 10 by 1930.

In looking around online, I found this list of the largest metro areas by decade, and it is not at all the same one that Steely posted Here's the 1930 list:

1930
Rank Metro Area Pop
1. New York 8667
2. Chicago 3718
3. Philadelphia 2264
4. Detroit 1721
5. Los Angeles 1617
6. Boston 1479
7. San Francisco 996
8. Cleveland 976
9. Pittsburgh 960
10. St. Louis 950
11. Baltimore 836
12. Minneapolis 753
13. Buffalo 620
14. Milwaukee 615
15. Cincinnati 580

https://www.peakbagger.com/pbgeog/histmetropop.aspx

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by edale

Yeah, I was wondering where LA was on this list. I knew it'd certainly be in the top 10 by 1930.

In looking around online, I found this list of the largest metro areas by decade, and it is not at all the same one that Steely posted Here's the 1930 list:

1930
Rank Metro Area Pop
1. New York 8667
2. Chicago 3718
3. Philadelphia 2264
4. Detroit 1721
5. Los Angeles 1617
6. Boston 1479
7. San Francisco 996
8. Cleveland 976
9. Pittsburgh 960
10. St. Louis 950
11. Baltimore 836
12. Minneapolis 753
13. Buffalo 620
14. Milwaukee 615
15. Cincinnati 580

https://www.peakbagger.com/pbgeog/histmetropop.aspx

st louis is definitely off there, the population doesn't correspond to anything im aware of. 821k in st louis city + st. louis county had 210k. also however many on the east side - east st. louis proper was 75k but there were many smaller industrial satellites in illinois. i can easily get the population to 1.2 million with low hanging fruit - these are areas all connected by electrified rail or commuter rail.

[ue]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

That's pretty normal for Times Square. It's not what would be considered a busy day. Times Square is typically so congested on a normal day that it pushes many pedestrians into the street, particularly if you're walking on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th avenues. I didn't witness that same level of congestion in Shibuya, or anywhere else in Tokyo.

Maybe we just went at different times. Though even in that photo MonkeyRonin posted, you can see visible breaks and filtering out of pedestrian volumes, which I experienced in Times Square. And I'm also not arguing it wasn't that busy - it was - just many places in Tokyo I felt like exceeded it and Manhattan more generally. Even the comparison in the photos show a clear, seemingly unending pedestrian crush at Shibuya whereas Times Square has the aforementioned breaks.

I'm sure there's specific peak times in Manhattan that are busier (rush hour, lunch, etc) but Tokyo is just busy all the time - well at least until the transit shuts down at midnight. The only place that felt underwhelming in pedestrian volumes in Tokyo for me was Akihabara and I'm pretty sure that was only because it was pouring rain when I was there.

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I agree with everything stated here. I've been to hundreds of cities where English is not widely spoken and where caucasians like myself are virtually absent, and I don't believe it played a role on my appraisals. Seoul is denser but it did not feel denser than the densest parts of Tokyo. Ditto for Shanghai, and other big Asian cities that I have spent considerable time in.

Yeah. Seoul was interesting because its vernacular was more oriented towards towers throughout the area vs Tokyo. It was also a very busy city, no doubt, but perhaps more on par with New York.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't know what Myeondong in Seoul is like on a normal day, but I was there on Christmas Day a couple of years ago and it was insanely crowded. It was definitely as congested as Times Square at its worst. Definitely far worse than Tokyo.





Photo credit mine

Myeongdong is probably the busiest pedestrian area in Seoul (at least in my experience). Hongdae, Seoul Station, Itaewon, the Buenos Aires-like Gwanghwamun area, Insadong, Dongdaemun, etc are all busy too, though not to the extent of Myeongdong. Myeongdong (and maybe Hongdae) are the only places that felt Tokyo-like in intensity (and inside Seoul Station), whereas Tokyo has it all over the place. Ginza, Shibuya, Harajuku, Omotesando, Shinjuku, Shimokita, Skytree, Asakusa, Roppongi, etc.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Those were/are all human settlements that developed into seats of government. Washington is the opposite.

Now that I think about it, is DC the best-planned capital in the world? I'm thinking Canberra and Brasilia...which both suck. Is there a better-planned capital out there?

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Now that I think about it, is DC the best-planned capital in the world? I'm thinking Canberra and Brasilia...which both suck. Is there a better-planned capital out there?

i mean...the OG paris? vienna?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ue

Maybe we just went at different times. Though even in that photo MonkeyRonin posted, you can see visible breaks and filtering out of pedestrian volumes, which I experienced in Times Square. And I'm also not arguing it wasn't that busy - it was - just many places in Tokyo I felt like exceeded it and Manhattan more generally. Even the comparison in the photos show a clear, seemingly unending pedestrian crush at Shibuya whereas Times Square has the aforementioned breaks.

I'm sure there's specific peak times in Manhattan that are busier (rush hour, lunch, etc) but Tokyo is just busy all the time - well at least until the transit shuts down at midnight. The only place that felt underwhelming in pedestrian volumes in Tokyo for me was Akihabara and I'm pretty sure that was only because it was pouring rain when I was there.

I guess it's fair to agree to disagree. Shibuya is extremely busy, yes, but it's not as dense as Times Square, just like Tokyo isn't as dense as Manhattan.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Now that I think about it, is DC the best-planned capital in the world? I'm thinking Canberra and Brasilia...which both suck. Is there a better-planned capital out there?

D.C. is probably the oldest. Ottawa? I've never been, but I'm sure it's lovely.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Now that I think about it, is DC the best-planned capital in the world? I'm thinking Canberra and Brasilia...which both suck. Is there a better-planned capital out there?

Maybe St. Petersburg? (even though it's no longer the capital of Russia).

Quite a few "older" cities are also purpose-built capitals, like Istanbul (Constantinople) and Baghdad. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ional_capitals

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

D.C. is probably the oldest. Ottawa? I've never been, but I'm sure it's lovely.

Ottawa is more Madison-tier. St. Petersburg and DC are probably the two greatest from-the-ground-up capital cities.

[sopas ej]

Washington DC wasn't considered a grand city until fairly recently (like within the last 50 or 60 years or so). Despite being the capital of the US, it was considered a backwater (cultural and otherwise) compared with the other already established US cities. For a good part of the 1800s, DC still had dirt roads; definitely not on par with world capitals of the 19th century.

Washington DC, 1830s


Southwest DC in the 1930s



And of course in the mid-20th Century, it also went through a so-called Urban Renewal program, which removed sections like the one above, displacing many lower-income people of color. In the 1950s, sections of Pennsylvania Avenue were considered blighted, and people also thought the streetcar tracks were ugly.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

D.C. is probably the oldest. Ottawa? I've never been, but I'm sure it's lovely.

Ottawa wasn't a planned Capital..It was a compromise over the other cities which were squabbling over which one should be the Capital.+ it was strategically more difficult to invade. Mother Queen Victoria had a hand in ending the dispute by chosing the outlier, Ottawa.

Originally Posted by Centropolis

ah, yeah i guess in a classic fleet setup.

although i think the midwest would be a battleship battlegroup sans carrier with a lumbering almost excessively long iowa class battleship as chicago.

Yes, metaphorically The Great Lakes Flotilla would be impressive as a battle ship group. Each metro representing a class of ship.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Those were/are all human settlements that developed into seats of government. Washington is the opposite.

No, they’re all places that were meaningless settlements prior to being seats of government.