How to find cool cities

Either if you’re cruising in a train on foreign land, or visiting a nearby city, you can take a quick guess on how cool a city is by just looking at it. There’s just one thing to do, look at the number of cranes.

Some might argue that cranes are ugly in a landscape, and that they ruin the skyline. To my view cranes are indicators of progress and novelty, two things to seek in a city. A city that has many cranes indicates that it is open to innovation, that it is adapting to new requirements or increasing its cultural offer. Also, in order to be seen from afar a crane needs to be high, and high cranes belong to big construction sites, and big construction sites bring cool stuff to a city!

Cranes are an indicator of prosperity in a city, and the construction under it will add value to the city (otherwise, why bother building?). In my experience I have also observed a correlation between cool cities and number of cranes. I don’t know if it might be spurious, but so far I count cranes whenever I travel or discover a new city.