this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Urban Details

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This community is dedicated to interesting city planning decisions and details. Post anything you come across around cities that you find interesting or endearing. Here are a few examples: **Street furniture**, like something especially modern or beautiful, unusually comfortable or unique **City lighting**, like streetlights, facade or bollard lights, etc. **City infrastructure**, like bike or pedestrian paths, green tram ways, etc. **Public spaces**, such as chillout zones, interesting parks, unusual gear at children's playgrounds, etc. **Easter eggs**, like tiny statues or hidden details **Successful accessibility projects**, like useful sidewalk ramps or city map totems See stickied post for more examples

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[–] quixotic120 3 points 1 year ago

I remember walking through Philly and seeing these in the 90s or early 2000s. They were very distinctive and kind of a local landmark

https://toynbeeidea.com/where2-2/ has a map of a lot of them. All the originals are long gone and only a handful remain. I would suspect at least a few that remain are possibly copycats given they came about many years later, look kind of different, some came about very far away, and the whole thing has been popularized quite a bit over the past 15ish years (there’s literally a documentary on it). The documentary maker had a pretty credible theory on who did it too iirc but I don’t remember the details