"Though it's eas­i­ly for­got­ten in our age of air trav­el and instan­ta­neous glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, many a great city is locat­ed where it is because of a riv­er. That holds true every­where from Lon­don to Buenos Aires to Tokyo to New York - and even to Los Ange­les, despite its own once-uncon­trol­lable riv­er hav­ing long since been turned into a much-ridiculed con­crete drainage chan­nel."
"Paris did­n't take its shape in a sim­ple process of out­ward growth. As is vis­i­ble from high above through the video's ani­ma­tion, the city has grown dif­fer­ent­ly in each era of its exis­tence, whether it be that of the Parisii, the tribe from whom it takes its name; of the Roman Empire, which con­struct­ed the stan­dard Car­do Max­imus (now known as the Rue Saint-Jacques) and Decumanus Max­imus, among much oth­er infra­struc­ture; the Mid­dle Ages, amid whose great (and hap­haz­ard) den­si­fi­ca­tion rose Notre-Dame de Paris;"
Paris originated on Île de la Cité and expanded along the Seine over nearly two-and-a-half millennia. A three-minute 3D time-lapse compresses that long evolution into a rapid visualization. Urban form developed in distinct historical phases: an initial Parisii settlement; Roman planning with cardinal axes and infrastructure; medieval densification that produced Notre-Dame de Paris; and 19th-century Haussmann renovations that cleared medieval quarters and introduced broad avenues, stately residences, and monumental architecture. The city’s growth patterns varied by era rather than following simple concentric expansion, producing the layered urban fabric seen today.
Read at Open Culture
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]