# Looking at cities on google maps/streetview



## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

brazilian001 said:


> What I actually strongly disagree about his point is regarding that slums are the best place to look for interesting things on developing world cities.


But what's interesting and not interesting to some is something strictly subjective, like tastes in music, film etc. You can't "disagree" with someone's attraction for picturesque/decayed/informal/unruly/exotic/etc places, it's not a rational judgment, it's a subjective preference. When someone says "X is more interesting than Y" you need to accept that 99% of the times the person saying it is expressing a personal opinion, so it doesn't have any bearing on you and your own tastes. [This reminds me of when I started using internet forums, music boards in particular, and I got annoyed when people would say "this album is sh*t" and got into fights with them because me, liking that album, I would feel myself and my tastes attacked. But that was dumb of me (and almost a decade ago, I've grown out of it now  ).] So if someone says how interesting he finds favelas, that doesn't mean he is telling you that slums are the "best" thing in your country in an objective sense.

One other thing is that you don't seem to fully understand the psychology of people from developed places. They, who grow in orderly, well built, well kept, well technologized etc. environments, have an almost innate tendency to look out for the disorderly, the under-developed, the different in one word, which gives them experiences that are more "genuine" or more "exotic", or both. And that's normal. For example, I also come from a country that's very proud of its achievements or, say, its Little Paris, but foreigners from Western Europe come to our villages to explore and live in our old earth-made houses (where the toilet is a hole in the ground), put on boots and walk the muds called roads, take care of the animals the old-fashioned way (take out the pig shit with a shovel, milk the cow by hand etc.), take care of the vegetables garden by hand... I don't find that insulting, just a tad silly, but I very well understand it. Myself I like their orderly cities with a high standard of living, architectural history etc. so we're even.  It's the same reason why I don't visit Poland, Ukraine, Russia etc - I have that stuff at home, I am interested in different things.


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## Brazilian001 (Apr 22, 2012)

alexandru.mircea said:


> But what's interesting and not interesting to some is something strictly subjective, like tastes in music, film etc. You can't "disagree" with someone's attraction for picturesque/decayed/informal/unruly/exotic/etc places, it's not a rational judgment, it's a subjective preference.


My previous answer is actually not related to his personal opinion regarding slums, everyone has the right to like, dislike and be attracted to what they want and makes them feel good (in the same way I have the right to "disagree" with anyone's opinion, after all, that's my own opinion, though I must respect them, always). Now I remember of a Voltaire frase: "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  What I disagreed about his point is regarding that slums are the best thing in a Latin American city, this gave me the impression that he meant the rest completely sucks (maybe I misunderstood what he said, maybe not). 



alexandru.mircea said:


> One other thing is that you don't seem to fully understand the psychology of people from developed places. They, who grow in orderly, well built, well kept, well technologized etc. environments, have an almost innate tendency to look out for the disorderly, the under-developed, the different in one word, which gives them experiences that are more "genuine" or more "exotic", or both. And that's normal.


I can perfectly understand that, people are generally attracted to the new, the unknown, the forbidden. This is an innate characteristic of humans, the pursuit and subsequent conquest of those things is what makes life so interesting.


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## Baitalon (Sep 30, 2014)

slum 
https://www.google.nl/maps/@-22.913...m4!1e1!3m2!1saG0a3gZE6VuGWK3EoYpY2Q!2e0?hl=nl


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