Friday, December 12, 2008

Tom Beyeler's thoughts on size and scale

In Chicago, downtown is pretty much centered around Michigan Avenue. Manhattan is much the same as the center of New York City. Here in China the cities are so large it is hart to tell where “downtown” exists. Everywhere there are skyscrapers. Each day as we drove around Beijing on our way to visit our tour destinations we would see areas that were full of huge apartment buildings and office skyscrapers. Any of these areas could easily qualify as “downtown” in an American city. It is much the same here in Shanghai. As we drove in from the airport we saw a dazzling display of huge buildings. The size of these two cities is incredible. The skyscrapers in Chicago and New York are impressive. The sheer number of skyscrapers and the fact that they are spread throughout the cities make Chicago and New York seem small in comparison. Our host at the American Consulate described cities of four to five million people as second tier. He summed it up best when he said it’s all relative when compared to Beijing and Shanghai.

1 comment:

  1. Thats awesome!!
    Learn how to spell though, I know Tom Beyeler did not write this!

    ReplyDelete