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I think the city of Hamburg could have more bridges, but it depends a lot on how you count. Do you count only road bridges? Do you count only the city centre?
by Findecanor 5y ago
I think the city of Hamburg could have more bridges, but it depends a lot on how you count. Do you count only road bridges? Do you count only the city centre?
- DominikPeters 5y agoBBC article mentions 446 bridges in Pittsburgh, Wikipedia mentions 2,496 bridges in Hamburg, with 1,172 road bridges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_in_Hamburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_in_Hamburg
- owlninja 5y agoI imagine it is just a quirk of the city and people given it also says "and don't try telling locals otherwise."
- notahacker 5y agoOther obvious comparison points off the top of my head would be Venice (~400 bridges, much smaller than Pittsburgh if you count the island city rather than the broader region), Amsterdam (bigger, but has 1200 bridges apparently) and Birmingham UK (no total for bridges found with a quick Google but there's 100 miles of canal and a lot of elevated urban motorway and railway). But the great thing about being the place with the 'most bridges in the world' is that if you've got an impressive number of bridges, who's counting?
- ineedasername 5y agoIt looks like that's still more bridges per capita for Pittsburgh, maybe that's the metric they're using.
- BigJono 5y agoThis sort of thing always crops up when comparing US cities to cities in other countries. Other countries tend to count more of the surrounding built up areas as part of the city itself. Whereas every time I look at a US city there's places chock full of buildings right next door that somehow don't count. Looking at Pittsburg there's a bunch of "townships" and things which would be considered part of the city in most other countries, which makes it difficult to compare absolute metrics like "number of bridges in the city".
- tgflynn 5y agoThat's definitely not true in general, in fact my impression has always been the exact opposite. France, in particular, has a very large number of distinct municipalities (called communes). Paris proper includes only the very high-density central and historical core of the city. The inner ring suburbs still appear very urban. Compared to New York it would be like comparing the 5 boroughs = 1 city with the entire Paris region which probably contains dozens of distinct municipalities.
- theandrewbailey 5y agoUS cities are usually considered by their city limits, which are almost always pretty small, and have lots of smaller suburbs surrounding them. The other countries definition seems more analogous to the US Census Bureau metro areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area
- jleyank 5y agoHamburg is a state in Germany. Pittsburgh is a city in a state that dislikes its two big cities. This might have a difference.
- fuzzy2 5y agoIt's a city state. Still, according to Wikipedia it covers almost five times the area.
- colpabar 5y agoPittsburgh, by population, is 6 times smaller than Hamburg (300k vs 1.8m). I'm not sure about size, but Pittsburgh is pretty small and the bridge density is pretty high. I think that's where the "city of bridges" title comes from.
- edgyquant 5y agoIt’s weird that Pittsburg is so small and yet as a midwesterner (who’s driven through PA into NY a couple of times) I’d never heard of Hamburg until this thread.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- selimthegrim 5y agoThere’s a Hamburg, NY FYI
- sorry_outta_gas 5y agoThe pittsburgh metro area is larger than the city itself, area wise the city is only about 50 square miles vs hamburgs 200+