Tod Machover combines music with technology at the MIT Media Lab. Check out intro and details at CityLab’s “Turning Street Noise Into a City Symphony”. First, Machover turned the sounds of Toronto and Edinburgh into symphonies that reflect the characters of each city. Then he asked Detroiters to record and upload sounds unique to the city — street drums, factories, spoken language by locals. Then he combined these sounds with instruments by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The result is known as Symphony in D.

Creation of “Symphony in D”

Below is a link to “Symphony in D” itself. It is almost 38 minutes long. A good idea is listening to it after reading this post.

Ambient

It is hard to not notice that you are awake in friendly time zone, but it’s already dark skies for hours, e.g. in Stockholm in Autumn. PM hours are dark because of the shape and tilt of the planet. It is hard to not notice the absence of Sun in Andorra because there are mountains all around you. There are only narrow skies above you. It is hard to not notice any climate difference in comparison to what you are used too — light vs. dark, dry vs. wet, cold vs. hot, windy or quiet, yellow grass vs. green grass, weather and so forth.

A city could be flat like Copenhagen or Amsterdam with tons of people riding bicycles. A city could be hilly like San Francisco or Istanbul, with steep climbs difficult even for machinery. A city could be a monolithic piece of land or spread over islands. The central parts of Stockholm consist of fourteen islands that are continuous with the Stockholm archipelago. There could be canals like in Hamburg, Amsterdam or a big river like in London. New York City has a continental part, islands, and rivers.

Air contributes to the vibe a lot. Both visually and smelly. Air pollution is a real thing, it changes during a day, it is different across the cities. BreezoMeter shows air quality per city, using air quality index, with drill down into details. New York City real-time air quality could be checked here.

Real-time air pollution in NYC by BreezoMeter

Smell vastly contributes to the vibe of the city. Manhattan, Paris, Mumbai all smell differently. Check out our older post about Parisian smell, scroll down to Cultural Curiosity section there.

Eventful

Events make the vibe. Significant events define the city during the event. E.g. SXSW in Austin during two weeks redefines Austin, Web Summit in Lisbon redefines Lisbon. Technological companies created platforms for events: Facebook Events, Google Maps Events. Google Maps is only rolling out the feature for users to create public events since late March 2019. When you wake up in a new city, it is a good idea to check out both Facebook and Google Maps for the events, and head to where people gather, to not miss the thing.

Events could be at city-scale, such as annual festivals, sports games, techno-sport (Monaco Grand Prix). City-scale events could be scheduled more frequently than once per year, such as concerts, exhibitions, initiatives. Events could be smaller than a city, e.g. the start of sales of new iPhone [when it was religiously anticipated] in Apple Store, or a celebrity in residence.

A celebrity in residence is so-called TEDification of travel — when artists, academics and assorted creative types are invited to stay for free. It is open to professional yoga instructors, surfers, photographers, dancers, etc., to come for a week. The only requirement is that they meet and mingle with guests, and contribute to the community in some way.

Events could be rare, though definitely not once in a lifetime experiences:

Mystical cross halo aka sun dog, Solar eclipse, Moon eclipse, cloud iridescence, Manhattanhenge, meteors (Chelyabinsk meteor story), a huge iceberg drifted close to the city.

Cruise liner half-sunk at the shore (Costa Concordia story), nude protesters on the main street, 7-month blockage of the Wall Street (Occupy Wall Street story).

Provocative graffiti or mural, that is going to be removed (Haight Street Rat by Banksy story). Temporary installations, e.g. giant hands in Venice against global warming (Support by Lorenzo Quinn story)

Opening of something cool (The Vessel in NYC story), a celebrity next to you watching the sunset in Machu Picchu, or even in The Vessel.

Sun dog halo in Vemdalen, Sweden, December 2017

Events could be true once in a lifetime experiences. Such events are not predictable, not plannable, often dark. They are black swans, catch them in real-time:

People tragedy: NYC 9/11.

Landmark devastated: Notre-Dame on fire, World Trade Center twins NYC 9/11.

Hudson water landing of US Airways Flight 1549.

Big people gathering on central square or near a government building, a prequel to revolution (Kyiv 2014 story).

Celebrity died, emotional tribute, pilgrimage (Apple Store in Tokyo story).

King Kong escaped from zoo and climbed Chrysler Building (did not happen yet).

Behavioral

City vibe is dynamic. Even if nothing significant happens, people make it all. How people move, what people do on a daily basis, what exactly people do — this defines the vibe. Traditional breakfast in Vienna is a semmel and coffee. Once I [with friends] got a bag of fresh semmels on a door handle as breakfast in an Austrian village. We were still waiting for an hour or so for more. But that was it. Culture difference.

It is interesting to watch how people move in the city. People commute to work in the morning, then back home in the evening. People who live in the city move within the city. Various motion workers (delivery services, service workers) contribute to the big picture. There are distinctive motion patterns, depending on the people motion behavior. Below are four cities — Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Istanbul, New York City — with four motion modalities in each — transport, running, biking, walking. Check it out at Human.