Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities and Stack Them Sideways

An interesting article, sure, but there's a small problem. The section of Istanbul that they've chosen (centered here: <a href="https://maps.google.com/?ll=41.044081,29.096603&#38;spn=0.043954,0.090895&#38;t=m&#38;z=14" rel="nofollow">https://maps.google.com/?ll=41.044081,29.096603&#38;spn=0.04...</a>) 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.<p>That said, this is a case of being right for the wrong reason. Istanbul is an <i>amazing</i> city to walk through. It's like the worlds largest living maze, and you're never quite sure where you'll pop out.<p>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...<p>But you don't have to believe me. Yandex has great walking maps of Istanbul! Here's the location I was just describing: <a href="http://harita.yandex.com.tr/-/CVeLjW60" rel="nofollow">http://harita.yandex.com.tr/-/CVeLjW60</a>

Paris shouldn't be too surprising. While the city is quite old, it was reshaped and modernized in the mid-19th century.<p>See, for example: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmanns_renovation_of_Paris" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmanns_renovation_of_Paris</a>

I've been transfixed with the idea of 'Digital Comparative Studies of Cities' (or some similar turn of phrase).<p>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.<p>There are lots of similarly clever projects cited on BLDGBlog [1] if you're into this kind of thing.<p>[1] <a href="http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/</a>

Istanbul's layout is downright Byzantine.

<i>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?</i><p>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.

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

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.

Allan Jacobs' book <i>Great Streets</i> 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. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B-Jacobs/dp/0262600234" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B-Jacobs/dp/026260...</a>

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.

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.

Original URL (with a few more cities):<p><a href="http://www.armellecaron.fr/art/index.php?page=plans_de_berlin" rel="nofollow">http://www.armellecaron.fr/art/index.php?page=plans_de_berli...</a>

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.

I've always thought that American roads suck for exactly this reason.<p>They're so boring. -__-

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.<p>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.

This reminds me of Ursus Wehrli's work. <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/ursus_wehrli_tidies_up_art.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/ursus_wehrli_tidies_up_art.html</a>

I have a fondness for geography and maps, so I am delighted to see this posted here. <i>Big Think</i> covered this back in February, 2011: <a href="http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/502-hung-out-to-dry-a-taxonomy-of-city-blocks" rel="nofollow">http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/502-hung-out-to-dry-a-taxon...</a>.<p>The above article is part of Big Think's <i>Strange Maps</i>, a fantastic blog which has many, many more interesting articles!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Including Salt Lake City would be humorous.<p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/8e2f27l" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/8e2f27l</a>

Mumbai is an excellent case for dissection.

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

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

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

The Situationists meets William S. Burroughs