There are many, many travel guides that feature the picturesque and happy parts of cities - parks awash with flowers, smiling shoppers in clean cafe-filled streets, sunsets over spectacular skylines.
The "The Ugly Parts Of" series is very similar, but the opposite. Each finely crafted hardback volume will feature photographs of the truly crappy bits of the city in question, with captions. Vast traffic jams on a grey rainy Tuesday rush hour; the hideous Travelodge that should never have got planning consent; a moodily-lit black- and-white close-up of the kicked-in, duct-taped glass panel in the door of the betting shop; a swirl of fast-food wrappers driven by gusty winds... you get the idea.
In part, the books would seek to treat these Ugly Parts as photographic challenges, aiming to render each eyesore as a perfect visual poem. Mainly, though, they would just draw attention to the crappy bits of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Lewes... A prospective tourist buying the relevant Ugly Parts book will either find beauty in the ugly bits, or will be pleasantly surprised if they find any non-ugly bits in the city they're visiting.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 04 2019 Like this, but a travel guide https://www.amazon....-Live/dp/0752215825 [hippo, Oct 04 2019] The crappy bits of Edinburgh are all the bits of Edinburgh.
Over the last while I have been spending more time in the centres of various English and Scottish cities and, revolting aberrations such as Aberdeen aside, I have come to think that there is very little difference between any of them. Yes, the river might be in a different place, and this one or that one might have a volcanic plug in it but when you boil the piss right down, what you have is a scattering of Victoriana, some bus stops, eight or nine Wetherspoons and a pedestrianised zone. So, I think that the Ugly Parts series should be on a country by country basis. I'd hope that the crappy bits of Basse-Terre would look a bit different to those of Cardiff.-- calum, Oct 04 2019 // Each ... hardback volume //
<Envisions the "London" edition being delivered Britannica-style, in many volumes, on a series of pallets unloaded from an articulated truck/>
You probably need to go to Blu-Ray ...-- 8th of 7, Oct 04 2019 //I think that the Ugly Parts series should be on a country by country basis.//
Are you insane? Think of the revenue you'd be missing compared to a city-by-city series.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 04 2019 Monetizing the narcissism of small differences, ok. I can get on board with that.-- calum, Oct 04 2019 Great idea, that's why there are several books in existence that only show the crappier side of most places, and numerous photographers use this as an ongoing theme to their work. (myself included) I only ever take pics of the most bland, or dismal places. Atlantic Ave Brooklyn is a particular favourite and never fails to impress with its dystopian vistas.-- xenzag, Oct 04 2019 Naples is truly awful and even has a shanty-town.-- DenholmRicshaw, Oct 04 2019 // dystopian vistas //
Vista was bad enough, windows 8 was a bag of nails ...-- 8th of 7, Oct 04 2019 //Atlantic Ave Brooklyn is a particular favourite and never fails to impress with its dystopian vistas.// How can you possibly say that about Atlantic Avenue? It's got all those half- timbered buildings that overhang, red clay tiles interspersed with thatch and slate, a duck pond full of happy overfed ducks, the ruins of a castle, markets three days a week in the square by the town hall - I can't think of a single thing not to like about it. Sometimes I just don't understand you.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 04 2019 No, wait, I was thinking of Saffron Walden.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 04 2019 // Naples is truly awful and even has a shanty-town //
Look on the bright side; it's intrinsically time-limited. The next Plinian eruption will do more urban redevelopment in a few hours than the government has managed since 1945 ...
May we ask, is your species secretly running an International Urban Stupidity competition ?
San Francisco, Tokyo; built in top of major tectonic faults. Naples; built right next to a notoriously active and destructive volcano. New Orleans, London, Amsterdam; below sea level, and still sinking. Lisbon; just waiting for the next tsunami from the offshore fault Paris; built in france.
Wouldn't it be more sensible (although admittedly less entertaining) to have a "Build A Major City In A Rational Location" competition ?-- 8th of 7, Oct 05 2019 How can London be dry if it both is below sea level and has a river running through it connected to the ocean?-- notexactly, Oct 05 2019 // How can London be dry [...] //
The manic energy of cockneys and several immigrant communities is sufficient to fool the Thames water into flowing uphill for the last ten miles and, by the time it realises it's been cheated out of several MJ/K of entropy, it's back in the North Sea and it's too late to argue about it.-- pertinax, Oct 06 2019 //below sea level//
Sea level is usually given as "mean" to smooth out small short-term cyclical variations caused by waves, tides, and interglacials.-- pocmloc, Oct 06 2019 random, halfbakery