For anyone missing Hong Kong, someone has filmed its bus routes in entirety. Better than Google Street View!
SAIGON’S (DIS)ORDER
Awesome video by Rob Whitworth, which is a beautiful timelapse capturing the ordered chaos in Ho Chi Minh City.
Watching this video brings Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis to mind:
“In order to understand the city, and its ceaseless contrapuntal rhythms, one must situate oneself simultaneously inside and outside of it.”
This is what Lefebvre wrote, sitting on his balcony in Paris and observing the urban rhythm:
“Towards the right, below, a traffic light. On red, cars at a standstill, the pedestrians cross, feeble murmurings, footsteps, confused voices. One does not chatter while crossing a dangerous junction under the threat of wild cats and elephants ready to charge forward, taxis, buses, lorries, various cars. Hence the relative silence in this crowd. A kind of soft murmuring, sometimes a cry, a call.
Therefore people produce completely different noises when the cars stop: feet and words. From right to left and back again. And on the pavement along the perpendicular street. At the green lights, steps and words stop. A second of silence and then it’s the rush, the starting up of tens of cars, the rhythms of the old bangers speeding up as quickly as possible. At some risk: passersby to the left, buses cutting across, other vehiccles. Whereby a slowing down and restart (state one: starting up - stage two: slowing down for the turn - stage three: brutal restart, foot down, top speed, excluding traffic jams…). The harmony between what one sees and what one hears (from the window) is remarkable.”In: Restless Cities (2010) edited by Matthew Beaumont and Gregory Dart.
You know shots like this really do make me want a white christmas in Europe.
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
