Can You See Your City Geographically Situated Elsewhere?

[Razor]

This is just a fun exercise in imagination.

For example, I've always envisioned Winnipeg as a prime Great Lakes city candidate. Perhaps on the North Shore of Lake Superior. To me, it just seems like it has the dna to be one.

Any others?..Chicago as a coastal city, or St. Louis also as a Great Lakes city perhaps?

[Steely Dan]

Can't really see it for chicago.

It's the very embodiment of where the great lakes met the great prairie.

Corn and Lumber and Pigs and Iron.

Boats are slow, let's build railroads!

Nature's Metropolis

The interior alpha could've been at St. Louis, that's about it.

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Can't really see it for chicago.

It's the very embodiment of where the great lakes met the great prairie.

Corn and Lumber and Pigs and Iron.

Boats are slow, let's build railroads.

The interior alpha could've been at St. Louis, that's about it.

Chicago is not "my city" in that I wasn't born there and don't live there but I think of it as my adopted North American city for a variety of reasons but mostly the epic skyline.

I agree 100%. For me Chicago is all about those rail lines ranging across the pancake-flat prairies. Driving or rail travelling in and seeing the towers gradually appearing as if in the middle of nowhere and that is part of the point of Chicago. It is in the middle of nowhere.

[hipster duck]

Toronto could definitely be somewhere else. It isn't really a product of its surroundings. It's on a Great Lake, but it barely has a port and never relied on lake-bound shipping or shipping-reliant industries for its bread and butter.

Toronto would have to be in Canada, though. Toronto is unmistakably Canadian. And it would have to be in Ontario. Pretty much right after it was founded in the wake of the American revolution, it was clear that Upper Canada (Ontario) was going to eventually be the most populous province. It already had more people than Quebec by 1850, and the power and size of Canadian cities are more a function of their provinces than of the country as a whole.

[BillM]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Toronto could definitely be somewhere else. It isn't really a product of its surroundings. It's on a Great Lake, but it barely has a port and never relied on lake-bound shipping or shipping-reliant industries for its bread and butter.

Toronto would have to be in Canada, though. Toronto is unmistakably Canadian. And it would have to be in Ontario. Pretty much right after it was founded in the wake of the American revolution, it was clear that Upper Canada (Ontario) was going to eventually be the most populous province. It already had more people than Quebec by 1850, and the power and size of Canadian cities are more a function of their provinces than of the country as a whole.

I can imagine Toronto being near the site of Hamilton. Or, perhaps Hamilton would be the big city.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Can't really see it for chicago.

It's the very embodiment of where the great lakes met the great prairie.

Corn and Lumber and Pigs and Iron.

Boats are slow, let's build railroads!

Nature's Metropolis

The interior alpha could've been at St. Louis, that's about it.

yeah, you’d have to geologically/geographically reorder and downsize the continent - make it narrower or something and chicago could have been on the lake AND at the end of the columbia river or something crazy like a massive puget sound. its not entirely unusal for cities to be sandwiched by two seperate bodies of water - new orleans and auckland, nz come to mind.

but otherwise of course chicago is wholesale a product of the vast wealth extracted from the massive northern half of the interior from lake huron or whatever to the rockies.

[Centropolis]

st. louis has some great-lakes related attributes but really takes on a sub-tropical feel in the summer - rumbling cloudbanks and a city-wide obsession with growing banana trees in the front of houses...

i could see it somewhere upriver from buenos aires if argentina or paraguay had industrialized more extensively - an old, new world city thats seen some shit...hard to picture it anywhere but on a river although I could picture it as an industrial el paso type thing - a chunk of brick sitting on a river/ditch in the desert.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

st. louis has some great-lakes related attributes but really takes on a sub-tropical feel in the summer - rumbling cloudbanks and a city-wide obsession with growing banana trees in the front of houses...

i could see it somewhere upriver from buenos aires if argentina or paraguay had industrialized more extensively - an old, new world city thats seen some shit...hard to picture it anywhere but on a river although I could picture it as an industrial el paso type thing - a chunk of brick sitting on a river/ditch in the desert.

That sounds like Rosario.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by CaliNative

That sounds like Rosario.

huh. funnily enough Rosario is a sister city to St. Louis now that I look into it.

theres sort of a new world archetype of an 18th century colonial, humid, inland river port city with some evidence of past wealth and a large agricultural catchment in a volatile climate. interestingly the last ocean-going vessel that i know of to dock at st louis was from latin america (Cuba).

[pdxtex]

Pittsburgh and Portland are cousins.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

Pittsburgh and Portland are cousins.

i used to work with a portland native and he made portland in the 70s sound like a bit of a mild rustbelt city - not in the sense of white flight but deindustrialization and the port.

but of course the rivers, even the climate to an extent - i can see the parallels. people have been speaking of pgh as the “next portland” for a while now (in the portlandia sense not ANTIFA SUPERSOLDIERS).

[biguc]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

st. louis has some great-lakes related attributes but really takes on a sub-tropical feel in the summer - rumbling cloudbanks and a city-wide obsession with growing banana trees in the front of houses...

i could see it somewhere upriver from buenos aires if argentina or paraguay had industrialized more extensively - an old, new world city thats seen some shit...hard to picture it anywhere but on a river although I could picture it as an industrial el paso type thing - a chunk of brick sitting on a river/ditch in the desert.

Originally Posted by ue

Winnipeg could've been in the US. It looks Midwestern and has the manufacturing industry that other Prairie cities lack. It could've been somewhere around Fargo or Omaha or Minneapolis or perhaps Kansas City. Alternatively, it could've been where Edmonton is - they're similar as it is and also have similar climates.

A lot of what Centropolis says about St. Louis makes sense for Winnipeg. At least in summer. Watching clouds 10km high dump everything they've got on the earth, you get the sense of scale that puts you in the middle of something vast. The continent around you has a presence. In this sense, Winnipeg could be Missouri, Volgograd Oblast, or Zambia.

[ue]

Originally Posted by biguc

A lot of what Centropolis says about St. Louis makes sense for Winnipeg. At least in summer. Watching clouds 10km high dump everything they've got on the earth, you get the sense of scale that puts you in the middle of something vast. The continent around you has a presence. In this sense, Winnipeg could be Missouri, Volgograd Oblast, or Zambia.

Yeah, that's true too. In the summer, there are many days that remind me of Southern Ontario around the Great Lakes. You don't get that further west in the Prairies. But, then, Winnipeg is at a crossroads. It takes influence from Ontario and the Midwest while influencing the subsequent Prairie cities.

[Centropolis]

i mean these down-continent south american river cities are the same deal - a mix of people eating tons of grilled/bbq meat and drinking german beer styles in sweltering humidity waiting for the thunderstorm to pass as it sweeps the chaco


polarsteps.com

[James Bond Agent 007]

Not Kansas City. It's in the ideal east-fading-into-west location and wouldn't be the same if it were somewhere else.

[LA21st]

Defintely not LA, SF, SD or Vegas.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by LA21st

Defintely not LA, SF, SD or Vegas.

ive never been to cdmx but i’ve always thought LA might have a similar soul.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

ive never been to cdmx but i’ve always thought LA might have a similar soul.

is that Mexico City? Im gonna disagree because LA metro has so much beach culture. I was just in Malibu only and there are people everywhere.
I dont think you can have LA without the beach. Same as SD

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by LA21st

is that Mexico City? Im gonna disagree because LA metro has so much beach culture. I was just in Malibu only and there are people everywhere.
I dont think you can have LA without the beach. Same as SD

of course, yeah i thought of that immediately aftarwards but there is still this immense metropolis in a basin ringed by mountains on many sides and in between.

[kcexpress69]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Not Kansas City. It's in the ideal east-fading-into-west location and wouldn't be the same if it were somewhere else.

It's not the geographical location that bothers me. I just wished the KS/MO State Line didn't go right through the heart of the metro area. The Missouri and Kansas Rivers do enough of that as it is. I would love to see how much stronger the city of Kansas City MO would be if the state line was 20 miles east or west of downtown.