Manhattan Elsewhere: “Depending on your vantage point, Manhattan seems either very big or very small. On complete map of the New York City area, Manhattan is dwarfed in size by the other four boroughs and surrounding megopolis. But for someone on the ground in Manhattan, the population density, the height of the buildings, the endless number of things to do, and the fact that many people don’t often leave their neighborhoods, much less the island, for weeks/months on end makes it seem a very large place indeed. This divergence sense of scales can cause quite a bit of cognitive dissonance for residents and visitors alike.
A few months ago, I found an image online … from Bill Rankin’s project, The Errant Isle of Manhattan) that worked to alleviate some of that dissonance. The image depicted downtown Chicago with Manhattan placed alongside it in Lake Michigan. I’d been to Chicago a few times and the image immediately gave me a better idea of Manhattan’s true size.”
(Via http://www.kottke.org/.)