Most! Informative! Diagram! Ever!

Most! Informative! Diagram! Ever!

National Geographic has the most informative New York diagram that we've seen in lo these many years we've been working on Gothamist. It shows what is under the city streets-- both in a compressed, annotated form, and in a full-scale version (who knew the water tunnel was so deep underground? Stop lying, you totally didn't!) Definitely click around the diagram-- there's lots of delicious NYC facts embedded in the descriptions. For instance:

Consolidated Edison has 80,500 miles (129,524 kilometers) of underground cable that run virtually everything electrical in the city.

Each day 1.4 billion gallons (5.3 billion liters) of water flow into New York City from a series of reservoirs to the north.

We just wish that they had included all the CHUDs and Mole People-- because they don't get nearly the attention they deserve.

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Comments (12) [rss]

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most! annoying! trend! ever!

let's! make! it! stop! now!

but! that! diagram! is! pretty! awesome!

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Nice Find. Your right, Most of us knew the Water Supply was deep, but not that deep...


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Tien: Are you referring to the trend of saying "Most/Best. Something. Ever."? If so, it could be worse. Jake could have used "Evar."

Or are you referring to the mapping/diagramming trend? In that case, I really like this trend.

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i'm talking about periods or exclamation points. because i generally like diagrams.

there's a reason the MSM doesn't ever bring up the CHUD - and it's time we start asking the important questions.

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yes. the. trend. of. putting. punctuation. after. every. word. is stupid!!!

but those diagrams rule.

Well I knew all about this!

If you ever watched "Jane's New York" on Channel 4 back in March you would have learned and seen all of this in video. Click here or on my name to go to the link: Click here to go to Jane's New York on WNBC's site

Well it's still pretty cool!!!

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I remember several years ago, i think pre 21st century, seeing this info/illustration/graph through don foley, the artist's, (old) website. it's not listed on his new site, but he does have other amazing graphics (ya just can't blow em up like the one we're linked to here)... http://www.donfoley.com/

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1 - David Macaulay's book "Underground" is really cool for this kind of stuff:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0395340659/

2 - For the last four years they've been doing a major project downtown (way downtown, aroud fulton st / wall st) on the utilities, which frequently exposes about ten feet of pipes, conduits, and vaults. It's an impressive sight.

I seem to remember they did this for an issue of National Geographic years ago.

I want to know how deep the alligators are, though. And where's "Below?"

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What the hell is that thing labled "Forgotten"? Forgotten what?

It's my all time favorite issue of National Geographic, February 1997 (featuring "Under New York", "Sons of Genghis Khan", "The Dawn of Humans", et al.)

The online diagram appears to be a composite of two much larger and far more detailed ones in the issue and (in miniature) on donfoley.com (thanks edEx)

"What the hell is that thing labled "Forgotten"? Forgotten what?"

Utility pipes abandoned so long ago that people just forgot about them.

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