

Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities and Stack Them Sideways - missechokit
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/09/12/160996525/odd-things-happen-when-you-chop-up-cities-and-stack-them-sideways?sc=tw&cc=share&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=f34b7

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jballanc
An interesting article, sure, but there's a small problem. The section of
Istanbul that they've chosen (centered here:
[https://maps.google.com/?ll=41.044081,29.096603&spn=0.04...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=41.044081,29.096603&spn=0.043954,0.090895&t=m&z=14))
is actually on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus, and it's one of the newer
neighborhoods. The streets are actually arranged like that because of the
terrain, more than because of history.

That said, this is a case of being right for the wrong reason. Istanbul is an
_amazing_ city to walk through. It's like the worlds largest living maze, and
you're never quite sure where you'll pop out.

For example, the first time I was there, we turned a corner down an alley to
try and get to one of the main roads. The alley started out wide enough for us
to walk three-abreast, but quickly narrowed. At some point I looked up and
noticed that there was now a roof over our heads. Eventually the alley
narrowed to where we had to turn sideways to squeeze past people coming in the
opposite direction, and there were shop counters on either side. A few feet
more, and we stepped out onto the main street we had been looking for. I
turned around, but where I expected to see the alley was, instead, what looked
like a regular store-front, identical to all those next to it on either
side...

But you don't have to believe me. Yandex has great walking maps of Istanbul!
Here's the location I was just describing:
<http://harita.yandex.com.tr/-/CVeLjW60>

~~~
Jun8
Came here to point this out, too. Would be interesting if they redo the
analysis on the old part of town. Where was teh alley that you are referring
to? Near the Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi)?

~~~
jballanc
No, just off of Istiklal Caddesi. Actually, Istiklal is interesting in that it
is somewhat isolated, and almost every alley leading you to it (except for a
few major ones) is a different adventure. Istiklal also has a number of
"pasajlar" that are their own adventure (but sadly, don't appear in Yandex
last I checked). Kapali Carsi has some more amazing routes, and just down from
Istiklal is Cezayir Sokagi which, despite being called a "street", is more of
a staircase but also has some of the best French restaurants in the city.

If you haven't been to Istanbul, you really must go!

 _Edit_ : Oh, and I imagine if they did this analysis with one of the _really_
old parts of town, it would be even more extreme...the problem would be
finding an accurate map!

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cobralibre
Paris shouldn't be too surprising. While the city is quite old, it was
reshaped and modernized in the mid-19th century.

See, for example:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmanns_renovation_of_Paris>

~~~
ggchappell
Interesting article. But the link does not (currently) work without the
apostrophe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris)

~~~
Dinoguy1000
Now it does. ;)

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stevenrace
I've been transfixed with the idea of 'Digital Comparative Studies of Cities'
(or some similar turn of phrase).

With the advent of mapping projects (GoogleMaps, Openstreetmap, etc),
environmental sensor networks (my startup's area), and cheaper LiDAR arrays
(for point cloud mappings of buildings and terrain...now in CMOS form) - we'll
be able to quantify the homogeny of surbanization, architectural 'themes',
road uniformity, development rates, etc over time.

There are lots of similarly clever projects cited on BLDGBlog [1] if you're
into this kind of thing.

[1] <http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/>

~~~
Monkeyget
> quantify the homogeny of surbanization, architectural 'themes'

You'll be interested in this paper
<http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/whatMakesParis/>

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samd
Istanbul's layout is downright Byzantine.

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anonymous
Oh, I see what you did there :). Have an upboat.

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jrockway
_all those crooked, lopsided, curvaceous streets, going off in so many
directions, I can't help wondering, what would it be like to wander there?_

It would be like the suburbs in the US. Houses are all on cul-de-sacs that
wind around and eventually join larger streets which eventually join arterial
streets. Pretty much like the map of Istanbul they chose.

~~~
oh_sigh
Something tells me you've either never walked around Istanbul, or you've never
walked around a suburb, or both.

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jpdoctor
Would love to see Boston added. (Most believe that Boston city planners used
the throw-spaghetti-against-the-wall method of city planning.)

~~~
presidentender
I heard that Boston's layout was the result of paving cow paths.

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sammyo
That may be partially accurate, the large park in the center (Boston Common)
was originally a public grazing area. But Boston was originally a small round
island at the end of a long isthmus and many streets are spokes or perimeter
arcs around the waterfront or older obstructions. Incredible amounts of
landfill in the 1800s changed the borders of the city but by then core roads
had been long established.

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LesZedCB
I used to live in Istanbul, I actually lived in the section shown on this map.
I can verify from walking hundreds of miles through those serpentine back
roads that wandering Istanbul is a beautiful experience.

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portlander52232
Allan Jacobs' book _Great Streets_ contains dozens of this type of map, not
chopped up, but showing the street systems all at the same scale. It's
absolutely fascinating to compare 'Cisco to Houston to Paris to Venice. A
highly recommended book. [http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B-
Jacobs/dp/026260...](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B-
Jacobs/dp/0262600234)

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mahmud
where is "'Cisco"?

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bolasanibk
I am assuming San Fran'cisco' is being referred here.

~~~
portlander52232
Yep. People used to call it that.

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Alekanekelo
Humorous post. I can't say that I am surprised by Paris dissected. All those
small streets and alleys creates a lot of small segments and those small
segments, when looked from above, will seem monotonous and all in the same
shape. It seems that it is mostly the larger segments that are oddly shaped
and that is not really surprising.

~~~
babebridou
Something that also doesn't carry over this interesting approach is the land
area. Paris is only 105.4 km2, New York City is roughly 7 times as large,
Berlin 9 times and you could fit 50 Paris inside Istanbul as a whole. Those
tiny segments are really, really tiny - they don't have the time to be oddly
shaped over just a few dozen meters ;)

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redcircle
There seems to be a value judgement here: that curvy and uniquely shaped
streets are superior in some way. This can be decided with objective evidence:
look at how city districts flourish, and see whether it is related to the
shape of the city blocks.

~~~
mey
I'd be amazing to see that data (which I doubt exists) over major technology
changes in living style and transportation.

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stephth
Original URL (with a few more cities):

[http://www.armellecaron.fr/art/index.php?page=plans_de_berli...](http://www.armellecaron.fr/art/index.php?page=plans_de_berlin)

~~~
tripzilch
Thanks!

But it still doesn't mention what sorting key was used to arrange the pieces?
Similarity in shape, obviously, but by what measure?

Since it's an art project, it might even have been done semi-manually, by eye?

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jules
Paris looks more homogeneous than it is simply because they analyzed a bigger
area, or at least an area with more pieces. For example if you analyzed the
entirety of Istanbul, then for almost every piece you could probably find a
very similar piece elsewhere.

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shocks
I've always thought that American roads suck for exactly this reason.

They're so boring. -__-

~~~
freehunter
In the cities (where this is true), that is a good thing. City streets are
about efficiency of transport. A road that seems to go straight to your
destination but then ends abruptly is not a good thing. Freeways are boring
for the same reason. They're not meant to be exciting, they're meant to be
roads.

Country roads in America are anything but boring, though. Some of them are
bordering on downright dangerous with the twists, turns, and hills. I've never
heard anyone argue that city streets were too efficient.

~~~
toddmorey
You may hear the first argument from me, though it's not mine. The Interstate
Highway in America was modelled after the Autobahn in Germany. But we made two
dramatic changes: (1) we put the highways right through cities instead of
alongside them, and (2) we cut through the landscape rather than adhering to
it (so our roads could be straight instead of winding).

There have been a few unintended consequences of those decisions. First, the
highways literally divided cities like walls, cutting neighborhood access off
from one community to another. I live close enough to my downtown to walk, but
to do so, I'd have to cross a highway.

Second, there's some consensus among researchers that the long, straight
stretches of highway contribute to driver fatigue in a way that a more active
driving experience (from the occasional turns) does not.

While the autobahn curves with the landscape, it's not as dangerous as a
country road. And by not dissecting the cities, it makes life in the city more
efficient and connected.

~~~
Spooky23
Note that it wasn't always an unintended consequence. When Robert Moses built
the expressway and parkway systems in NYC, he expressly targeted black and
puerto rican neighborhoods to bear the brunt of the impact. On Long Island,
his bulldozers sliced small farms in two, but avoided the great estates of the
mega rich -- at huge expense to both taxpayers and generations of commuters.

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supreeth
Love this project! I'm curious to find out how Indian cities would hold up to
this exercise. A city like Delhi that is made up of 7+ old and new cities,
Mumbai which is sea front and hard pressed for real estate (which important
city isn't?!) and Bangalore which has very old green parts and very new barren
areas would all be fun to map.

One other interesting exercise would be to map the cities over time. A
satellite view image from the 1960's and one from 2012. Could throw up
interesting anthropomorphical results.

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galvanist
This reminds me of Ursus Wehrli's work.
<http://www.ted.com/talks/ursus_wehrli_tidies_up_art.html>

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MikeCodeAwesome
I have a fondness for geography and maps, so I am delighted to see this posted
here. _Big Think_ covered this back in February, 2011:
[http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/502-hung-out-to-dry-a-
taxon...](http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/502-hung-out-to-dry-a-taxonomy-of-
city-blocks).

The above article is part of Big Think's _Strange Maps_ , a fantastic blog
which has many, many more interesting articles!

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pbhjpbhj
What are the odd things - I only scanned the article but it seemed pretty much
to show expected results. The whole is more than the sum of parts.

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trentlott
He never says what "odd things" happen. He just organizes blocks and then
marvels at what it looks like in a completely boring way.

He spent all his allotted time making the figures, apparently, and took no
time to thinking of anything interesting to say about it or describe these
"odd things" he teases in the title.

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jboggan
Glad to see this article is up on the front page. I submitted it two days ago
and it never got traction.

Question about article submissions - in the past when I've submitted a
duplicate article it takes me to that HN posting instead. What are the edge
cases where identical articles get posted separately on HN?

~~~
missechokit
Whoops--I had no idea! And I was shocked to see that it had this much traction
myself.

~~~
jboggan
No, it's cool that you got it up. I thought it was really neat from a
visualization standpoint. You probably just submitted at a more fortunate time
of day.

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state
We have so much rich geographical data and it's always refreshing to see
someone (the artist / architect) asking simple questions about it. I'm much
more excited about the work itself than Krulwich's commentary (for as much as
I like him). Cities are rich with spatially disjoint points of similarity.

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dm8
I'd be curious to see how old cultural cities like Mumbai, Cairo etc. will
look like when they are "chopped". I'm sure they won't look anything different
from Istanbul.

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SeanLuke
Including Salt Lake City would be humorous.

<http://tinyurl.com/8e2f27l>

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Cherian
Mumbai is an excellent case for dissection.

~~~
manojlds
Or New Delhi for that matter.

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minikomi
Nice. Would love to see Tokyo. My guess is it would be a mix of NY and
Istanbul chunks, depending on the area.

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aw3c2
Doesnt say anything about the sources or methology. I guess footways and the
like were not used in this.

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kristianp
I don't find this interesting at all. What is the point of doing that?

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PilateDeGuerre
The Situationists meets William S. Burroughs

