Panorama Investigation

European cities have are both similar and dissimilar to American cities in terms of their overall appearance. This can be seen in the panoramic views of New York City and Paris.

Above is a panoramic view of Paris at dusk. It shows the winding streets of the City of Light, with the Eifel Tower in the background. More easily observable in the foreground than in the back, one can see that the buildings are all about the same height.

This photo shows New York City at night. One can see in the foreground that the streets are aligned in a grid pattern in an attempt to regulate traffic within the city. Also, the buildings of the city are not the same height, as can be easily seen in the lower left of the photo.

The difference that jumps out at me first is the arrangement of the streets within both cities. Despite Paris' origins as a Roman conquest town, which was built on a grid, the city grew into a sprawling city with winding streets which go off from each other at different angles. This is in stark contrast to the photo of New York City which clearly shows the grid system of street organization.

Another stark difference between the two views is the relative size of the the buildings in both cities. The average building in Paris, according to the view from the photo, is not much larger than a few stories high. The average structure in the New York City photo, however, is a skyscraper, with many more floors than the average building in Paris.

One striking difference between the city which stands out to me is that the largest structure in the photo of the city of Paris is a public monument, which when it was built was likely not intended to be a large generator of income for the city. This is in contrast to New York, where the largest structures pictured were built solely for economic purposes. This tells me that, in Paris, when these buildings were constructed, they did not want to blatantly advertise what the purpose of the building was.