All cities differ from each other, but some are stronger.
In one city only allowed during the day, second life — a chess Board, and in the third are not allowed to die.
And that’s not all the weirdness!
1. Norway: the city where you can’t die
The town of Longyearbyen, located on Svalbard in Norway, is the northernmost settlement in the world with a population of about 1000 people. The town has a Church, ATM, Museum, post office, airport and even a University. In short, like all other people, but only one — in Longyearbyen you can’t die. If someone is ill or dying, he immediately transportyour on a plane to another place. If still not lucky to die, to be buried in the local cemetery will not be still.
This is not someone’s whim and not the machinations of evil spirits: of the body not decompose because of the extreme cold weather and it is dangerous. So, it was discovered the man deceased, as studies have shown, from a deadly virus that caused an epidemic here in 1917 (by the way, after her in the local cemetery and stopped to bury). There are other mandatory local rules. Can’t leave the house without a powerful weapon, such as polar bears here than people and meeting with them can lead to what? Right, to the funeral! If the bear dies, its carcass will be sent away from home, leaving the dogs no piece of bear meat — they are fed seal.
Yet people do not have the right to have cats as they can threaten populations of rare birds. I want finally to say something nice. Here it is: in Longyearbyen, under the auspices of the UN is the underground Svalbard global seed vault in case of global catastrophe. So after the Apocalypse the first shoots of new life will hatch here.
2. USA, Florida: city circus
Tirelessly driving around the towns and villages as a travelling circus and Balagan in winter, migratory birds have headed South. In America this traditional wintering location was the city of Gibsonton in Florida, where the law allowed to have exotic animals and make the submission on private property. As a result, in the 1960s, the years flooded the city, dwarfs and giants of all kinds, bearded women, Siamese twins and other non-traditional view of human beings. Here cost nothing to meet on the street trained fire eater and the bar has seats for the smallest and tallest people and even chair for a Very fat Lady, the magician, executed by fresh tricks. Given the artistic temperament, winter life was in turmoil, there were scandals and uproars, but do not have to miss.
The legend of the town was a pair of giant e’s Tomani and born without legs Ginny, which he touchingly cared. Charter to travel around the world, artists have settled here forever. Al died in 1962. Reminds me of him put in the square the monument to the boot of gigantic size. In Gibsonton still allowed to post on the lawns trailers and elephants and to train in his yard tigers, so there still have to stop circus troupe. And the tourists, as before, off after a visit to the Museum of the American carnival to see the artists in an informal setting.
3. India: city-utopia
In 1968, 90-year-old mother Mirra (Mirra Alfassa) told his followers: “Go look in the open field big Banyan tree and build there a new city of Auroville”. And they found it. And not lazy to put in the state of Tamil Nadu is a settlement. The principle in Auroville is: to live outside politics and beyond nationality. No one owns the property and does not use money. Education, medicine, sports, and entertainment for Auroville free.
In a town of about 2,500 residents from 46 countries. There are Russians. The most famous was the historian, Professor Dimitri von Morechild, in India celebrated its centenary. He has allocated significant funds to support the first residents of the Russian community, for many he remained grateful. Auroville consists of about 50 community gardens, called the “Brotherhood,” “Transformation,” “Grace” and so on. Since the founding of on-site planting about 2 million trees, so the city is more like a forest with dirt paths and bike trails, among the trees hiding two-, three-storey building. No street names, no house numbers, signs — only the names of the communities.
To those who are eager to join the experiment, the townspeople are initially wary. You can stay in a hotel or a local resident, walk on tours, listen to lectures, participate by investing in the construction, but the document that housing remains the property of the city, still have to sign. And only idle curiosity Auroville especially not encouraged. They say that their life is “not a tourist attraction”.
4. USA, Alaska: city under one roof
Almost all of the 220 residents of Whittier, Alaska, live in one 14-story building called Begich Towers, built in 1956 as an army barracks. Gradually the building began to be used as residential, there was a police station, a school, post office, store, Church, clinic… it was a perfect fit under one roof. What is not a city? So he began to call. But thanks to this compactness, you can save money on heating that Alaska is not superfluous.
To get to Whittier, you can either on the water or on single carriageway, running through a four-kilometer tunnel. To avoid confusion, the tunnel gate opens every hour, letting in and letting the machine in one direction and then the other. At night the tunnel is closed.
Most of the residents work in the port that are close to home. In the summer, when the sun shines 22 hours out of 24, life boils there: come and cruise the industrial court, the tourists come. But then the winds blow out, walk blizzards, and snow drifts up to 6 m. So to have at hand everything necessary for life from the comfort of home — very convenient.
5. Russia, Republic of Kalmykia: chess city
Discovering in the middle of the steppes Board with chess pieces, to the uninitiated can solve that came along with Alice in Wonderland, but in the history of the city-chess leitmotif is quite another literary work — “the Twelve chairs”. No wonder there is the prospect of Ostap Bender, a monument to the Great schemer, and the chess city in memory of him called new-Vasyuki. However, it has mixed all genres: the chess Palace that resembles a Kalmyk tent, with the Museum of chess glory, and the Buddhist Stupa of enlightenment and the Orthodox chapel, and these ilfo-Peter’s motives. In short, the place is as multifaceted as the initiator of its creation is the permanent President, and then the head of Kalmykia, President of the International chess Federation Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. He played chess with the Pope, was friends with a clairvoyant Vanga and, according to him, September 18, 1997 met with aliens. Compared with all this build over 11 months in the steppe, the city is just nonsense.
Built city-chess in 1998 on the occasion of Elista in the 33rd Chess Olympiad. Here was held the Congress of FIDE, the international Biennale, various workshops and forums. The rest of the town looks like a luxury, but rather a deserted cottage village, richly decorated with all sorts of chess sculptures. In his free time events he is acting an expensive hotel, where you can rent housing for a period of several years.
6. China: city-copy
An exact copy of Austrian town Hallstatt, entered in the list of world heritage of UNESCO, appeared in China’s Guangdong province in 2012. Copying the Chinese meticulous: cobbled streets, Cathedral, statues, fountains in the Baroque style. All the houses just exactly repeat their Austrian brothers — and color, and architecture. To work it had a lot: a team of “misdirected Kazatchkov” long studied and photographed the Austrian town from all angles and details. Choosing the location was based on some similarities, however over the landscape had to work hard to smooth out the hills to dig up the ravines, to create artificial waters, on whose banks is located the town. Financed the work of an individual. They cost $940 million.
For residents of the real Hallstatt, the emergence of Chinese twin was, to put it mildly, a surprise. Among others invited to the Grand opening of the hotel owner in the Northern Alps noticed that the thumbs up, they say, would be to warn about the intentions and honestly to ask permission to copy. The protests subsided when the Austrians realized that the existence of clone benefits: the flow of Chinese tourists in Hallstatt with 2012 increased 20 times. Well and the people of China that can’t afford a trip to Europe — now they can visit in the Alps, not wasting time and money. The town is also popular and has evolved from a skillfully made decorations in a living organism. Here we have cafés and shops, even selling real estate — fully furnished and equipped house in a completely European style.
Hallstatt is not the first and not the last in a series of cities-copies. China is already ANTING German, British Dorchester, its Florence, performing the role of a giant shopping Mall, and partially reproduced neighborhoods of Venice, Barcelona, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
