"The City" in one photo

[Coyett]

Still captivated by the simple beauty of alley life. This is "The City" to me:
https://www.google.com/maps/@25.0604...7i16384!8i8192

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

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.


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.

What I'd give for downtown to have that kind of vibrancy again today.

Here's the same intersection today:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6302...7i16384!8i8192

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Coyett

Still captivated by the simple beauty of alley life. This is "The City" to me:
https://www.google.com/maps/@25.0604...7i16384!8i8192

We won't be having that because of health and sanitation laws. The closest we are likely to come in most towns and cities may be food trucks.

More and more, cities are allowing semi-permanent food truck "parks" (or, at least, they were in "the before times"). Here's one in SF that sort of resembles your photo:


http://www.somastreatfoodpark.com/new-home

[Ifactwo]

Amazing photos, thank you for sharing.

[TonyTone]

Originally Posted by Emprise du Lion

What I'd give for downtown to have that kind of vibrancy again today.

Here's the same intersection today:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6302...7i16384!8i8192

Ouch Boom Bust Cycle

[muppet]

[giallo]

This would be Seoul.

A sprawling, absolutely gigantic modern city of sub-standard architecture situated in a beautiful river basin.


basin dawn by Andrew Rochfort, on Flickr


overitall in by Andrew Rochfort, on Flickr

[muppet]

Also this, Bladerunner style

[destroycreate]

This has always been the aesthetic of LA to me--gritty, exotic, with a perpetual yellow filter.


https://memoriesoftommy.files.wordpr...palm-trees.jpg

San Francisco, as a kid to me, felt so bustling, urban, and vibrant as someone who lived in the whitewashed suburbs of San Diego. My brother went to college in the East Bay and when we would venture into the city, it just felt SO massive, so NYC-like to my little self. We would always walk from Union Square up to Chinatown all the way to North Beach (perhaps my favorite urban walk in all of the US).


https://cdn.theculturetrip.com/wp-co...-chinatown.jpg


https://previews.agefotostock.com/pr...v54-891630.jpg

[Double L]

https://revitalization.org/article/h...neighborhoods/

[mrnyc]

margaret bourke-white's cleveland
1928





and her manhattan aint bad either!

[kool maudit]

That chunk alone is the greatest downtown in the Americas. It's not just that New York's built environment is best, it's the sheer margin.

[mrnyc]

^ ha yeah for sure.

actually this 1973 pic is more iconic of cleveland.

it was used a lot in the media back then when talking about pollution.

[ue]

For me, I think New York is the most obvious example of "The City", and based on this thread, it is unsurprisingly a common choice for North Americans. But, as a Canadian, growing up with MuchMusic, imagery of the CN Tower, notions of Yonge St being the "longest street in the world", etc, Toronto also occupies a similar role. While New York was THE apex city, Manhattan particularly, Toronto was like "our" (the collective Canadian) version of "the city". The image below, of Toronto's elongated skyline tethered to Yonge St, with the mix of old bank towers, slab apartments, and newer condos and mixed-use developments, above the old, vaguely English Victorian West End, along with the ever-present CN Tower, is indicative of that idea of the city within Toronto. An alternate would be the final descent to Billy Bishop looking over Downtown from above (much better vantage than, say, from the CN Tower IMO).


https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...ostcount=16433

[TexasPlaya]

The formerly (and always known to me) Transco Tower always encapsulates Houston to me.... Growing up on the side of town where it's located, it was always visible from the highway or even poking above the treeline... At night... the spot light would cast over the city and break through the cloud cover.

[kool maudit]

It's a great building, one of the greatest American skyscrapers of the 80s.

[craigs]

Various iterations of this view of Park Avenue have for me always been truly timeless, iconic photos of "The City"


source

[Minato Ku]

Rue de Rivoli in Paris in 1988

https://twitter.com/nassigny/status/1234928785151098888

Well, I wasn't born in 1988 but Paris of my childhood (mid late 1990's) wasn't much different.

I'm from a little city in Central France, I didn't live in Paris until I was 12.
Anyway childhood (outside of Paris) defined in great part what is the City.

For me the city was a place with no individual houses (unlike the small city where I was living) and congested streets.
A high density of shops, many delivery trucks.
A place without a well defined center with shopping streets almost everywhere. Also a sharp contrast with my native small city.

In my mind, it was also quite gritty (Paris was full of white delivery trucks covered with graffiti), quite dangerous.
It's pretty far from the international romantic stereotypes of Paris but it was the Paris we were seeing on French TV and what I noticed during my visits.
A place where I didn't want to live until I was older. But anyway I knew that the it was the only place in France where I wanted to live during my adulthood.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by TexasPlaya

The formerly (and always known to me) Transco Tower always encapsulates Houston to me.... Growing up on the side of town where it's located, it was always visible from the highway or even poking above the treeline... At night... the spot light would cast over the city and break through the cloud cover.

It will always be Transco. I lived on Westheimer and would use the building to navigate around town when I first moved down here.

[MolsonExport]

And the Sears Tower will always be such. Whatchoo 'talkin 'bout, Willis?

And the Chrysler building. No matter how much I dislike their fugly trucks.