The Total Perspective Vortex

[waitingman]

A couple of days ago, we had a few drinks at the Opera Bar, celebrating a friend's birthday. Leaving there at about 9pm & walking back to Circular Quay, I looked over at one of Sydney's 'icons' ~ the Harbour Bridge... & realised how small it is, compared to bridges we'd seen in America, on both sides of the continent. Even the Brooklyn Bridge is longer... not to mention the Golden Gate

Driving across our Bridge yesterday, I looked over at our CBD & its familiar skyscrapers... & realised how small it is, compared to Manhattan & even the downtown areas of San Francisco & Chicago. Having now walked around all of them, I'll never complain about the distance from Circular Quay to the Town Hall ever again

I'm not running Sydney down ~ it's just that travel has broadened the mind & shrunk the city. Never having left this country until last year, I'd thought other cities of the world would be pretty much the same as mine &, in a lot of respects, they are. They're just a whole lot bigger than I'd ever considered

To illustrate my point:~

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Part of it, I think, is that cities in Australia sprawl in a way that they don't (and often can't) in other parts of the world. Australia don't build up nearly as much because we've been able to build out. Though that's starting to change, as people realise that a 100km commute to the CBD each day is kinda extreme...

Then again, the model is different in Australia to many other parts of the world. I was bewildered before we moved to read that Melbourne's population is bigger than that of any US city apart from NYC and LA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population). This baffled me until I learned that places like the SF Bay Area and St Louis can have well over a dozen "cities" in one contiguous metropolis. I'd think of that unbroken sprawl as one city, myself, but it's not counted as such here. It's all in the way you look at things, I guess.

It's certainly true that travel broadens the horizons, though. And coming back is not the same as never having left...