# Cities without people

> Some people believe that cities are all about bricks and mortar. While other people believe that they are first and foremost about people. Though I wholeheartedly believe that our built environment has a profound affect on our lives, I am in the latter camp. Real estate to me is an outcome. It is the result of people needing space. A new condominium is built because people need a place to live. A new office building is built because somebody built a great company and it needs to house its gro...

URL: https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/cities-without-people
Author: Brandon Donnelly
Published: March 23, 2015
Categories: architect-this-city, architecture, art-project, artist, atc, athiscity, buildings, built-environment, cities, condo, condominium, development, lucie-simon, new-york, office-building, queensbridge, real-estate, silent-world, times-square, uncategorized, urbanism

Some people believe that cities are all about bricks and mortar. While other people believe that they are first and foremost about people. Though I wholeheartedly believe that our built environment has a profound affect on our lives, I am in the latter camp. 
Real estate to me is an outcome. It is the result of people needing space. A new condominium is built because people need a place to live. A new office building is built because somebody built a great company and it needs to house its growing workforce. So at the end of the day, what is a city without people?
Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this point is to show you what cities look like without them. This morning I stumbled upon an interesting series of city photographs where almost all of the people have been removed. They are by artists Lucie & Simon and the project is called Silent world.
The top image is Times Square and the bottom image is Queensbridge in New York.
Images: Lucie & Simon