America 22: Skyline

On a map, it's nearly impossible to see what a city is going to be like. Sure, you can get an idea of its rough layout, how large, how concentrated, where the city centre is, but you don't get any sense of its personality. What is it like to live in this place? Are the people friendly? Is there good infrastructure? Is it nice to walk around? Surprisingly, these questions, so difficult to answer with a map, yield answers after just a few minutes of arriving. The city can't help but tell you who it is; it's reflected in every park, every building and street. The forces that shape the little things shape the big things too, micro-structure turning into macro-structure, until the final result is written across the sky like a banner. Each city is unique, and its skyline is its fingerprint.