Boston does that to me as well. I've never been sure whether it's the city itself -- which technically speaking was Cambridge, but I knew the city well enough -- or the age range during which I was there. (Also I'm from Massachusetts originally, and so continued to spend time there after college.)
I've always thought the extensive public transportation system in greater Boston, which fosters foot traffic, contributes to a feeling of comfort and familiarity. I know that when I've brought people -- Baltimoreans, say -- for whom decent public transportation is a bit of a marvel, to Boston, they find it novel to range about so fully. Wait, we're parking way outside the city, taking the T in, and walking to the Museum of Fine Arts? And then we're taking a short train hop and walking to the North End to find an Italian restaurant? Oh.
Walkability really helps.
Boston is the only major American city I've never been to, unless California has more than three major cities or Phoenix has started putting on airs.
I have some of the same feeling about Boston (counterbalanced by a sense that it's overcrowded and unpleasant), and I think parsimon gets it exactly right: it's surprisingly small, and public transportation makes it easily explorable. When I first got there, I would ride the T and just walk.
only major American city I've never been to
The obvious one for me is Philly. And there are probably major cities in the South; who knows, burn em down.
For some reason, the last time I was in Philly, it was impossible to eat dinner without being served a variety of small plates instead of one big plate of stuff.
Since there are Boston meet-ups all the time, you have every occasion to make a visit, Moby. It's worth it. It's really a nice city. This is not Boston bragging or Red Sox mania: it's just a really available place, or at least I've always registered it as such.
In full fairness, that may be because most of the places white people would want to go are pretty white. The most pronounced impression I had when I first moved to Baltimore -- aside from how damned hot it is -- was its racial mix.
This site tells me that Baltimore is 64% black; if you click over to the right on the Boston figures: 24%. There's a little bit of fussing to be done, if you wanted to, over those figures: the official Boston city line is pretty small, and greater Boston perhaps shows a greater African American population. Still, Boston is pretty white, and probably feels more comfortable to white people.
That said: when more people share public transportation, more people actually see each other face to face in all their differences, and it promotes tolerance and a lower likelihood of being afraid of one another.
Sigh. The italics in the first paragraph up there should have been cut off after "available".
a sense that it's overcrowded and unpleasant
Jesus Christ, you really were born for the suburbs.
The suburbs of Boston are only unpleasant.
No, I think the suburbs are crowded and unpleasant, too.
||
Interesting piece by Charlie Pierce on the way in which Supreme Court opinion -- specifically in the case of Clarence Thomas -- is understanding the Establishment clause, and the nature of federalism. The general concept has to do with whether the Constitution is an agreement among the citizens of the country or between the 50 states understood as independent republics.
|>
11: how far outside of the city are you talking about, ogged? I'm not a fan of Westin, but it isn't crowded.
My impression is that when you've spent time in the wider reaches of the US nation, you find the east coast really close, crowded and ... smelly, stinky. Was my impression only after returning to this section of the continent after a six-week tour of the rest of it.
It's an understandable response.
||
My crazy uncle died on Saturday. Not sure how I feel, exactly. Vaguely topical. His kids would like to have him buried in MA, and I believe that those were his wishes. His wife does not seem to want that. It's a very strange situation.
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When we had a chance to move to Boston a few years back, we chose not to -- in large measure because we found it overcrowded, unbelievably expensive, and also because my father-in-law lives in Lincoln, and my wife doesn't want to be too close, geographically, to him. But of course we're complete hayseeds, so it's totally unsurprising that the big city felt overwhelming to us. And yet, when I was in NYC a ten days ago, I had an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and thought that it would be a great place to live, assuming we had all the money in the world.
15: Sorry to hear about your uncle.
16: It's not a good city for limping.
Oh, I was just responding to Josh about suburbs in general, not Boston suburbs in particular. In fact, for an exurban/rural feel, without getting too far from the city, the outlying Boston suburbs are pretty nice.
I think of the suburb to the immediate west of the one where I grew up and the suburb that I have been to that's in the same general area as the one ogged grew up in as nearly interchageable in a lot of ways, so I admit to being a bit puzzled.
You'd think I would have read comment 19 given that it was posted nearly an hour ago.
So, Jeopardy audition. I hadn't realized, this is a no-information step. We took a paper test (pro tip: guessing a Kardashian sister for the question that I could just barely identify as current gossip related did not work), and then an unscored simulation of 5-10 minutes of game play and the interviewy bit. I won't know anything until sometime in the next 18 month they either call or don't.
So it's basically like applying for an academic job.
24: No, LB actually has a shot of getting on the show.
It's a visiting position. Even these days academics have a shot at those.
But is it a puppy or a wolf cub or a playtpus or an ocelot?
She was! She was great -- very amusing. I disclosed you on my form where they asked for people you knew who had been on the show.
only major American city I've never been to
Seattle.
only major American city I've never been to
Huh.
Of the top 20, I've only been to like 6.
I'm not sure what counts as "major", but I think there are a lot of major American cities I haven't been to: San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, El Paso, Portland, Las Vegas, Tucson....
Actually, I have a long list, including Atlanta, New Orleans, Louisville, Memphis.
3, 31: based on the various rankings here mine would either be Portland or a city in Texas.
or a city in Texas.
It seems like Dallas is by a lot of measures probably the most important US city I haven't been to, but I kind of feel like "I've been to Houston and Austin; am I really supposed to spend more time exploring Texas?"
the suburb to the immediate west
Needham for the win!
Probably the right way to get a ranking is just to ask a ton of people. Anybody set up on mechanical turk? We could have a canonical listing to work from in an hour or so.
Based on MSAs, which seems like the right measurement, it looks like the biggest US city I've never been to is St Louis (been to the airport, but that doesn't count). Then Charlotte then Cincinatti.
which seems like the right measurement
It totes does not. For one thing, the rankings in 36 are far more sophisticated. For another thing, there are some unimportant-ass conurbations that have, for various reasons, a lot of people commuting around and through them.
The only major American cities outside the Northeast that I've been to are Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Kansas City. And I'm stretching 'been to' a bit on those last two since it involved two half days each while in the area. If airports count I could add a bunch more. It's rather pathetic actually. (Bad American)
That list in 36 seems awesome if what you care about is how important a city is for global finance, which seems like a gigantic who gives a fuck.
MSAs seem awesome if you care a lot about Tampa, which nobody anywhere does.
OK also Portland. I wasn't sure if it was major.
"Portland, Las Vegas, Denver, St. Louis: eh. They're no Tampa!"
MSAs put the Inland Empire ahead of Seattle.
36's link is interesting. Looks like Atlanta for me. Since I don't have any real desire to go there, it will probably remain on my missing list for a while.
MSAs seem awesome if you care a lot about Tampa, which nobody anywhere does.
Careful, Xenu might hear you.
I've been basically nowhere, outside the coasts. Chicago, Akron, Phoenix, Tucson, that's it.
48: look, if you ask a hundred people in Europe to name ten major American cities, at least a few dozen of them are going to mention Riverside.
The Armenians will all mention Fresno and Detroit.
Many Europeans are pretty familiar with Florida, so a survey of 1000 Euros asked to quickly name the first 20 American cities that come to their minds might come up with Orlando.
That's fine. When I'm asked to name 20 European musical acts, Zamphir always comes up.
So, a major city is defined as "a place an asshole like Tweety wants to visit."
I'm going to the Tampa Bay MSA in less than a week, in point of fact. Want to meet up?
Tampa is obviously something made up to use to threaten misbehaving children with. That it has a wikipedia page is testament to how hard it is to fool a modern kid.
My parents live in the greater Tampa area: it's not as bad as a lot of places they might have ended up.
57: Flying to TPA in a week and a half! Stupid snowbird family. Dad, I know it's nice for you to get out of New Jersey once in a while, but I live in Los Angeles.
36: have not been to Atlanta or Dallas, save the airports, and only marginally to Houston (a night in the suburbs on a road trip). Unlikely to remedy any of those very soon.
...scrolling down to the list of 25, also missing Charlotte, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and only marginal on Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland.
America's big cities can hold their own against Europe's. Where we suck is in *small* cities. Pick a random town of 100,000 people in France or Germany and you've got a nice weekend-trip location with a city center, church, two art museums, local history museum, busy riverside park, Roman ruins, and a cable car to the scenic overlook. Same size town in the US is generally not a place a European tourist would choose over the equivalently-located highway rest stop.
Not counting airports, I'm missing more than half of the top 25. The most glaring is Chicago, for which I don't really have a good excuse.
Small German cities are often nice to visit for a day or two but IME you really don't want to live in them.
I have a feeling whatever list, my 2 is going to be wrong. I've not been to Miami or Portland or Austin or Canton (unless Akron is close enough).
I'm using this because I mistake Wikipedia for fact.
67: I think all of the lists except MSA-by-population rank Boston above Miami. The others you mention are all below those two on all the lists, I think.
Oh wait, the MSA list in 68 has Boston above Miami. I guess I was looking at a different wikipedia MSA List.
Anyhow it pretty much is always Dallas for me, I think.
Growing up outside of DC, I was raised to feel a deep revulsion toward Dallas, and have never been there.
|| Hey Moby, dalraiata.... check out what I did with my kid's Minecraft server. |>
Your gotta liberate yourself from the RLofGPM, man.
Ok, of the top 25 I'm missing Philly, Pittsburgh and San Diego in the (cultural) North, and Dallas, Miami, and Houston in the South.
Growing up outside of DC
Why DC in particular? Don't all right-thinking people loathe Dallas? Did they steal your sports team? Or was this a hangover from the Kennedy assassination?
Looking good!
Is that a mausoleum to the north (err, up)? And I like the Pac-Mac ghost (Bub & Bob?) guy. Glad to see you kept the little subdevelopment we made, and that tower I started that I need to go back to. I was going for something Gothic (stone tower on a bleak precipice), but when I asked your son what I should do he seemed to think an office building was the best idea. *shrug*
It's cool that you have that hooked up to what looks like MCExplorer. What a great use of the Maps API.
Did I mention that I played in the Minecraft tournament at PAXEast? It was, uh, pretty embarrassing since I think everyone else was a quarter of my age. Of course, I had a computer close to the crowd, so everybody's parents could see me. I studiously avoided eye contact.
How do you get the water to stack?
I suspect its a water source that starts at the top of a hill, and flows down. Then you get rid of the hill.
Why DC in particular?
The Redskins-Cowboys rivalry goes deep. It represents the only two football games I actually give a shit about all year.
76: The DC team and the Cowboys are in the same league/conference/whatever. Ditto with the Eagles. That always struck me as odd that Dallas was put with those eastern teams, but it was probably the only hole in the league when they were an expansion team and after the rivalries started they didn't want to break it up.
Did they steal your sports team?
Although, come to thing of it, yes they did. The Texas Rangers used to be the Washington Senators.
Mmm, sweet pwnage, how I've missed thee.
I think we did the "biggest city you haven't been to" thing quite recently, actually. For me it's Detroit if airports count, Atlanta if they don't.
So really, I have Texas to thank for my Orioles fandom. Those heartless bastards.
The only cities in the top 10 globally that I've been to are New York and Delhi. (top 20, throw in LA and London.)
London isn't a top ten global city? Do they drop in the rankings because the blond, shaggy mayor guy?
I used this, sorted by metropolitan area. The top 10 has a bunch of cities in Asia, and a few in Latin America, that benefited from being in the high-population-growth part of the demographic shift more recently. London is probably still in the top five for gross city product, though.
Gross city product: Brookings and PwC have them at 5th, McKinsey at 4th. These clearly cannot be trusted as their numbers are all over the place; also, Brookings has Seoul above London and PwC has Chicago, which both strike me as unlikely.
It predates the divisions: GPM didn't want a southern team to cut into his RL. So he actively obstructed expansion, and only relented when Dallas was able to hold his fight song hostage.
I'm surprised that LA is bigger than London.
What surprises me most about the top 20 world cities as listed in 86 is how many of them I have zero interest in visiting.
Like a bathroom mirror covered with flicked-out bits of toothpaste and dental plaque.
Of Southern cities, I've been only to Nashville and Atlanta. Miami airport. I've been in Virginia, but only just--Arlington. I've been in most cities in the Northern half of the country, with some exceptions: no Denver, no Kansas City, no Providence. In CA, SF but not LA. Not Baltimore. Not Louisville. Honolulu only for the Airport. No Nevada, Colorado, ND or RI. No Md or Del.
Above the 40th parallel, chances are I've been there, below, that I haven't.
I've been to all the states except Oklahoma and Alabama.
88: that's an amazing story. It all comes back to Marshall, doesn't it? Also tremendous evidence against leaving power in the hands of a few mercurial plutocrats.
OK also Portland. I wasn't sure if it was major.
Outside of the New York Times, no one thinks Portland is major. Inside of the New York Times, it's too something to something.
Minneapolis except once as a kid, and a hotel near the airport last year. San Diego only passed through for lunch. Seattle, nope never. According to 36 I am just so well travelled and cosmopolitan, aren't i.
I took a semester off in college and lived in Seattle. It was a couple years after "grunge" had peaked, and I felt suited to declines.
I suck at this game. I think I've been to more countries than I have states.
The list in 86 is bullshit; Guangzhou isn't ranked on met area, and it has a suburb the size of NYC for Christ's sake.
I like the chart in 36 that gives Honolulu a category all to itself at the bottom of the list of attractive targets for terrorism. Makes sense. It would be a massive PITA to get your weapons/explosives/nasty people here, and then you'd probably just end up blowing up a bunch of Japanese anyway.
I'll be back in Boston at the end of the month for the first time in about ten years. Looking forward to it very much, partly because of Boston but mostly because it will be good to see my son for the first time since Christmas and get him back home for a while.
The Armenians will all mention Fresno and Detroit Glendale.
Armenia is only very marginally European anyway.
Pick a random town of 100,000 people in France or Germany and you've got a nice weekend-trip location with a city center, church, two art museums, local history museum, busy riverside park, Roman ruins, and a cable car to the scenic overlook.
I think most American cities of 100,000 people have most of those things, actually (not so much with Roman ruins and cable cars, obviously, and probably fewer museums), though they might not meet European standards in most cases.
The art is probably less likely to be shittacular in Europe.
I've only been to Boston and DC in the US. Heading to SF in July. I can't say either Boston or DC leapt out at me as particularly interesting cities, by my standards, but they were short visits and I'm sure I missed lots of good stuff. Grid system street layouts, and architecture that is 19th or 20th century, doesn't usually an aesthetically interesting physical environment. Even if it has, say, great galleries and museums, or excellent food.
I'm also on record as not liking Paris, either. For much of the same reasons. Architecturally, not really that interesting, plus expensive, and the galleries have loads to see in them, but are, generally speaking, a shitty experience because ... people.
...doesn't usually make for an aesthetically interesting ...
I mean.
104: Unfortunately, your choices for US architecture are pretty limited. When I moved to DC, everyone told me how it was designed to resemble Paris (grids, relatively low buildings, wide avenues). I'm afraid I don't see the resemblance, but maybe you are picking up on a similarity I'm not. I like both, but for different reasons.
Our robber barons put the art in the same museum as the dinosaurs. This is so convenient for when you want to go to an art museum and not see the art.
104: D.C. is stupid hot in the summer. Maybe that's why you can't see the resemblance. Most buildings look better on overcast days.
104: if you spent more time here I think you'd find that any rumors Boston was laid out on a grid to have been very much exaggerated.
If you want to see a nice grid, you should try Lincoln.
And go soon, before it gets stupid hot.
It's much easier to see the can't-get-there-from-here in Boston when driving. It's less obvious taking transit and walking.
I'm hoping for a nice, cool summer.
The worst thing about DC's grid is the street naming system, as anyone who's been to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave SE can tell you.
Boston: not a grid.
(I would love to make things like that for a living. Fucking math.)
Philly is a grid? I wouldn't have guessed.
107: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC is the best museum of any kind I've ever been to, and I avoided going for a long time because I thought it was going to be full of art.
102: I dunno, looking at Wikipedia's listing, many western cities in the 100,000 range are pretty interesting -- eastern and midwestern are uniformly dull. Partly that's just the mountains.
There's nothing lonelier than a helicopter for one.
121: Since I can't fly it, I'd need at least a helicopter for two.
DC, based on first impressions, is like Albert Speer's Trumpton. Everything just that bit smaller than I'd expect.
re: 109 and 117
These things are relative. Compared to, say, medieval cities like Oxford, or Edinburgh, or Prague, it's pretty damn grid-like. It's quite similar to Glasgow, actually. Bits that are quite grid-like, bits that aren't grid-like at all. A lot of the architecture late 18th through to late 19th century.
120: I think it would be more accurately described as the Metropolitan Museum of Antiquities.
I wouldn't have guessed.
If you look at the graphic, you can see in the center of the "rose" that there's definitely a non-griddy part, and I wouldn't be surprised if that part was older/more central, so you might not often get out of it if you only visit.
127: If it's old art, it's still art.
126.1 is well put - it reminded me of Moscow (wide avenues, neoclassical stuff, lots of flags and monuments) but the buildings did seem a bit smaller than one would expect. They're certainly lower than you expect, even by London standards.
Compared to, say, medieval cities like Oxford, or Edinburgh, or Prague, it's pretty damn grid-like.
Oxford and Prague are at least topologically gridlike. Edinburgh can't even be deformed into a grid (George IV Bridge, Cowgate etc).
121:? It is possible that there's a helicopter someplace I'm not recalling -- it's a big museum. But I'm pretty sure you're thinking of MOMA, which definitely has a helicopter.
So, Mpls is a grid, or several grids, but then things get all wiggly around the river and Minnehaha Creek and the lakes. I guess I kinda figured almost everywhere in the US was like that, since just about every significant city has a river, and most cities platted between 1840ish and 1950ish are on pretty strict grids. Is this not the case?
Dang industrial revolution making everything all same-y.
They forgot to build Lincoln where there was a river.
117.3: Ah, looking at the graphic, I see that Pittsburgh is hee-wacky.
131: either that or I regularly hallucinate helicopters. But, okay, maybe that.
Hello, I am provincial rube! Share my gruel!
I've been to Lincoln, and all I came away with was:
1. Neat state capitol building.
2. Crappy student retail district.
3. At least the film society there shows some cool art movies occasionally.
Anyhow it is true that Boston is locally grid-like in most spots. It's just that the individual grids were independently planned and had to account for things like hills and marshes that have now been replaced with their own, independent grids.
I kind of like hoping that there's a big enough area of the Met that I'm unfamiliar with to hide a helicopter in. There could be all sorts of neat stuff.
That was the best place to get indoors on a winter afternoon when I was a teenager. I spent a lot of time sitting by the Temple of Dendur. A more attentive person would have come out of those afternoons with a broad education in art history, but I didn't.
The best part is the how they hired Freud to make the capitol as phallic as could be.
140: Not only are cows mediocre surveyors, but they don't work well in collaboration with each other.
re: 140
Locally grid-like is basically grid-like, from an aesthetic/experiential point of view. It feels griddy when walking about.
re: 134
Except for all those places in Europe, where it didn't. It just seems [at 3rd hand, anyway] like there was a certain planning ideal that was adopted in the US that wasn't in Europe, even though lots of European cities feature much of the same basic layout, and buildings of the same architectural style.
141 I kind of like hoping that there's a big enough area of the Met that I'm unfamiliar with to hide a helicopter in.
It seems plausible.
I think I had been there at least 10 times before I stumbled up on the Temple of Dendur. Like, wait, they have a whole building just sitting here inside their building?
I think I had been there at least 10 times before I stumbled up on the Temple of Dendur.
It's difficult to find. You have to get the Crystal of True Sight from the old hermit on level 4, and then get it blessed by the High Priest in exchange for the Robe of Sanctity that you picked up in the secret room on the first level.
And then if you want to get out, you need the Blue Phial of Selsun from the Green Wall.
That reminds me of the movie Evolution, which apparently nobody saw. I thought it was pretty good.
149: Don't forget to write "Elbereth" in the dust at the door, or it'll never open. This is a necessity for Ascending.
This is funny because I was planning to go to the Met today before something came up I need to take care of.
The Arms and Armor galleries is (are?) one of my favorite places anywhere.
http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/museum-departments/curatorial-departments/arms-and-armor
And I'm eager to see the newly refurbished Islamic galleries. They were spectacular before they closed for renovation in the early 00's and I hear they've done a wonderful job.
130 DC is low by law; something about not overshadowing the Washington Monument. I think Matt Yglesias writes a column about it every time he's reminded of it. He wants more high-rises.
People who think DC is hot in the summer have never been to Houston in August.
Boston is definitely dirtier than some cities that it is sometimes compared to. (San Francisco comes to mind, although some parts of SF will out-dirty anything.) On the other hand, you can't beat the Arnold Arboretum on a nice day, which yesterday was; really the nicest day so far this year.
I've been to five of the World 20. The only top ten US city I haven't been to is Miami. (I have been to T-SP though!) No Seattle, Portland, or Mpls or KC or St. Louis. (Airports don't count, right?)
O Scanning Tunnelling Microscope, where have you been?
154: when "something comes up" that Barry needs to "take care of", he naturally heads straight for the Met's Arms and Armor galleries.
-- Looks just like a normal halberd, doesn't it? But watch this...
Inside of the New York Times, it's too something to something.
Gimmick infringement! See you at Commentmania, Jesus! Get ready for Something in a Something!
I'm trying to think if there are any major cities outside Europe that meet Ttam's criteria. Cairo, for sure, and I guess some others in the Levant and North Africa. Otherwise ... Quito maybe? The super touristy part of Quebec City? Parts of Old Delhi?
When I try to think of the names of non-Western cities, I have to picture maps from various games of Civ.
I was looking at Salvador, Bahia recently on Google Maps and I was surprised by how not griddy it was at all. That probably applies a lot to the first few generations of European settlement in the New World, which I'll arbitrarily define as those predating Boston. Bridgetown, Barbados was a little griddy but not much; Bermuda and St. John's, N&L are probably similar.
156.3: I'm surprised that you think Boston is dirtier than SF; maybe I haven't traveled widely enough in both but SF seemed so much dirtier, even in relatively upmarket parts so long as they were well-traveled.
Obviously, neither approach the dirtiness of third world poverty.
162: This is why I still think, at least on an intuitive level, that Orleans is the second biggest city in France.
The law of the Indies definitely did some weird things with Latin American town planning, but I believe it required grids from at least the 17th century on. It's why much of LA is at an odd angle; it required that the streets be at about a 45 degree angle from true north-south so that houses would have equal sunlight on each side during the day.
146.1: they were laid out much earlier. For all that the (tiny) core of Boston is old (and largely ungridded -- it follows mostly no-longer existing hillsides) the bulk of the city was developed in the 19th century, as largish planned additions (like the Back Bay). So it makes perfect sense that they'd look Haussmann-ish.
re: 166
The US is fairly unique as a major country where it only got urbanised at or around the time of the Industrial Revolution. I'd guess, with a few exceptions, that almost all major Asian cities are much older, so I'm not just thinking of old Europe.
I like DC's unique combo of extraordinarily half-assed attempt to resemble a European capital, mid-century technocratic boringness, and decrepit urban wasteland, but Paris it is not.
Every time I'm near the Mall and trying to find a place to eat, I can't figure out anything better than the cafeteria in the Air and Space Museum. I'm not sure if I'm failing or D.C. is.
I don't think 168 is right at all, at least for any major East Asian city I can think of. Sure, many are very old and have been cities for thousands of years, but given the vagaries of development your experience of walking around one (if you can, and you probably can't) is going to be mostly 19th and 20th century structures and grids, with occasional weird pockets of older stuff. Maybe Kyoto or old Dehli (I've never been to either). But I do think that what you're talking about is largely limited to Western Europe and the area around the Mediterranean.
The US is fairly unique as a major country where it only got urbanised at or around the time of the Industrial Revolution.
Well, most or all of the Americas, right? The architectural treasures of Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Porto Alegre, etc. are almost all from 1850-1910 or so.
I'm not sure if I'm failing or D.C. is.
Isn't there a ubiquitous kabob chain in DC called "Moby Dick?"
Also almost all major countries only got urbanized around the industrial revolution; I think you mean that the US has a larger number of cities than Europe founded after 1750, which is of course true.
171: Beijing is a grid and it's been a grid for centuries... the Imperial Chinese just liked things to be square.
170: the cafeteria in the National Museum of the American Indian is awesome, for next time.
The worst thing about DC's grid is the street naming system
Blaspheme. The quadrant naming system in genius.
If you are going to bitch about the DC grid, the correct target is all those avenues that go off at weird diagonals, cause trouble at intersections, and result in the creation of tiny, triangular-shaped blocks.
170 -- The food at the History museum was much better that A&S, at least when we took kids to the Mall regularly. Not as sunny, though.
I get the Paris/DC thing; it's really just about height and street width.
I'd guess, with a few exceptions, that almost all major Asian cities are much older
A surprising number of major Asian cities were basically invented by the imperial powers. Kolkata and Chennai were trivial until the HEIC decided to use them as bases. Hong Kong and Singapore are obvious, but Karachi only became a major port because of partition (that is, it was fairly significant, but not to compete with Mumbai.) New Delhi was designed by Lutyens. And that's just the Brits, I don't know how much the French fucked around with the importance of cities in S.E.Asia, or the Dutch in Indonesia, but I'd expect to a fair extent.
176: Yes. Haven't been myself, but it gets rave reviews from The Missus.
176, 178: I should try to go to a different museum. Still, you'd think they could bastardize our national heritage enough to put a Five Guy's there or something.
158 I'll take the 15th century Yasumitsu wakizashi, the brace of late 17th century snaphaunce pistols and the phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range yataghan from the court of Suleiman the Magnificent.
181 -- At History, they were actually trying to do something foodways related; some big donor has probably shut that down by now, though. The food at the Native museum is nicely different.
The underground waterfall at the National Gallery cafeteria is kind of neat.
The quadrant naming system in genius.
Sure, once you learn it, but if you don't know that there are up to four different Letter St & Number St intersections it's mighty confusing.
182
Crossing the beams of the Boston and DC discussions, the Worcester Art Museum took over the armor collection of the Higgins Armory Museum when it closed, and they've put up some great armor exhibits, which they will rotate.
(Worcester is a hike from Boston but contains a few gems like that.)
176
Will try that! I try to stay away from A&S during tourist season anyway, but this is another reason.
I just found a mayonnaise packet that was old enough that the mayo had become the consistency of dough. I didn't open it.
Wikipedia says that L'Enfant's plan was redesigned in 1901 by the McMillan commission. And sure, it could be much better than it is, but DC is sooooooo much better than it used to be. No comparison. It used to be that Capitol Hill was filled with crack dens and Ballston (not technically in DC) was filled with car dealerships and empty lots. Of course it's not all progress. The punks who used to hang out in Georgetown disappeared a long time ago. But in general, the city is definitely improving. The newcomers have no idea.
|| How long til this fever runs its course? |>
Just out of curiosity, I decided to look at this list of the world's 100 largest cities to see how many fit Ttam's criteria of (a) largely not on grid (b) lots of pre-19th Century architecture (by the way, I generally agree that this makes for an attractive city -- it's interesting that a lot of really fancy suburbs are deliberately designed to be non-grids). Anyhow, I count the following, in reverse population order, but this is assuming that many of the Chinese cities are mostly gridded and modern because I ran out of time to look them up. Northern Brazil and the Middle East are really doing a lot of work here, being run by the Portuguese seems to help, as does being an older city in India.
Recife
Rome
Salvador de Bahia
Barcelona
Surat (India)
Pune
Lahore
London (#34 worldwide)
Istanbul (#21 worldwide)
Cairo (#11 worldwide)
Delhi (#4 worldwide)
Possibly controversial exclusions:
Milan
Baghdad (I think it was so modernized to be no longer ancient seeming, admittedly this is mostly from war photos)
Ahmedabad
Rio de Janeiro (19th C architecture)
Paris and Boston (not on grids, preemptively excluded, lots of 19th C architecture)
A bunch of Chinese cities I couldn't be bothered to look up.
So, 10/100, and 2 out of the top 20.
I guess Barcelona is really mostly 19th Century architecture too, of course, but it's sure an attractive version of that.
America's big cities can hold their own against Europe's. Where we suck is in *small* cities.
/sighs mournfully
It's not that it has to have lots of pre-19th c architecture. It's more that a variety is nice. I like modern architecture, often. But that bland same-y 19th c municipal uniformity is just boring. Wide streets, all the blocks a similar size, rehashed neo-classical etc.
Damn it, that complexifies my 100 world cities attractiveness analysis!! Keep the parameters strict!
I will say that among big US cities Boston and DC are probably the most uniformly same-y 19th century. Chicago and NY have a grid pattern of course but (especially Chicago) have so much incredible 20th C architecture that it's far from uniform 19th C.
Yeah, so I've never been to either, but they look interesting in photos, at least.
That said, a bit of medieval is nice, too.
194.2: Like beautiful Soldier Field? Or the Trump Tower? There is definitely good stuff, but those make it hard for me to take the city seriously architecturewise.
Well, there's some fake medieval stuff.
For example, in Los Angeles, there's this tasteful piece of architecture which incidentally was the home of a grade school friend of mine.* Europe's castles may be less tacky but I'm pretty sure you can't swim in the moat of Warwick Castle for a 2nd grade pool party in February.
*who these days I believe earns most of his income renting this place out for porn shoots.
When I think Chicago architecture, I think Louis Sullivan and early skyscrapers generally. 20th C, but early.
I didn't know about that place, Halford. That's awesome. Man, the sky's the limit if you aren't burdened by good taste.
193.last doesn't describe it here! DC I think of as having lots of unfortunate mid-century edifices among lots of unfortunate neo-classical edifices, and very wide streets. I do like the wide streets to look at. Boston definitely lacks for interesting 20th C architecture (and has mostly crappy high-rises).
Honestly, that castle is relatively tasteful, compared to this one. Is there any European city with a $6 million pirate-themed castle/tract home in a low income suburb with a designated "pirate pool"? I think not.
I need the indoor chicken coop explained to me.
When I think Chicago architecture, I think Louis Sullivan and early skyscrapers generally. 20th C, but early
I've been very into Sullivan lately, and the life of the photographer Richard Nickel, whose struggle to save Sullivan's buildings, or at least the ornament in them, ended in 1972 when the Stock Exchange building collapsed on him. His body wasn't found for 28 days.
In 1950 there were about 15-20 Sullivan buildings in the loop. Now there are 3. Holabird & Roche, and Burnham & Root, his near equals at the time of the creation of the Chicago skyscraper, have fared a little better.
I've spent my lunch hours the last few weeks walking to and around all of the survivors.
I like that the room with the indoor chicken coop goes full-bore country kitch. How else could the chickens feel at home?
the cafeteria in the National Museum of the American Indian is awesome, for next time.
Seconded. It's way better than you'd ever expect.
190: Istanbul totally depends on where you are. Sultanahmet? Sure. Beyoğlu (and particularly İstiklâl Caddesi)? Not so much.
I've been very into Sullivan lately, and the life of the photographer Richard Nickel, whose struggle to save Sullivan's buildings, or at least the ornament in them, ended in 1972 when the Stock Exchange building collapsed on him. His body wasn't found for 28 days.
I've always held it against Ira Glass that he doesn't think this is a compelling story. I gather that he defends himself by clarifying that it's not a good radio story, but I don't buy that excuse. 20 years of TAL, and he doesn't think they've ever done a story that would seem to require visuals?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BneAuW3IYAAnhBS.jpg
DC 1890 from newly opened WashMon
Rich Texans have a distinctive horrifically ugly interior decorating style, with lots of stucco, maybe some pillars, lots of arched doorways and domed ceilings with dome-trim, lots of wrought iron and faux-rust, etc. I found out on Saturday that the style is called Texas Tuscan and I couldn't be more pleased by that phrase.
(Google images for that phrase look a little more run-of-the-mill and less distinctive, but the houses I've been in are distinctly interchangeably identical.)
Some rich Texans build castles. A friend got married in this one. It was an unusual wedding.
Southern California has pyramids!
Also, African cities have some pretty awesome futuristic buildings.
That link in 215 is amazingly awesome.
The thing in 214 is a classic bit of California desert weirditude.
There's a mansion up the road from us -- not as garish as those Texas and California examples -- but in your face enough to be known locally as "Versailles" -- owner runs a health insurance company. No good pix on the internet . . .
|| Hey, they've put out a fairly detailed recounting of our local shooting. This guy's going to have a tough go convincing jurors that he was actually afraid . . . |>
206: thirded, as I can attest from a midday meetup with CharleyCarp and PGD sometime around the last collapse of the U.S. economy, IIRC.
The megachurch in 215 is/was well-known. IIRC there was some sort of demand from Rome that some critical dimension be less than St. Peter's.
What's craziest about it is that it's impossible to convey its size in photos because it's just an enlarged version of a humanely-sized building, and you can't quite look at those columns and entablatures and understand how big they actually are. It reminds me of the idea a friend of mine had to build a room that would be proportioned to his adult body as his childhood room was to his childhood self - doorknobs 6' off the ground, windowsills at 4', etc.
Florida knows how to compete with SoCal.
217: I've driven by that Kentucky castle. It's a pretty sad building, as if someone decided to plop down a castle in the middle of a horse field but didn't really put their heart into it.
Second 222. Nia is mad I won't rent it for her for her 8th birthday, but it's creepy anyway. There's a closer castle I've never gone to that at least seems to make the effort.
What's craziest about it is that it's impossible to convey its size in photos because it's just an enlarged version of a humanely-sized building, and you can't quite look at those columns and entablatures and understand how big they actually are. It reminds me of the idea a friend of mine had to build a room that would be proportioned to his adult body as his childhood room was to his childhood self - doorknobs 6' off the ground, windowsills at 4', etc.
Doesn't that have many precedents? I'm thinking of Louis XIV's hunting lodge at Marly, which Rasmussen describes as not very notable when you see the drawings, but the scale is colossal. Versailles and the Invalides have some of the same quality. Charley's neighbors have put their finger on it.
Under the rubric of of fundamental perception altering information, how much is one justified in altering (okay, honestly, downgrading) one's estimation of others parenting on being told their prepubescent daughter has a modeling gig with usaian apparel? Does it matter that they are foreigners & therefore might be able to semiplausibly claim lack of knowledge of dreadful co policies/practices?
Quite a few European cities seem to have an old town/new town divide, with grids in the new town. Or if they grew under Renaissance/Enlightenment style rational planning, then there may be an ordered diagonal/roundabout design with some gridlike regularity to it.
Barcelona seemed pretty gridded outside of the old city center.
San Francisco is of course absurdly gridded, relative to the contours of the land.
Tying threads together*, even Carcassonne has a bit of grid outside the medieval city.
*not really
Quite a few European cities seem to have an old town/new town divide, with grids in the new town. Or if they grew under Renaissance/Enlightenment style rational planning, then there may be an ordered diagonal/roundabout design with some gridlike regularity to it.
Yeah, I think the distinction ttaM is talking about arises mostly because although European cities were subject to the same planning fads as American ones over the centuries, which affected new development in similar ways, they also had these old medieval cities that continued to exist side-by-side with the new parts.
Right, but depending on how big the city was during medieval or early modern times, and then how the city grew or didn't later on, the non-gridded part may only be a small part of the city and may not be "representative" of the city as a whole.
I've only been to Barcelona a couple of times for a few days each time but I wouldn't characterize it as a city that wasn't pretty grid-like overall in terms of where you might go as a visitor, at least if you're looking for architecture stuff. I may have spent more time in the old city but that didn't dominate my impression of it. Whereas I know there are newer parts of Florence but don't know how gridded they may be because I never spent much time in them despite having spent much more time overall there than in Barcelona, which in the medieval areas seemed pretty meandering.
But I don't find the fact of a grid to make much difference to my aesthetic experience of cities, possibly because US cities are so thoroughly gridded you need to make distinctions on other criteria.
Sentence construction failure: I meant to refer to Florence as seeming mostly meandering, but various edits switched clauses around.
231: All good points. This whole discussion is kind of weird for me because I'm so used to the US convention of gridded layout being closely associated with large, dense cities (and small towns, but we're not really talking about those here) in contrast to meandering suburban development. Boston and Lower Manhattan are exceptions, of course, predating as they do the Griddening of America under the influence of Philadelphia and Savannah.
Possibly erroneously, some of the densely packed small towns in hilly areas in the US, especially mining or mill towns in the east, make me think of European towns with possibly similar economies I've gone by on the train in places like Belgium. I have no idea if they're actually similar since I haven't spent much time at all in places like those. Spread out small towns of one or two story homes and businesses seem pretty distinctly North American.
Edinburgh, quite a well known aerial photo from 1920:
[Funny, looking through the other photos from the same guy, how they reflect the pictorialist aesthetic, even though they are aerial shots:
]
There's a solidly gridded bit of Barcelona called Eixample (extension), which fills in between the old city and the former exurbs which are now part of it. It's one of the less tedious gridded districts to my knowledge because although the street plans are strictly rectangular (it's bisected by a major road called, imaginatively, Diagonal), the late nineteenth century Catalan fixation with architectural oddity crops up unexpectedly here and there in it.
The rest of the city basically follows the organic growth lines of the old town and its surrounding villages.
I actually lived in this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_Building
built by a guy who made a fortune in quack remedies! by an architect he took on a tour of the Loire Valley and told "Build me one like that, but twice as big!" standing in front of Chambord! but if you go into the quadrangles, you'll find out that he also wanted a bit of Wharton College, so our building looks like Chambord on steroids and made of bricks, with Wharton's library surgically grafted into the quad! insulated with straw dipped in paraffin wax, so the building is the third biggest fire hazard in south-eastern England!
236: look up the horrific Macia Plan for what the madman Le Corbusier wanted to do to the city. Street after street of identical concrete tower blocks across the entire city. No shops at street level - not even any pavements. Fortunately the Civil War broke out and stopped him.
insulated with straw dipped in paraffin wax, so the building is the third biggest fire hazard in south-eastern England!
This reminds me of the Roald Dahl bit about Gloster Gladiators: "They have taut canvas wings, covered with magnificently inflammable dope, and underneath there are hundreds of small thin sticks, the kind you put under the logs for kindling, only these are drier and thinner. If a clever man said, 'I am going to build a big thing that will burn better and quicker than anything else in the world,' and if he applied himself diligently to his task, he would probably finish up by building something very like a Gladiator."
Heartfelt, because Dahl himself had crashed and burned in a Gladiator...
re: 237
Heh, I used to drive past that almost daily, last summer, when I was taking the baby to Virginia Water for a walk/sleep. It's quite reminiscent of Keble College, too.
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/27/d3/17/keble-college.jpg
237. I love the comment in the link: Today it is the dominant building on the campus.
Who'd a thunk it?
240 C'est magnifique, main n'est-ce-pas la gare!
"Opinions differ on the merits of the Victorians, but it is pretty generally agreed that very few of them could be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks" - PGW.
Quite a few European cities seem to have an old town/new town divide, with grids in the new town.
Dresden is funny in that the Neustadt is the older part, what with the Altstadt having been bombed to bits. (Not counting the reconstructed historical buildings along the river, of course.)
Prague's New Town is 14th century in origin [although most of it is newer, now, obviously].
"New Town" in Europe is always a bit relative, c.f. Edinburgh, where I haven't noticed much of a grid in the New Town (18th century), although there are some interesting layouts here and there.
Yeah, New College, Oxford is from 1379.
Here's an aerial photo showing the weird rotunda: http://iwia.org/2006/FoundersAerialWeb.jpg
Actually I'm wrong about Wharton; it's copied from a New England women's college, but I forget which one. Royal Holloway also nicked quite a bit of their charter for our constitution.
It was a horrible building to live in; freezing in winter, broiling in summer, as spartan as a spartan thing, a couple of crappers per landing like a prison. (Actually, there's another hall of residence on the campus that was supposedly built to the plans of a Swedish jail, and that's far more habitable even if it does stink.)
In Morocco Fes Jadid "New Fez" founded outside the original walls of the old city dates back to the mid-13th century.
And there is the colonial-era French built modern Ville Nouvelle adjacent to the old (and "new") city.
235.1 is a great picture. I hadn't seen it before.
But the worst thing was that everyone with any power was paranoid about fire, so there were really quite strict rules about how much electricity you could have in your room. There was a maximum draw in watts as a condition of the tenancy. I have no idea how they cope with it now every student comes loaded with electronics.
And the place was full of very sensitive detectors.
So there were fire alarms all the time, sometimes two or three in a night, and a thousand or so students would bail out into the car park to wait for the fire brigade to search the place. The firemen were very keen not to be the gang who lost a grade one listed national monument, especially as Windsor Castle burned down on their watch and twice would have looked like carelessness. And of course the constant call-outs to investigate steam from a shower or burnt toast or cigarette smoke (it was always one of those options) must have been pretty tiresome, so I guess they took their time.
This was especially amusing if you were in someone else's room, and even more so if you were in their bed. Invariably someone would be dressed in a duvet, and just as invariably, it would rain.
Grade 1 Listed National Ruin is nothing to sneeze at.
Well, the college hierarchy probably wouldn't have cried salt tears over the massive insurance payout and the end of the huge costs of maintaining the bugger. And we'd probably have thought Founder's Ruin was even more awesome.
But the firemen had a rather different perspective. I'm not kidding about Windsor Castle burning down on their watch, you know, although at least the fire chief who was on holiday was from the Berkshire brigade not Surrey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Windsor_Castle_fire
The firemen were very keen not to be the gang who lost a grade one listed national monument, especially as Windsor Castle burned down on their watch and twice would have looked like carelessness.
In 1991, no castles burned to the ground. In 1992, one castle burned to the ground. In 1993, no castles burned to the ground. In 1994, no castles burned to the ground. I mean, I could go on.
Grade 1 Listed National Ruin is nothing to sneeze at.
I think that was WH Auden's official title.
It would take more than two fires to get statistical significance. They should relax.
Speaking of castles, apparently Bran Castle in Transylvania is for sale.
I think that was WH Auden's official title.
As opposed to Quentin Crisp, who became one of the Stately Homos of England.
I'm living in Istanbul right now and let it be known that the amount of pre-19th-C architecture is almost negligible. Aside from the Ottoman center, which preserves only the big public buildings of the last 1500 years, most of the "old" buildings you'll see (in Beyoglu, parts of the historical peninsula, and the Bosphorus shores) are nineteenth-century stone or brick or concrete three-story apartments, not unlike the row houses of the 19th-C US and Britain, but with distinctive balconies. They are beautiful and evoke a deep past but in fact are no older than Chicago. There is also opulent Baroque-orientalist fantasy, and that is great too.
The other ninety percent of the city is pure concrete, from the fifties and later. Hundreds of square miles of it, and no grids anywhere to be seen.
"New Town" in Europe is always a bit relative
I should have been more explicit about deliberately not capitalizing new town. I was referring to 19th and 20th century newer development, not necessarily places called "New" where the name stuck. But obviously European cities have many older sections, and much less overall order than North American cities. I was just pointing to the range of variation that struck me when crossing the borders from/to pre-19th century city sections.
236. The gridded bit of Barcelona. I came across the pic elsewhere. A bit late, but it's a nice image.
That's beautiful. Thanks for passing it along!
That is a really nice photo. Makes me wish I could take vacation time right now.
