Frankfurt Leaves an Impression.

Since I’m writing this post in the wee small hours of a London night, I can wish the bulk of my usual readers:

A good morning and good day!

As well as good evening, good night, sweet dreams! And then once again it’s onwards and upwards to new achievements in your personal and community activities. In other words, as yours truly is wont to say: “get back to work guys!”

Frankfurt is next up on my agenda. It’s a familiar situation – I’ve actually been here many times, but not in the city itself, just at the airport for connecting flights. I’ve never seen this large and very important city as a tourist! This time, too, Frankfurt has managed to fly past me, leaving a sort of “impressionistic” picture in the memory.

All the same, is there anything from Germany’s landscapes that I can offer you to exercise your mind? Are you ready to rack your brains?

But first, a small introduction. Let’s look at some different cities from above. For example, like this:

Cities can be large and varied. Beautiful and functional. Clean and dirty. Every place is different: higher or lower, fancier or simpler … in other words – unique.

Looking at all these differences can be pretty exciting.

But here is a question that has been bothering me for years.

Why are cities in Europe mostly flat, while in North America almost every important city has a clearly defined center with skyscrapers surrounded with low-rise buildings stretching out to the horizon? Why is that?

Yes, there are exceptions: Paris with LaDefense and Moscow with Moscow City. Both are artificial formations, state-level projects.

But in general, Europe is flat and America is high-rise. WHY IS THAT?`

Whoever comes up with the most satisfactory answer will win … a chocolate! :)

For example, Frankfurt am Main. The financial capital of Germany. Because of the skyscrapers, it is affectionately called “Mainhattan”.

This is the only place with skyscrapers in the whole country and one of the few in Europe. But why? In America it is normal to see skyscrapers surrounded by low buildings in the city centers. How so?

I suggest you give it a good think over and come up with the best ideas for the judgement of this most trolling of Internet communities.

P.S.: and in this photo, I am going to work a little, thanks for reading the whole post! :)

READ COMMENTS 7
Comments 7 Leave a note

    Peter Hofmann

    The the highest building is the church.

    Flyingdutchman

    This….most european cities were build bround churches. In ye olde times the houses could not be higher than the church; hence some strange peaks on churches to increase hights. Look at old paris or amsterdam, all lower than the churches, which makes for wonderful sights. Newer project are certainly higher than that, but to extensively rebuild cityscape would break our hearts and would cause lots of old (1400 and older) buildings to lose their charm

    P yates

    Europeans are scared of heights. Where’s my chocolate?? Lol

    Jona

    New guys on the block build tallest buildings as success symbol. Europe is not successful

    Jim Marlon A. Macaraeg

    European Cities are mostly flat because they tend to preserve or restore old buildings while North America is inclined to build new buildings and tear down old buildings.

    Charles

    I’d probably agree with Jim about North America building new buildings. Luckily, that doesn’t always happen so we can keep some of our better structures.

    What looks like a chrome sausage (or balloon) in the one picture (I couldn’t find what it really was called or where specifically) reminded me of the Spoonbridge in my Minneapolis home town – http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artworks/spoonbridge-and-cherry

    Oleg Petrovsky

    Most likely has to do with the cost of land and density of a population, not to forget that most of the tallest buildings are offices rather than flats, the companies like to hurdle people under one roof..;)

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