Google Earth: Identify the city

[Sigurd]

Just a quick observation to narrow down our search...

An airport with what appears to be two Boeing 737 machines and a Boeing 777 machine.
A lot of yellow cabs in the parking lot outside the airport.
A slum area next to the airport with a river and what appears to be rice fields. I am saying slum because there are no visible roads between the housing.

This is obviously in Asia somewhere.
Where does airplanes nearly land in the city...

Hong Kong?
(I haven't looked in google earth yet)

edit: hmm looking at Hong Kong it seems they have closed down the city airport...

[barocca]

if the game is going to be "post picture and give no clues"
then i cant wait to get my next shot
B.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I can't figure it out either. I tried some places, from Egypt to Pakistan to Indonesia, but no luck...

Sorry about that pagoda picture, that was mean. It is a restaurant in Tivoli, in the centre of Kopenhagen.

[KukriKhan]

Following Sigurd's hunches, I checked out Asia's major Int'l airports (figuring it must be large enough to accomodate such jumbo jets).

Those yellow cabs intrigued me. I saw none, anywhere in the cities I reviewed. Finally, I moved west, zoomed in on India/Pakistan, and there it was (after about 5 false leads):

Chattrapathi Shivaji International Airport , Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay), the busiest airport in India & south asia.

I can't say I used much deduction (except to rule out NYC, the other "yellow cab" capital of the world). It was just a matter of hopping airport to airport, looking for 300+ cabs assembled near the terminals, finding none, then moving on, until I stumbled over Mumbai.

Whew! Are my arms tired. :)

------------------------------------
edit: assuming I'm correct, here's another tasty morsel on which to feast your eyes:



Hint #1: This city, established in the 1600's, has changed names, and hands, many times in its history. It's current name is based on the name of a national hero, a statue of whom sits in the square you see.

[barocca]

FYI
New York State has over 300 towns that have changed names
(and hands - with brit and canadian invasions) in their history...

still looking
B.

[Duke John]

if the game is going to be "post picture and give no clues"

The hint was: "The contrast in the picture below struck me and which is apparent in the whole city and not just in this part."
Mumbai is quite known for its slums in the heart of the city, quite unusual as they usually are on its fringes. Project developers want the slum dwellers out of there, but most of them do not accept the new housing in which they will then be put. The contrast in the picture was slums versus ecomonic prosperity, which characterizes the whole city.

The hint was also in the picture itself. I thought in this game it was quite common that google is used to find cities. If you typed in "airport slums", or if you guessed the country right "india slums" then the first link would bring you to Mumbai. Because of this I first wanted to wait a few more responses (only Sigurd had responded when I last logged on) until I gave more clues.

Cheers,
Rob

[KukriKhan]

FYI
New York State has over 300 towns that have changed names
(and hands - with brit and canadian invasions) in their history...

still looking
B.

Good point.

So, Hint #2: It's not in NY state, and neither Brit nor Canadian forces have ever (so far) invaded here.

Hint #3: The city is quite high in elevation ~4,500 ft.

[barocca]

DJ - apologies old friend, but even after the answer to the clue I dont see slums there, i noticed the farmland and the craziness of having such right next to an airport (toxic fumes)


Kukri - Ulan Bator (Ulaanbaatar Mongolia)

[KukriKhan]

Ulan Bator (Ulaanbaatar Mongolia)

is correct! Good job.

Take it away barocca.

Wrestlers at the Naalamm festival there

[barocca]

Hint #1: This city, established thousands of years ago, has changed names, changed hands, and been utterly destroyed many times in its history.
It's current name is not based on the name of a national hero, a statue of whom is the center of focus for the road network.

B.

[barocca]

Hint #2: Surprising because of it's location, the city has a decent Korean minority.

[KukriKhan]

Hmmm... Korean expat communities.

Vancouver BC, Canada vegetation looks similar, but can't find that street pattern.

Munich, Bavaria, Germany, not enough trees to match the image.

Bangkok, Thailand, also not enough trees, and more heavily populated than the image.

Paris, France, can't match the street pattern.

Los Angeles, US; not enough freeways :) and not 'thousands years old'.

Mexico City, Mexico; can't match street pattern.

OK, I'm not getting it with the hints. What do I see?

Tree-lined streets that radiate out from a central point eastward (ala the ancient 'mound' fort/city design), but grid-style westward. Near the center, a blue-roofed dome (orthodox christian? or mosque?); also some long and tallish buildings, suggesting gov't offices.

Alright then; I'm off to eastern Europe on a hunch.

[barocca]

Hint #3: When Genghis Kahn arrived to sack the city he was most upset to find someone else had done so but a few years earlier and the city had not yet recovered (ie - not much loot).
In a tiff Genghis destroyed the city.

[KukriKhan]

Ahh... the old Genghis neighborhood. One of the 'stans' likely.

edit: Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A surprisingly nice looking city, judging from the photographs.

LoL; what I ID'd as a possible religious site was the Amir Timur Museum.
.

[KukriKhan]

No Yellow taxi's in this town. Here, they're either red (regular) or white (limo's).

[Duke John]

Oi! I wanted to host that city!

Since I recognized it instantly I'll skip this one. Never watched the movie though.

[Sigurd]

I just found out what red taxi really means..

[barocca]

a four hour search narrowed down the list of cities who have only red taxis to four,
and none of them are that pic...
In other words the www is missing at least one city from the list of "red taxi only"
- another clue please

[KukriKhan]

This city of 3 million+ inhabitants, lies in a country that resisted colonization until the early 1900's. It is not a colony today.

edit: Sigurd: gotta stay away from those 'urban dictionaries', lest you get grossed out. I meant nothing of the kind, of course. Taxicabs

[Sigurd]

Sigurd: gotta stay away from those 'urban dictionaries', lest you get grossed out.

[Sigurd]

Are not Louis playing?

I guess it is his turn..
It was the movie reference and the red dirt (not red taxi) that made me find this city.
And ... I have not seen the movie either (just thought I should put that in... )

[barocca]

cities of 3 mill are a dime a dozen, (rats and double rats)

countries that resisted colonisation until the 1900's include phillipines, ghana, mexico (some tribes never submitted until after independence from spain) and even australia (according to some aboriginies the war goes on today)

(good clues tho')

intrigued (sleep time, i'll thunk again in the morning)
B.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I am playing, Sigurd! Those two central Asian cities had me stumped. They have so many cultural influences that I just didn't know where to even begin looking. (note to self: a potpourri of influences = central Asia). They look Asian, AND European, AND euro-colonial....
By the time I was beginning to get a clue they were guessed already.

The current city is easy, people have guessed it already I see. It almost looks southern French, but not quite. So French colonial probably: North Africa, Beirut. The movie reference made me check Casablanca.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Let's see what you all make of this:





Up is north. The picture was taken directly from Google Maps with the edges cut off for effect.

[barocca]

i do not think we should accept such modification to an image,
blotting out the long/lat bar is fine,
but not cutting away entire sections of the city

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Well, most of the time the entire city isn't included in the picture anyway, so I don't see what's wrong with it. A sizeable chunk of the city is shown.

[KukriKhan]

This is another of Louis's planned communities, of which he is enamored (understandably; I am too).

At first blush, it doesn't look american/canadian, rather asian or former-soviet. But the strict diagonal layout defies classification as any particular continent's 'style' of civic planning.

This place was originally laid out on some student/teacher's grid paper, I think, with green areas strategically located, LOCs (lines of communication/roads) placed for maximum efficiency, and central assembly areas located at center, and 1 and 2 o'clock. I daresay that, even on foot, a resident living at 7 o'clock, could arrive at that race-track-looking area within two hours, with arms, or betting money, or a vote.

So I suspect: an american-educated city-planner somewhere in the former ussr "built" this city.

I'm off to Poland, and central/eastern europe for this one.

p.s. Although I appreciate Louis's intent in focusing our attention on a coo-o-ol geographic pattern, I also gotta give props to barocca's lament and appeal for context. In terms of this image interpretation game that we play here, knowing/seeing the surrounding farmland-swamp-desert-whatever, would help folks guess the region, and focus their search.

pps: Thanks for the north orientation. After google-searching whatever clues are provided, it's helpful to know one needn't reorient ones map to find the image.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I don't see what's wrong with my picture? Cutting off the edges is not different from zooming in a level. The only difference is that now the visible area is cut it off diagonally instead of horizontally and vertically, which was done to keep the peculair shape of the objext intact.
And this game is not meant to be easy! We're here to pose fiendishily difficult questions for each other..

But here's the city again:

[KukriKhan]

Hmmm... I wonder if that is fuel or water storage to the north-east - and is that the southern tip of an airport/airstrip up there also.

Zooming in, I don't see vehicles - very strange. Maybe I just missed them.

My preliminary guess: we're looking at a mid-sized, not-ancient city, a product of urban planning, somewhere in China. The purpose of this city is not immediately obvious. What do they do there besides live and breathe? What do they make there?

*goes off to look at random chinese cities of 125K - 250K population.*

[Sigurd]

It is indeed a strange location...
The surrounding landscape looks like the northern hemisphere above the warmer climate.
I think this might be a larger than 250K city (My hometown is a 250K city).
Where are the trains? and why does that belt around the main block look green?
In the larger picture there is a stadium. I wonder what they play there...

I wish for a closeup of this city to get my bearings on religion, traffic, housing etc..

edit: I wonder if the green belt is infact train tracks that moves around the large grid city.