minneapolis has a nice skyline and a pretty good downtown...so does st.paul actually....both are quite urban, with their own unique identity and character.
maybe using canadian cities as a comparison isnt fair, but that is my frame of reference....and i am talking more about urban quality instead of skyline....
i have been to phoenix a few times and have always been blown away at the lack of urban quality in that city....the skyline honestly rivals regina saskatchewan, a city of 200k....the downtown has almost no urban quality at all....practically no retail or residential....phoenix would have a poor downtown if it were a city 10 times smaller....consider that it is twice the size of vancouver and 3/4 million larger than montreal and it is astounding.
another city that i find has a low urban quality for a city of its size is atlanta....i know people will post images of the skyline at night in defence, but if you consider that it is a city the size of toronto (5.5 million), the downtown is amazingly small.....it is literally 4 or 5 blocks wide and a couple of kilometers long....which is why the skyline can be photographed to not look bad...in overall area though it is very small and completely void of the elements of a living, breathing downtown, especially for one of the biggest cities on the continent.
Last edited by trueviking; Dec 27, 2009 at 7:32 AM.
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