Skylines

So, for this week's post I'm looking at skylines of cities and comparing them.  The two cities I would like to compare are New York City and Tokyo.  I chose these two cities because I have been lucky enough to have been to both of them as well as I have a few pictures of my own that are readily available instead of searching for pics of other cities that I have been to.

The top picture was taken from the roof top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC this past June and the lower was taken from the patio of my family's apartment when they were living in Tokyo.  Two very different cities!!!

To start with, NYC was considered a city by the late 1600's and has only grown since then.  It is also the most populous city in the US.  Tokyo, on the other hand, has been an inhabited area since the late 12th century (as a small fishing village to start) but not considered a city until the early 1600's.  Tokyo is now, like NYC, the most populous city in Japan.

Although both cities have been around for a very long time, their skylines are both very different.  One of the first things I noticed while traveling to both places was the architecture.  In NYC, it is very easy to spot a large number of buildings that are at least one hundred years old mixed in with newer buildings as well.  If you look closely at the skyline of Tokyo, the buildings are very different.  Most look somewhat drab and are not much to look at while some are pretty cool, like the zig-zag building in the upper left corner of the pic.  There are two reasons for this.  First, Tokyo had been almost completely leveled by the end of World War Two.  This forced the city to rebuild with fresh new structures to replace everything that had been ruined.  The second reason is that real estate in Japan, and especially in Tokyo, is extremely expensive, so the land is worth a lot more than the building on it.  This leads to landowners building cheap buildings that they plan on using for maybe twenty years, after which they will knock them down and build new ones.

Another major difference I saw between the skylines was the use of signs.  While there are advertisements all over both cities, the use of lighted signs is pretty much kept to Times Square.  In Tokyo, that same type of signs are plastered all over the city!

While both cities are huge, I think that NYC is taller.  There are many skyscrapers in both cities but NYC has so many more that are also taller.  Tokyo does have a large number of skyscrapers, but not like the original home of skyscrapers.

I feel there are many different things that can affect how a city grows, no matter where the city is located.  Some of these things are necessary for the city to grow and others just kind of happen.  Both types make any city unique.