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Don't judge a place by its media portrayal.

I have always been someone who has had a fascination with the world.  I've studied the world in great detail...its history, cultures, and geography.

I have also traveled around...not as much as I'd like, but enough to realize one important thing.  Books, TV shows, and other media lie.  Well, it's dishonesty through omission.  When we see images of the world, it's the vision that other people want to push on us.  Many cities are ugly, and to hide this fact, they will pick the needle out of a haystack and skillfully take a picture of that needle while making sure to hide any trace of the hay.

A good many cities have been destroyed through the onslaught of Modernism.  However, others have survived relatively unscathed.  This is a visual tale of two cities.

The first is Kyoto.  Hailed as the most beautiful city in Japan, it was a former capital of Japan and a center of Japanese high culture.  It has generally avoided major damage by earthquakes over the years.  1995's Great Hanshin Earthquake was the largest in recent history, but Kyoto was far less damaged than neighboring Kobe.  In WWII, Kyoto wasn't firebombed out of respect for its great architectural heritage.  Yet what earthquakes and WWII couldn't destroy was later pretty much annihilated by a much more powerful force - Modernism.  Japan became a huge fan of Modernism that it began a process of dismantling its historic architecture and putting up Modernist vernacular structures in its place.  Currently, Kyoto's charm has almost all dried up, and what is left is often next to hideous monstrosities and adorned with power lines.

The second is University Park, Texas.  This suburb of Dallas has been able to retain its charm.  Classical homes can be seen from tree-lined roads replete with sidewalks.  This area contains a university with an attractive campus.

Google Maps and Google Earth are fabulous programs, because their satellite and especially "Street View" functions let you explore cities that you might not be able to easily visit otherwise.  And even if you visit, you might be ferried around to see those few needles in haystacks.  Randomly choosing an area in a city will open your eyes to what those cities actually look like to the people who live there, instead of to the unwitting tourist who has his/her eyes fixed on the colorful guidebook while passing through ugly neighborhoods on a bus on route to one of the few tourist centers.  I've never shut my eyes, though.  I like to know what's really out there, not the image that is presented to me.

With that in mind, I chose three random places in Kyoto, and three random places in University Park and compared them.  Then, to be even more fair to Kyoto, I chose three more places in the center of town (Nakagyō-ku) because Kyoto is obviously larger than University Park.

The results are in.  University Park (a very upscale neighborhood in Texas) bests Kyoto (the city which is generally accepted to be the most beautiful in the entire country of Japan) in terms of aesthetics.  (As for access to public transportation, that's another matter, and one which I'm not testing for in this example.)

Here are the views I got from each place:

Kyoto (whole city):
http://goo.gl/maps/WX4JO (Ugly)
http://goo.gl/maps/VwvQJ (Semi-decent)
http://goo.gl/maps/tW4ew (One side butt-ugly)

Kyoto (center - Nakagyō-ku):
http://goo.gl/maps/fRNBa (Atrocious alleyway)
http://goo.gl/maps/V6lHj (Semi-dumpy)
http://goo.gl/maps/7fpcn (Partly-passable)

University Park:
http://goo.gl/maps/VmHW3 (Dignified)
http://goo.gl/maps/JdDbE (Nice)
http://goo.gl/maps/zAaFr (Also quite nice)

Unlike most other Japanese cities, Kyoto still has some of its traditional spirit left, but many of the remaining traditional structures (besides the tourist/money magnets) are often dilapidated and will most likely be replaced in the next decade or two.  And to find out what they will be replaced by, just check out the minimalist blocks that stand right beside them.
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