Cities On Water
Canals are so deeply identified with Venice that many canal cities have been nicknamed "the Venice of…". The city is built on marshy islands, with wooden piles supporting the buildings, so that the land is man-made rather than the waterways. The islands have a long history of settlement; by the 12th century, Venice was a powerful city state.
Amsterdam was built in a similar way, with buildings on wooden piles. It became a city around 1300.
Other cities with extensive canal networks include: Alkmaar, Amersfoort, Bolsward, Brielle, Delft, Den Bosch, Dokkum, Dordrecht, Enkhuizen, Franeker, Gouda, Haarlem, Harlingen, Leeuwarden, Leiden, Sneek and Utrecht in the Netherlands; Brugge and Gent in Flanders, Belgium; Birmingham in England; Saint Petersburg in Russia; Hamburg and Berlin in Germany; Fort Lauderdale and Cape Coral in Florida, United States.
Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City is a UNESCO World Heritage Site near the centre of Liverpool, England, where a system of intertwining waterways and docks is now being developed for mainly residential and leisure use.
Canal Estates (commonly known as bayous) are a form of subdivision popular in cities like Miami, Florida, Texas City, Texas and the Gold Coast, Queensland; the Gold Coast has over 700 km of residential canals. Wetlands are difficult areas upon which to build housing estates, so dredging part of the wetland down to a navigable channel provides fill to build up another part of the wetland above the flood level for houses. Land is built up in a finger pattern that provides a suburban street layout of waterfront housing blocks.
Read more about this topic: Canal
Famous quotes containing the words cities and/or water:
“Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)