Memphis' Evil Twin Sister City?

When I opened this Wired article, about the building of a 70-story skyscraper on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, something looked very familiar. Half a second later, I figured it out.


The camera angles of the visualizations, the buildings towering alone over the waterfront, the slope of the low-rise roofs.

And there's more. From the article:

At 72 stories, the new headquarters for Russia's state-run gas company will tower over St. Petersburg. And, yes, the Gazprom building — part of a complex to include a sports center, theater, and cafés — has its critics. They note that, at 1,300 feet, it's a touch tall for a 300-year-old city of church spires and canals. Not that such carping hinders progress in neo-authoritarian Russia. Only vigorous protest kept the city from funding the entire project, and the liberal Yabloko party was barred from recent elections for opposing it.

When I'm pissed off, I will call Memfograd "neo-authoritarian Memphis", or "the neo-authoritarian Bluff City".

(There might be value in finding not only new models of progress but also new models of dysfunctionality. Looking at the problem from a drastically different angle might -- might! -- give our civic narrative a fresh new twist.)

By the way, this is not a commentary on either Beale Street Landing or One Beale. I just found the images similar.