

Mind-Blowing Satellite Pictures Show How Cities Grow Over Time - gatsby
http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-pictures-cities-growing-over-time-2011-3#dubai-2000-1

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bane
As an American, I've never really appreciated this. Frequent trips to D.C.,
Baltimore, Philly, NYC all my life...the cities are all too new to really see
such dramatic growth from the ground without really taking some time to see
it. Oh a suburb here and there, a new road, a new high ramp, a new shopping
center etc.

I think that D.C. in some ways is fairly easy to actually drive through the
history of the city and its growth. Starting in D.C. going South or West you
find yourself in various "old towns" like old town Alexandria that even today
have a distinctly old timy feel. A mess of roads, narrow streets, etc. right
after that you quickly see urban areas like Arlington give way to what used to
be the far off suburbs of D.C. in Alexandria or Fairfax or Vienna or Falls
Church. Today they are an almost unbroken semi-suburb of shopping centers and
communities of small old houses built in the 60s and 70s. Get out past that
area and you find the 80s. Lots of shopping malls, larger newer homes, etc.
The area is noticeably nicer, better planned, less crowded, newer stuff. Out
past that you find the 90s and so on and so forth.

And at some point it sort of reverses itself as you near the next old town
area, you start going back again through time. The bigger the original town
was, the more noticeable it is (you see this effect more as you approach
Leesburg or Manassas than Haymarket.)

I actually found this effect even more interesting and pronounced in Europe,
with so many cities founded by Romans, surrounded by a medieval era unplanned
rats maze of narrow roads punctuated with a few Renaissance buildings (and a
few later eras depending) surrounded by beautifully organized and architected
19th and early 20th century buildings and then a rats maze of ugly modern
apartment blocks bleeding off into modern suburbia.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=paris,+france&aq=&sll=38.861098,-77.240753&sspn=0.577443,1.308746&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Paris,+%C3%8Ele-
de-France,+France&ll=48.8576,2.351074&spn=0.060988,0.163593&t=h&z=13)

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Barcelona,+Spain&aq=0&sll=48.8576,2.351074&sspn=0.060988,0.163593&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Barcelona,+Province+of+Barcelona,+Catalonia,+Spain&ll=41.385954,2.168255&spn=0.069548,0.163593&t=h&z=13)

You can actually see the history from space, the road organization and
building layout are tell-tale. Like rings of a tree you can spot population
explosions, times of hardship, uncontrolled fast growth. It's actually quite
beautiful to ponder on.

This concept, travel towards or away from the founding core of a city in order
to "time travel" is also echo'd by modern archeologists, dig down to go back
in time. The Seattle underground and the Roman ruins under Barcelona are
fantastic examples of this.

It reminds me in analogy of climate as a function of altitude (mountain and
hills) or latitude (north and south). You can experience the climate of a
northern latitude while at the equator by simply climbing up.

