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What decisions would you make – graphically, textually, even musically – in order to produce something sufficiently emblematic of an urban experience, something people all over the world could recognize and relate to?
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[Image: Need a hint? Think Oprah].
If you had to represent New York, for instance – or London, or Shanghai, or New Orleans – or Atlantis, for that matter – what, first of all, does such a question even mean? How do you "represent" "Shanghai"?
"You."
Well, let's just say that we've answered those questions: what, then, would you choose? The people? The landscape? The skyline?
The architecture?
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7184/598/400/shanghai.gif)
A series of digital city guides, produced by The Economist, uses unique graphic emblems to represent each city under discussion – in the process, making clear artistic decisions about what does or does not constitute "London" or "Sydney" or "Tokyo."
Overwhelmingly (if unsurprisingly), these graphics – like urban coats of arms for the 21st century – choose landmark architectural sites and streetscapes for their centerpiece.
From the obvious –
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– to the slightly less obvious –
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(why obscure Berlin's TV tower in clouds? why not include the Reichstag? and is that really the best Brandenburg Gate they could draw?)
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(here, why hide the Golden Gate Bridge to focus on a cable car – which, as drawn, looks like every other tram on earth?)
– to the downright ugly –
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(that's Tokyo!)
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(Dubai!)
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(is that a UFO invading New York? why not a flaming World Trade Center?)
– to the surreal or overly abstract:
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Those last two? Mexico City and Toronto.
Bilbao, Rome, Rio, Las Vegas, Montreal, Marrakech, Cairo, Baghdad – all emblemizable, so to speak: but what would those emblems depict? And what of so-called minor cities, from Glasgow to Winnipeg, Frankfurt to Xian?
What about The City of Lost Children?
What about Guantanamo Bay?
If we were to develop a new series of international coats of arms for all our global cities, what buildings or spaces or skylines – or bodies of water, or atmospheric events, or exposed geological formations, or even emblematic animals or famous disasters – earthquakes, fires, floods, terrorist attacks, atom bombs – would be included?
How do you represent a city?
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