There are few aspects of city life as boring as manhole and storm drain covers. Fortunately, some artists are willing to turn these bland icons into artistic canvases -often in surprisingly humorous ways. There are more great paintings over at WebUrbanist.

Link

From the archives of the Old West, we’ve culled a list of the most notorious places on the frontier. Here’s our countdown of the baddest of the bad, meanest of the mean, Wild West towns.

Some historians say that the Wild West wasn’t as dangerous as we’ve been led to believe by Hollywood, but there’s no doubt that some frontier towns were beyond the immediate reach of the law -places where mischief, mayhem, and murder were everyday occurrences.

8. FORT GRIFFIN, TEXAS

One of the wildest places in the old West, Fort Griffin sprouted at the intersection of the West Fork of the Trinity River and the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in northern Texas. Built in the 1860s on a hill overlooking the Brazos, the fort itself was designed to protect the folks -mostly farmers and ranchers- who lived below in the settlement of Fort Griffin.

The town was soon invaded by outlaws and cowboys driving their cattle north to Dodge City. By the 1870s, skirmishes with the Kiowa and Comanche in the north diverted the soldiers from Fort Griffin and, as a result, law enforcement broke down, which attracted even more rough types to the town.

Visiting Celebrities. The motley collection of buffalo hunters, gamblers, gunfighters, and “painted ladies” brought with them a penchant for violence. Among them were a gambler and prostitute named Big Nose Kate and her pal, the legendary gambler Doc Holliday. Also passing through were Wyatt Earp (who met Holliday for the first time at the fort), lawman Pat Garrett, and John Wesley Hardin -by some accounts the most sadistic killer to ever come out of Texas. Dustups and gun violence became so frequent that the commander of the fort finally placed the town under martial law in 1874.

7. RUBY, ARIZONA

From the days of the Spanish explorations prospectors had searched for veins of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc near Montana Peak in southern Arizona close to the Mexican border. In 1891, high-grade gold was discovered. A local assayer judged it to be a bonanza, and the rush was on. The town of Ruby was born practically overnight.

Here Comes Trouble. Most of the miners lived in tents or rough adobe huts, and bought their meager supplies at George Cheney’s Ruby Mercantile, the one and only general store. The men provided for themselves and their families by hunting and rustling cattle. But the primary source of trouble came from Mexican bandits who frequently terrorized the settlement. By the early 1900s, Ruby was so dangerous that Philip and Gypsy Clarke, who owned a general store, kept weapons in every room of their house as well as the general store. When Philip eventually sold the store to a pair of brothers, he warned them of the danger. They didn’t heed Clarke’s warning and were soon found shot to death. Today, Ruby is a well-preserved ghost town.

6. DELAMAR, NEVADA

Delamar got its reputation as a notorious Wild West town not from gun violence but from dangerous conditions in the mines. The 1889 discovery of gold in nearby Monkey Wrench Gulch unleashed a stampede of miners intent on digging for the peculiar form of gold, encased as it was in crystallized quartz. A former ship’s captain named Joseph Raphael De Lamar bought most of the profitable mines in 1893 and built a mill to crack the quartz and refine the gold. Within a few years, the town had 1,500 citizens, a hospital, post office, opera house, school, several churches, and plenty of saloons. But then the deaths began to mount.

Dust to Dust. Operations at the mill exposed the miners -and the town- to clouds of silicon dust. The mill workers were at the greatest risk of breathing in the dust, which slowly caused silicosis of the lungs and death. At one time, 400 widows lived in Delamar, giving the town its reputation as the “Widowmaker.” Delamar began its decline in 1909 when Captain De Lamar tore down the mill. Operation started up in the mines two decades later, but eventually slowed to a halt. The last resident moved away in 1934.

5. DODGE CITY, KANSAS

Fights and gunplay were all too familiar in Dodge City in the 1870s. In its first ten years, it became a well-known gathering hole for gunslingers -so well known that companies such as the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad came to Dodge to hire fighting men when they needed to protect their business interests. Fearless buffalo hunters, cowboys, muleteers, and

Bat Masterson

bullwhackers (wagon train drivers) populated the city. Characters with colorful nicknames arrived, among them Cherokee Bill, Prairie Dog Dave, Fat Jack, and Cockeyed Frank. Said one resident, “With a few drinks of red liquor under their belts, you could reckon there was something doing. They feared neither God, man, nor the devil, and so reckless they would pit themselves, like Ajax, against lightning, if they ran into it.”

The Upside to the Downside. There were plenty of deaths and gunfights in the streets of “Wicked Dodge,” as writers termed it, but it could have been worse. Because so many inhabitants were known as “sluggers, bruisers, and dead shots,” most of them were wary of starting trouble with one another. Also happening on the scene were legendary lawmen such as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Charlie Bassett, and Bill Tilghman, who stood ready to step in and jail anyone who got out of hand.

4. ELDORADO CANYON, NEVADA

Spanish explorers in the 18th century gave Eldorado Canyon its name, but it was American gold miners a century later who gave the mining camp at the canyon its reputation. The miners were drawn to a gorge on the Colorado River after prospectors discovered a vertical vein of gold there in 1861. The established the Techatticup Mine, which eventually fell into the hands of California senator George Hearst (father of publisher William Randolph Hearst). Eventually, dozens of mines in Eldorado Canyon became a magnet for prospectors, entrepreneurs, Civil War deserters, and “sporting women.” Their only connection to the outside world was a steamboat that carried the gold, silver, copper, and lead down the Colorado River to distant Yuma, Arizona.

The Original Fight Club. Political clashes among supporters of the North or South in the Civil War and greed, vigilante justice, and disputes over claims made for frequent brawls, stabbings, and gunfights. Killings became so common they were nearly a daily event. And the canyon was so remote -300 miles from the closest civilized town- that lawmen simply refused to enter it. A military post was eventually established near the settlement in 1867 to protect the steamboats and bring a sense of civility to the neighborhood.

3. DEADWOOD, SOUTH DAKOTA

Like many other famous Wild West towns, Deadwood owes its reputation for violence to the discovery of gold. In 1874, U.S. Army general George A Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills to confirm the existence of gold. The U.S. government tried to keep the gold a secret in honor of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which recognized the Black Hills as belonging to the Lakota-Sioux. But in1875, when a miner found gold in a narrow canyon lined with dead trees, the news of the find in “Deadwood Gulch” spread like wildfire. Within a year, miners stormed into the area and established the rough-and-tumble mining camp of Deadwood.

Deadwood Comes to Life. The Black Hills gold rush was in full bloom by 1876. Deadwood swarmed with men determined to get rich by any means. Dozens of saloons, gambling parlors, and brothels competed for their attention and dollars. Legendary characters Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were town fixtures. But danger lurked everywhere. Henry W. Smith, a Methodist minister, was murdered while walking to church, and Hickok was shot in the back of the head while playing poker in one of the saloons. By 1879, the rowdy nature of Deadwood began to ebb after a town government was established. Today, the well-preserved city is a gambling destination for tourists as well as a National Historic Landmark.

2. TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA

Many consider Tombstone the most dangerous of all the Wild West towns because of its lawlessness and frequent gunfights. The named seemed appropriate enough, but it wasn’t derived from the Boothill graveyard outside town -it came from a nearby mine named by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who filed the claim in 1877. He was told by a soldier that warring Apaches controlled the area. “All you’ll find in those hills is your tombstone,” said the soldier. But Schieffelin was undeterred and named his mine the Tombstone. News of the strike brought other miners to the site, and the town of Tombstone soon came into being.

Lovely Downtown Tombstone. Consisting of 40 buildings, a post office, and 500 residents by 1878, Tombstone began to draw the usual collection of men and women from the fringes of society.

Big Nose Kate

Within a few years, the town boasted more gambling parlors and saloons than anywhere in the Southwest, as well as the largest red light district. Wyatt Earp arrived at the end of 1879 with the intentions of establishing a stage line but instead invested in a gaming parlor while riding shotgun for Wells Fargo stagecoaches. Four of his brothers followed: James opened a saloon, and Warren, Virgil, and Morgan went into law enforcement. Wyatt’s friend Doc Holliday arrived in 1880 with Big Nose Kate, who established a brothel in a tent. The Clanton gang and the McLowrey brothers terrorized the countryside, running afoul of the Earps, which led to the showdown at the town’s O.K. Corral, thus sealing Tombstone’s legend. The city has survived into the 21s century, as has its newspaper, the Tombstone Epitaph, which memorialized Tombstone as “The Town Too Tough to Die.”

1. CANYON DIABLO, ARIZONA

Nowhere in the Southwest was there a more violent place than the railroad town of Canyon Diablo, giving it the top spot on our list of the meanest Wild West towns. The settlement was born when workers laying tracks for a railroad came to the edge of the canyon, with no  way to cross over until a bridge was built. Constructing the bridge took ten years, during which time the town that came into being took its name from the canyon. It was as despicable a place to live as there was in the West. With the closest U.S. marshal 100 miles away, Canyon Diablo quickly attracted drifters, gamblers, and outlaws. Fourteen saloons, ten gambling parlors, four brothels, two dance halls, a couple of cafes, a grocery, and a dry good store did business 24 hours a day. The buildings faced each other across the aptly-named Hell Street, the town’s single rocky road just off the railroad right-of-way.

They Shot the Sheriff. Fights and gun duels were frequent among the town’s 2,000 residents, filling dozens of graves at the town’s cemetery. Bandits regularly held up the stage that ran between Flagstaff and Canyon Diablo. When mounting violence persuaded the townspeople to hire a police officer, the first one put on his badge at three o’clock in the afternoon and was dead by eight o’clock that evening. Five more who tried it lasted a month or less before being slain. But what the law couldn’t do, the completion of the bridge accomplished. The town died, and according to Western lore, completely disappeared by 1899 when its last resident, a trading post owner named Herman Wolfe, died peacefully.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader History’s Lists.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Would you live in a city near an active volcano? Many people do, all over the world. Environmental Graffiti shows us ten cities in which the people live side-by-side with the threat of explosions, ash, and lava. Shown is the city of Pasto, Colombia, (population 450,000) which is only 9 kilometers from the active volcano Galeras. Link

(Image credit: Camilo Martínez S.)

We’ve all heard of underground societies, but rarely is the term used in such a literal manner as these amazing underground cities featured on Dornob.

Cities, empires and religions have risen and fallen around these unique underground havens once used by early Christians to hide from Roman armies, yet they remains occupied to this day – 100 square miles with 200+ underground villages and tunnel towns complete with hidden passages, secret rooms and ancient temples and a remarkably storied history of each new civilization building on the work of the last.

Read more about these amazing homes and enjoy the stunning pictures at the link.

Link

Gas, KS
“Don’t pass gas, stop and enjoy It.”

Hooker, OK
“It’s a location, not a vocation.”

Bushnell, SD
“It’s not the end of the earth, but you can see it from here”

Walla Walla, WA
“The city so nice they named it twice.”

Click on a slogan at the site and the map will show you where the town is. Link -via Buzzfeed

Mental_floss continues to have fun with the latest US Census data in today’s Lunchtime Quiz.

Of the 150 most populous cities in the United States, 11 have names that are only four or five letters long. How many can you name in five minutes?

Let’s see… two. And then of course I felt stupid when the answers came up. Surely you will do better! Link

1. Masdar City, United Arab Emirates The Greenest Town in the Middle East

The United Arab Emirates isn’t exactly known for its environmental consciousness. Many of its citizens live in large, air-conditioned homes in the middle of the desert, which is part of the reason the country produces more greenhouse gas emissions per capita than any other nation in the world. But Masdar City, a new suburb being built on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, hopes to change all that. As the world’s first carbon-neutral town, this 2.5-square-mile development not only expects to house nearly 40,000 people by 2020, it also plans to run entirely on renewable energy.

How does a city reach carbon neutrality? For starters, automobiles will be banned! Instead, folks in Masdar City will get around by using a public transit system of pods -battery powered vehicles about the size of minivans. Sleek and white with see-through black windows, these six-seaters will zoom around a central loop taking passengers to their destinations. When the transit system is completed, 3,000 pods will shuttle between 85 stations within the development.

In addition to this new spin on public transportation, Masdar City plans to get its energy from large, solar-paneled umbrellas shaped like flowers. During the day, the umbrellas will open up, storing energy and providing shade for pedestrians. At night, they’ll close to generate electricity. The suburb will also be surrounded by a perimeter wall that’s designed to block out the hot desert winds, thereby keeping the community cool. The massive barrier may look like something out of the Middle Ages, but like the rest of Masdar City, it’s actually part of the future.

2. Lyon’s Gate, United States The Coolest Place to Live in Arizona

In the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Arizona -where summer highs regularly spike past 100°F- one community is keeping cool the eco-friendly way. Lyon’s Gate is a collection of 210 homes built to withstand the heat while also conserving energy. And according to the U.S. Department of Energy, the community’s houses are unbelievably successful. In fact, they require 80 percent less energy for heating and cooling than typical American homes.

A lot of that is due to the way houses in Lyon’s Gate are insulated. Most buildings in the Unites States rely on cheap, fiberglass insulation, which can leak out air. But the homes in Lyon’s Gate are protected by a spray foam that expands up to 120 times its original volume to fill in cracks and crevices.  Although spray foam is more expensive than fiberglass, it traps air much more effectively. The houses in Lyon’s Gate also beat the heat with vinyl windows, which block out solar rays four times more effectively than normal glass. And soon, you won’t need to move to Arizona to experience the benefits. Meritage Homes, the company that built Lyon’s Gate, already has plans to open similar green communities in several states across the country.

3. Dongtan, China Where No Grain of Rice Goes to Waste

Forty miles from downtown Shanghai, between the Yangtze River and the East China Sea, is Chongming Island -a massive expanse of mudflats and wetlands that occupies an area about the size of Los Angeles. These days, birds are the island’s only visitors. But soon, the eastern part of the island could be transformed into a dense, eco-friendly city called Dongtan, which aims to have 80,000 residents, 27,000 homes, and complete carbon neutrality.

The most exciting thing about Dongtan is how it plans to power itself: All of the city’s energy will be locally produced. To fuel the power plant, for instance, the city will use rice husks. Typically, after rice is processed in a mill, the husks -the protective covering on grains of rice- are discarded. But Chinese engineers have figured out a new way to transform them into energy. Even more surprising is the fact that Dongtan will make use of almost all its refuse, including sewage. Ninety percent of the city’s waste will be reused or repurposed to create fuel, compost, and fertilizer for its organic farms. And because almost all the garbage will be recycled, Dongtan won’t even need a landfill.

4. Jätkäsaari, Finland The Least Trashy Neighborhood in Europe

The Jätkäsaari district of Helsinki, Finland, is windy and barren -at least for the moment. Ship builders and cargo warehouses have abandoned the district for newer locations. All that remains are piles of old ship supplies and a grassy knoll that local kids use to play soccer. But all of that is about to change. In 2009, the city greenlighted plans to transform part of the area into a sustainable community. Over the next 15 years, it’s expected to provide commercial and residential buildings for 16,000 people.

To ensure that it has a minimal impact on the environment, Jätkäsaari plans to utilize a variety of green technologies, including “automated vacuum collection” in every building. This incredibly efficient system will suck away waste through chutes that connect to tubes running under the city, eliminating the need for garbage trucks. There will even be separate chutes for different kinds of waste -one for cardboard, one for paper, one for compost, etc. Once underground, the paper will be transported to paper mills; the compost will be sent to farms; and combustible items will be shipped to a furnace, where they’ll be burned as fuel. Watch out, garbage men of the world; your days may be numbered.

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The article by Rachel Stern is reprinted from the January-February 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Subscribe today to get it delivered to you!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

Shaun Sanders leads us through the different way US cities treat pedestrians, illustrated with pedestrian crossing signs. See the rest at Hipmunk Link -via Laughing Squid

So what is so important about Pioneer Square and why should anyone outside of the city care? Read on, my friends, read on.

The First Settlements

In 1851, a troupe of pioneers known as the Denny Party established the first white settlement in the area at Alki Point. The group was led by Arthur A Denny, who soon realized that Alki Point wasn’t a good place for a settlement and then moved his party to a tide flat off of Elliot Bay, which they named Duwamps, after the local Native American tribe.

Within the first few years of settlement, another leader, Doctor David Swinson Maynard moved in from Cleveland. Whereas the members of the Denny Party were dedicated teetotalism Methodists, Doc Maynard was a heavy drinker who believed vice was one of the most effective industries in a frontier town.  Maynard convinced the other townspeople to rename the city Seattle after the Duwamps Chief Seattle, who was a friend of his. He did so not only to help honor his friend, but also because he knew Seattle would be a lot easier to promote to people back East than Duwamps, which sounded like a swamp.

In 1852, Maynard built his cabin, and contained a store inside of it, establishing the first shop in Seattle. He soon obtained the right to host a post office in his store, meaning everyone had to visit his store to get their mail. Throughout his life, Maynard helped build a number of important establishments in Seattle, building the first pharmacy, hotel, casino, saloon, brothel and hospital in the area.

When plots of land were officially established, Denny’s property stretched north of Pioneer Square, while Maynard’s extended to the south. Because each established their streets according to their piece of shoreline, the streets now have an awkward bend at what is now Yesler Way and that area of town is noticeably jumbled when it comes to driving.

Maynard helped jump start the city’s industry by offering his land at exceptionally cheap prices, provided the buyer started building a business on it immediately. He attracted critical business professionals such as blacksmiths into town, along with purveyors of vice, which helped attract more frontiersmen to the city. Early real estate records show that 90% of the city’s first businesses were built on Maynard’s land or immediately adjacent to his plot.

Left Out of The History Books

While Maynard obviously did a lot to help establish the town, he was left out of history books and almost completely forgotten about until Bill Speidel’s research helped bring his contributions to light. So why would such a key figure in the town’s founding be forgotten? Mostly because he was seen to be amoral.

When Maynard left Cleveland in 1850, he was married to a woman named Lydia. She eventually filed for divorce on grounds of desertion, but she never completed the divorce. Before arriving in Seattle, the good doctor circulated amongst several wagon trains, helping to fight cholera. While serving as the leader on a small wagon train that brought him to Puget Sound, he fell in love with a widow, Catherine Troutman Broshears. At first, her brother refused her permission to remarry, but after Maynard made a good deal of money in Seattle, he relented and the couple was married.

Years latter, Maynard’s first wife sold off her share of property and the man who purchased it then went after Maynard, claiming he was owed everything that was Lydia’s since the couple was never officially divorced. Lydia came to Seattle to help defend her husband and Catherine and the doctor became friends with her and let her live in their home. According to Speidel, Doc Maynard was the only resident that was commonly seen with one wife on each arm.

Aside from his adulteress nature, Maynard was also known to be a serious drunkard and prominently supportive of businesses dealing with vice, including saloons, casinos and brothels.

An Environmental Disaster

Seattle was established as a logging town. The area it was built on was covered with 1000-2000 year old trees that stood as high as 400 feet tall. Naturally for a logging industry with this much potential, a sawmill was necessary to process the wood, so when Henry Yesler moved from Ohio with a $30,000 loan to establish a sawmill, Maynard and Denny both donated land to him. The land was just west of Pioneer Square, in between the two properties and right on the waterway.

The mill was all set to make a fortune as Seattle was poised to be the main lumber supplier for San Francisco, which had a constant need for building supplies. Interestingly, Yesler made more money from real estate than he did from his mill and quickly became the city’s first millionaire.

The sawmill was at the bottom of the hill, so trees were harvested and then rolled down the street to the mill, which inspired the name “skid road.” When the area became dilapidated in the twentieth century, it led to the adaptation of the term “skid row” to describe a scummy part of town.

Yesler’s steam-powered saw mill had ample sawdust, which ended up coming in handy as the mud-ridden streets of the tide flats required something to help fill in the constant potholes. So, Yesler donated his mill’s waste to the streets. Of course, the rotting wood surrounded in mud wasn’t entirely effective and the early stories of San Francisco describe a number of horses and dogs sinking into the mud up to their necks and at least one person being killed in the mud, which sometimes sank like quicksand.

Aside from sawdust, Yesler also donated wood to help the city create its first sewage systems. Their first attempt consisted of a v-shaped trough above ground, which stank and leaked into the streets. This was soon replaced with an underground system that used hollowed-out logs. Unfortunately, because the pipes went directly into the sound, the high tide sent the sewage right back up, so everyone was advised to avoid flushing at high tide or risk a fountain shooting from their toilet.

The Trouble With A Lumber Town

Given how much timber was readily available in the area, it’s not entirely surprising that the majority of the city’s buildings were made from wood. Because the city was built on a tide flat, many of them were even built on wooden stilts. Add a ton of wooden buildings, wooden water pipes and sawdust shavings lining the streets, it’s easy to see how much of a fire trap the city was.

Unsurprisingly, when a cabinet maker accidentally started a glue fire in 1889, it spread quickly throughout the town. In the end, somewhere between 25 and 29 blocks were completely destroyed, including the city’s entire business district, four of the wharfs, and the city’s railroad terminals. Luckily, no one was killed in the massive blaze.

The Great Rebuilding

Bill Speidel often joked that the fire was known as the “Great Seattle fire” because it allowed the city to rebuild in a way that would get rid of all of their terrible problems. They could install real underground plumbing that wouldn’t shoot back in the pipes during high tide, they could regrade the streets so the high tide wouldn’t flood buildings and streets. To prevent future fire hazards, an ordinance required that all businesses downtown be made from brick and stone.

Unfortunately, the city renovation caused a conflict between the business owners, who wanted to reopen as soon as possible, and the city, who wanted to regrade the streets, which would take years. A compromise was soon reached, allowing the businesses to rebuild immediately on the tide flats as the city would regrade the streets. This meant the city would install massive retaining walls around the sidewalks and ladders could be used to climb from the elevated streets into the city’s underground sidewalks and into the store entrances.

Eventually, the sidewalks were built over the underground area, connecting the second or third stories of the buildings to the street-level. Interestingly, the fire also led to an economic boom, as construction workers rushed to the city to help rebuild businesses and streets alike.

By the time of Speidel’s Underground Tour, most people in the city thought the underground was just a rumor, but once the tour opened up, residents and visitors alike were amazed to discover the city’s fascinating buried history.

The story of Seattle’s founding isn’t just interesting for the tales of corruption and entrepreneurship, it also serves as a perfect example of how history can be reshaped as it is retold. Without Speidel’s research, Maynard and the city’s underground would likely still be lost to history. Who knows how many other cities have similar tales hiding just below the surface of the sparkly clean stories in history books?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, Seattle PI, History Link #1, #2, UWSP and Underground Tour

This Sunday, the Packers battle the Steelers in the Super Bowl. You may be a fan of either, and you may know all there is to know about football, but how much do you really know about the two cities? Test your knowledge of Green Bay, Wisconsin and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored 62% (8 out of 13). Anyone who does better can claim bragging rights right up until kickoff time! Link

China plans to merge nine cities along the Pearl River into one huge mega-city that will cover an area twice the size of Wales and initially have a population of 42 million people.

The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.

“The idea is that when the cities are integrated, the residents can travel around freely and use the health care and other facilities in the different areas,” said Ma Xiangming, the chief planner at the Guangdong Rural and Urban Planning Institute and a senior consultant on the project.

The new mega-city does not yet have a name. Nearby Hong Kong, with another seven million people, will not be included in the new mega-city. Link -via Metafilter

Many older cities rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, as workers flocked to the urban centers. As the towns and cities expanded, the residential areas for the workers tended to be in the east, with the middle and upper-classes in the west.

The reason for this is that in much of the northern hemisphere, the prevailing winds are westerlies – blowing from west to east. The massive, unchecked pollution from these early industries would therefore drift eastward, making the air quality much lower in the east end of cities, lowering the desirability (and price) of the housing. Middle classes preferred the cleaner west ends.

The issue was probably even pre-Industrial Revolution, as smoke from personal chimneys would still have caused problems to the east.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo by Flickr user otodo used under Creative Commons license

I live in a bright yellow house in a mostly brown or brick neighborhood, so I am drawn to these colorful neighborhoods around the world. This picture is from Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, South Africa. See all 20 colorful cities at Buzzfeed. Link

Microrentals and dead space

Rental space in Tokyo is hard to find and it’s pricey. Many low income people are forced to live in tiny plastic “capsule hotels” barely larger than a coffin. A Japanese real estate company has come up with a concept for microrentals in spaces that were previously not considered rentable.

Nokisaki.com seeks pockets of “dead space” around cities and converts them into short-term rental property.In Tokyo, where every sliver of land is at a premium, a few feet of unused private property near the front entrance of an apartment building can be used to sell muffins. A patch of storefront space transforms into an ad hoc vegetable stand for a farmer or a consulting space for a fortune-teller.

Those spaces can be reserved at Nokisaki for short periods of time—starting from three hours—and for as little as $15 total. The spots are granted on a first-come, first-served basis and the rental times and prices are set by landlords.

Link -via Good

If you live in a tourist town like I do you know that there is a whole lot happening that tourists never see. This data set shows various cities around the world from both a local and a tourist point of view, using information from pictures uploaded to Flickr. Pictures that people have taken in a city for more than a month were considered to be locals, and those who took pictures of a certain place only within the last month are deemed tourists. The differences are clear in quite a few maps in the Flickr set.

Some people interpreted the Geotaggers’ World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in places that tourists don’t visit.

Link -via Waxy

How many cities in Florida can you name? If you can name the twenty biggest cities in Florida in five minutes or less, you deserve a star! If you get half of them, you’ll be considered a winner. Try your hand in this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, and let us know how you did. Or, if you prefer to name the biggest twenty cities in California or Texas instead, you’ll find links to those quizzes as well. I got over half, then I was stumped. I should take a vacation! Link

This quaint English village, housing 10,000 people, is just 20 miles outside the center of Shanghai, and a new rail system puts it just 15 minutes from downtown, as part of a rapidly expanding Greater Shanghai. Thames Town was designed to look exactly like a bucolic English town, complete with red brick buildings, a sandstone church, a village green, a market square, and a pub. But it’s not a theme park – developers insist it’s a real residential community.

Link -via the Presurfer

The US has its share of strange town names. If you’ve made a few road trips, you’ve no doubt encountered some of them. Test your knowledge of these strangely-named cities in this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss. I scored 67%. Note: be sure to read the questions carefully! Link

Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test your familiarity with city nicknames. If you’re lucky, your city will be one of the ten! If you’re unlucky, you’ll score 30% like I did. Link

The 2016 Olympic summer games will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 2012 games will be in London, England. Since the first modern Olympics in 1896, 22 cities have hosted the summer games, some more than once. Can you name all those cities in five minutes? That’s the challenge of this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. Good luck -I could only name 16. Link

Virginia Beach, Virginia
Madison, Alabama
San Jose, California
Overland Park, Kansas
Boston, Massachusetts
Denver, Colorado
Rochester, Minnesota
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Plano, Texas
Edison, New Jersey

The advantages of each city are listed in the story and slide show. Link -via Digg