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Besides the Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco has no one identifiable landmark that sets it apart. Chicago has at least 3 that come to mind, The Willis Tower (Sears Tower), Chicago 360* (John Hancock Building), and Navy Pier.
None of those Chicago buildings are landmarks. I wasn't even 100% sure what the Navy Pier was, and I lived in Chicago for a time. I had to look it up.
And Hancock and Willis, while 100x better known than Navy Pier, are not global icons. If you showed a pic of either building in Istanbul or Osaka or Amsterdam, they would have no idea what city you're talking about. I bet you their first guess would be "a building in New York?"
In contrast, SF has Golden Gate, Alcatraz, Chinatown, Transamerica Pyramid, Lombard St., cable cars, victorians, hills, redwoods, etc. Even Fisherman's Wharf is better known than pretty much any location in Chicago.
Chicago's most famous icon would actually be the "L" structure looping through downtown. I bet you that would be the structure that would be most recognized by outsiders, esp. foreigners.
I don't care about "expanse" as even NYC isn't that expansive if you put it next to Paris and when you get to that density you kind of just stick to your area anyway
NYC actually has more expansive density than Paris. Its urban core is enormous.
NYC, for U.S. standards (really for Western standards), is just a big outlier, in every sense of the word.
Besides the Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco has no one identifiable landmark that sets it apart. Chicago has at least 3 that come to mind, The Willis Tower (Sears Tower), Chicago 360* (John Hancock Building), and Navy Pier.
Yea, I never heard of the Navy Pier until a couple years ago. Willis Tower, yes, but more for just being the tallest in the country rather than the look. Golden Gate Bridge, the trolleys I've heard of before visiting San Francisco.
Golden Gate Bridge peaking out:
Trolleys. You can tell it's Christmas time cause the Palm trees are decked in lights.
Atlanta is somewhat walkable...I personally think it's more walkable than the average sunbelt city . It's more active and bustling than Houston and Dallas in it's downtown on an average day with way more to do. Here's some random photos I took recently(not these are not all downtown photos)
Really awesome pics of Atlanta.
I think one important factor about urbanity is a city's public transit system. Frequent rapid transit definitely builds a more urban environment, and is only increased by high ridership numbers and high adoption by local residents. Some cities like Dallas has already made large investments building their LRT in recent years, but ridership numbers have yet to reach sustainable levels because that requires a fundamental change in habits.
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