Photography: Identifying streets

Streets are in my opinion always a good reflection of the identity of a city. Is it a busy city? Does it have a lot of expats? Is it commercial? Stuff like that. Some streets represent their city in an instant. A few examples of Asian cities where I found these ‘Identifying streets’:

Hong Kong

The street in this picture is a good reflection of the identity of Hong Kong. There are multiple things that identify it:

You see it’s a busy city; lot’s of people, lot’s of traffic
And of people get moved around by public transportation
It’s a mix of Chinese and English by the looks of the commercial signs
And by the looks of the signs themselves, also a very commercial city
The pedestrians show it’s a multicultural city
It’s also a quite organized city, if you look at all the yellow street marks
And last but not least, the double decker bus reveals this city has a British past

Easy, right? If you look closer you discover a lot of attributes that identify a city. It makes you look at city streets in different ways.

Next to Hong Kong I did two other Asian cities.

Bangkok

At first hand this city might look like a Chinese city, but by watching twice it’s clearly not. It’s clearly Thai:

Yes, it looks Chinese, but that’s one of the characteristics of Bangkok. It has a lot of Chinese influence, and ofcourse it’s because this is in Bangkok’s China town
Seeing a Tuk-Tuk is clearly saying ‘You’re in Bangkok’
The Thai letters give away this is Thailand. However, if you don’t know Thai it’s hard to see, I guess
The people on the photo here are not really recognizable, but trust me they looked Thai
The traffic looks quite organized. Ok, there is some chaos in the city traffic, but it’s controlled chaos. And this picture resembles it perfectly, I think
Commerciallity. Bangkok has a lot these sign boards. Khao San Road is a street like that and als China town is full of signs

Now I think twice this photo could also maybe be of a Chinese city with a ‘Thai town’

Phnom Penh

Street scene in Phnom Penh – capital of Camodia – near Kandal market. It’s a city still in rebuild after the disastrous policies of Pol Pot that made it a ghost town in the 70’s. Nowadays there’s hustle and bustle again and a lot of construction work being done, but the city still trying to find back it’s soul. And this picture says it all:

Buildings that look as if they survived a war
New buildings rising
Market hustle and bustle
Dirty unorganized mess. Things are thrown on the street, it doesn’t look very clean
Powerlines that don’t seem very safe
Commercialism, but not very professional
Scooters!
Improvisation. Look at the market stalls, the parasols, the carts, canvases covering the market. I think improvisation is key in these countries though