Saturday 23 January 2021

Unfamiliar Circles

See Mornings for descriptions of mornings on both Merseia and Hermes. Do you notice an odd phrase in the passage about Ardaig on Merseia?

Like many cities and towns on Earth, Lancaster, where I live, has a Market Square which has made several appearances on this blog. However, in Ardaig:

"...market circles began to fill..."
-see the above "Mornings" link.
 
I thought that "market circles" seemed an alien concept but took the precaution of googling it and found Takoradi Market Circle. The image shows it at night. Are there others?

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm sure any number of circular market or business can be found on Earth. But humans seem to prefer them to be square or rectangular.

And ENSIGN FLANDRY gives us another "morning" on Merseia!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

I think the Market circle in Takoradi is really a roundabout. Note that many ‘market squares’ are really only very approximately square,or even rectangular. Actual geometric shapes in a townscape imply a degree of planning.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

And your comment here reminded me of how it was the Romans who were really into what we call urban planning, before the mid 19th century. The carefully designed and laid out city of Constantinople, with its forums, seem to have been the last such "planned" city in Europe for many centuries.

Ad astra! Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Correction, I erred. There was at least one planned city in Europe before the 1800's. I mean St. Petersburg, the new capital of Russia which Peter the Great founded in the early 1700's, and which his successors continued to build and enlarge.

And the US capital of Washington, DC, was also a designed and planned city.

Sean