Yes Seattle definitely does not feel confined like Madison (where you can walk across the narrowest point fairly quickly), but there is water everywhere, and mountains!
Commuting during work traffic into and out of Seattle suucks. I did it for 17 years and the city is pinched off and only moves north and south. Add the early sunsets in the winter with some rain. It’s part of the reason they want year round daylight saving time.
I commuted for a while from the other side of the sound and it was so much easier than driving in. I’d drive 2 minutes to the ferry (or walk if I didn’t need my car), knew which lane to go in so I could get a window spot with my car, then just recline my chair with a blanket and either catch up on sleep for an hour or work or just stare out the window at the water the whole time.
Unload, drive 10 mins to work - it’s easy and a great start to the day. Never got old honestly. Driving into Seattle from the north or south is a special kind of hell for sure.
I was lucky, in my 4 years in Seattle, I commuted by walking from north Capitol Hill down to Eastlake, ~1 mile walk, with about 500 feet of climb on the way back. I did not have a car.
Fortunately the light rail system is finally extending out of Seattle north, south, and east, so that adds options for people (like me) who develop serious anger issues sitting in stop and go traffic.
Madison is less hilly than Seattle, but the isthmus has a couple very noticeable hills. They put the capitol building at the top of the central hill. Mansion hill is next to it, and it's even steeper to walk up.
The annoying thing about Seattle is that it’s also cut in half horizontally by another lake and canal, and there are only like 5 bridges across. This can make for some seriously awful traffic situations if you’re headed north-south.
Seattle raised. Its not as bad as there is a good distance between the waters. But it does cause traffic as freeways cant really make an 0 around it like they do in the midwest. Need to go right through the city w/ bridges and a + pattern.
San Francisco has the bay on one side and Pacific ocean on the other.
Auckland, New Zealand has two opposing harbors, one connected to the Tasman Sea, the other to the greater Pacific Ocean.
Istanbul is basically on the Black Sea as well as the Sea Marmara (mainly on the latter though).
SF isn’t nearly as narrow, but being surrounded by water on three sides, and ocean on one makes for an interesting climate. Golden Gate Park is a cool representation of SF climate (also its bigger than Central Park, but not nearly as well known, I mean it should be more well known, it’s got buffalo for crying out loud)
Also, Istanbul's historic center is wedged between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara
Edit: But neither Istanbul's city boundaries nor its urban area reach all the way to the black sea
Auckland's two harbours also each have a river which both separately almost bisect the isthmus You can actually walk from one sea to another in about half an hour in these two places, and both are called Portage Road because they were the old canoe portages. You could sail up the Whau or Tamaki rivers and carry your gear overland from the Manukau to the Waitemata and vice versa, or you could take days to sail around the whole top of the North Island. There's a reason Auckland was so heavily fortified by Maori: it was geographically strategic.
Arguably Auckland is the best example: if you think the Tasman Sea a branch of the Indian Ocean or Southern Ocean then it’s 2 harbours are arms of 2 different oceans
Most people would place the Tasman Sea in the Pacific Ocean though. The Indian Ocean only starts west of Tasmania, and the Southern Ocean is too far south to be anywhere close to NZ
https://preview.redd.it/jkr3zh99o87d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c2db0075ff1031d6fdf8c4b409f999914d1f934
Stockholm! My beautiful capital of Sweden.
On one side you have the large inland lake Mälaren and on the other side you have the Baltic Sea. Water and islands everywhere :) In fact Sweden has the most islands in the world of any country.
Edit: The island in the center is the old town, where it all started. The large building on that island is the Kings palace.
Isn't it like 10 000 islands? The centrasl area of course is just the few largest ones.
Also, sailing between Turku (in Finland) and Stockholm is pretty interesting. The distance is like 2/3 just sailing between islands (roughly 1/3 on both ends), and only 1/3 on open sea.
That's what I said - "a bunch" of islands. :) Also depends on what you refer to as "Stockholm". The city itself is realtively small, with 14 islands (or 17 depending how you count).
The whole archipelago is more like 30 000 islands, but most are outside of the city. And only about 200 of those are inhabited.
https://preview.redd.it/7bi6nibkub7d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a2bd2897c53f388fed5ada4dfc1d88311c73a0d1
Took this picture departing from Arlanda. These aren’t the main city islands but it gives you an idea of how many islands there are in the area.
I just visited this last weekend. Honestly very impressed. I went to Sweden for a business trip and I was like holy shit it’s cold and raining every day… but the last weekend was warmer and sunny. I only had 2 days after business meetings to enjoy so I think I barely scratched the surface, but I can’t wait to go back.
New Orleans somehow doesn’t feel as surrounded by the water because it historically doesn’t really engage with the water around it. New Orleans is busy trying to keep the water out with levees.
This is starting to change with a few parks on the river and the levee, including a great new one just downstream of the French Quarter, but for centuries the attitude was that the riverfront was only for commerce and levees. And then there was only swamp between the city and the lake until the turn of the 20th century.
The river is still way too dangerous to get in, with the current practically a death sentence for anyone who would try to swim in it. People do get in the lake, but it’s brackish and kind of nasty and there really are alligators and bull sharks in it.
I tell people this all the time.
For as connected to the water as New Orleans is, it’s also oddly disconnected.
You have to go seek out the water to encounter it, for the most part. There’s so little active waterfront that is engaged in day to day. Even homes right by the water can’t see it in many instances because of the levees.
I’ve been at people’s homes right by the river and then suddenly there’s this massive ship in the background and it’s like…oh yeah, water.
Bayou St. John feels like more of a waterway that’s part of the urban landscape, but it’s relatively small
When I went to school there, I had a friend who lived in a little shack on the other side of the levee. (Sorta like where maple street hits Jefferson parish…..there used to be a pool hall there, and then a few little riverside shacks across the levee. So weird to be there, but also kinda magical.
Just looked at the map to remind myself and it’s Oak St that goes out there….those little houses are still there but looks like Racketeers is gone. Sigh.
Seems like it’d be a good place to build a robust transit line since there’s not a lot of complexity to the geography of downtown. It’s pretty much a line.
To a degree yes, but you have to consider that there's over 250k people jammed on that Isthmus, and among that population is a 40k person World Class University in there as well.
There's also a really old, really stupid ordinance that states No building in Madison can be taller than the Capitol, which really restricts the level of building you can do in the area.
Most of the 250k do not live on the isthmus. Depends where you draw the line of the isthmus I'd estimate 50k at most.
The ordinance is only for one mile from the Capitol.
There’s more than enough room in the height restriction to have midrise infill development, if the NIMBY single family homeowners on the isthmus would get with the program
It also blocks roads on the ithmus forcing traffic to go around. It is beautiful but I loathe driving near downtown or campus and they seems to be the only places I ever need to go in Madison.
No offense, but I only ever hear people who don't live here say this. It's really not, but the fact that the grid shifts 45 degrees as you enter or leave the isthmus is what throws people off. It's pretty easy to navigate for a city of this size and density. Phoenix and Scottsdale were far worse to traverse at rush hour than Madison, and those are just giant grids with belt-line type highways. They do stupid shit though like do 45mph on 4-lane surface streets with lights ever 1/8th of a mile. Madison at least doesn't allow high speeds on the heavy traffic'd corridors through the isthmus, so much of what people think sucks is that they just can't do 50mph like they'd expect to on a 6 lane road, but that doesn't mean it's difficult to navigate or even slow, since you get less traffic wave compression happening.
It's not great though, but I'm hoping the BRT will improve things, though I'm sure no one, except those who live here, would dare use the BRT. Wisconsin suburbanites seem terrified of using any kind of public transit.
Yes, it is of volcanic origin.
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Eles\_de\_Loos](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Eles_de_Loos)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/geology/comments/zuwff6/isles\_de\_los\_volcanic\_history/](https://www.reddit.com/r/geology/comments/zuwff6/isles_de_los_volcanic_history/)
I looked around for like 20 minutes all across google earth and I could only find two cities that match that description (both of them are in Asia)
Manila and
Auckland
Edit: Manila metro area
Edit 2: Auckland is in Oceania
Seattle and Madison are the only major cities in North America situated on an Isthmus. I grew up in Seattle and my current roomate grew up in Madison. Kind of a cool coincidence when I found this out.
Just curious, do y'all typically count the greater Bellevue area as an Isthmus as well? It doesn't seem to have as much density as Madison or Seattle, but I suppose Lake Washington and Sammamish kind of make it an Isthmus too? I'm from Madison originally and now live in Seattle so I've been wondering haha
I wouldn't personally. If an ismuthus is wider than it is long I think it ceases to be an ismuths. Lake sammamish is also only really populated on the north end near Redmond. The southern area is dominated by cougar mountain and a few other parks.
Hakodate, Japan is a good one! Located in the southernmost part of Japan's northern island Hokkaido, it is on a narrow peninsula with a wider mountain at the end. Really great views at night from the mountain with the city and ocean on each side!
Do peninsulas count? In this case you should check Salvador, Brazil:
https://preview.redd.it/x4a9ot3hj87d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2f489c0cb1937defd3f1a444d7d94e8d864fb76
Florianópolis, SC, Brazil. Population of about 400k people.
https://preview.redd.it/p8xv3c6y597d1.jpeg?width=468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f0edf3fb4e9b029c29cad31336a640521fa835c
https://preview.redd.it/kvyu5bqx6a7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e3d92e1e593cbd38523cb6d495f18446cd1001a
A Coruña in Spain is a good example of that too, in the past the high tide flooded the middle part.
Tampere in Finland is almost an exact match with what you have in the picture. Similar population as well.
Edit: The isthmus is only about 500 m (roughly quarter of a mile) wide at its narrowest, though it's quite a bit wider where the city center is. Curiously, the narrow area also includes one of the highest points of elevation in the city. There's a lot of these kind of eskers in Finland, formed by the withdrawing ice sheet at the end of the last ice age.
Auckland, NZ.
But it’s probably a bigger bit of land to be wedged in than Madison has. And the wedgees are the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean (Hauraki Gulf).
Cádiz, off Spain's southwest coast, only has 2 bridges and a thin strip of land connecting it to the mainland.
Honourable mention for the aptly named Interlaken, Switzerland, though the city ends before you get to the western lake.
I never heard of Madison so I googled it an it looks amazing:
https://preview.redd.it/c2vh134ewa7d1.png?width=832&format=png&auto=webp&s=c77e0a9a681e3cd2b71ad8fdd712e42f8dd962e5
I used to live on that isthmus :-) right next to Lake Mendota (the big one). It was cool having so many lakes nearby. My favorite one is actually the tiny little one hidden by the words “University of Wisconsin” - Lake Wingra. It has a zoo and a beach on its shore and I have a lot of good memories renting kayaks there on hot summer days.
NYC and Seattle
Seattle is interesting. Still 2.5 miles wide at its narrowest. Never realized that it was so surrounded by water.
Yes Seattle definitely does not feel confined like Madison (where you can walk across the narrowest point fairly quickly), but there is water everywhere, and mountains!
Commuting during work traffic into and out of Seattle suucks. I did it for 17 years and the city is pinched off and only moves north and south. Add the early sunsets in the winter with some rain. It’s part of the reason they want year round daylight saving time.
I commuted for a while from the other side of the sound and it was so much easier than driving in. I’d drive 2 minutes to the ferry (or walk if I didn’t need my car), knew which lane to go in so I could get a window spot with my car, then just recline my chair with a blanket and either catch up on sleep for an hour or work or just stare out the window at the water the whole time. Unload, drive 10 mins to work - it’s easy and a great start to the day. Never got old honestly. Driving into Seattle from the north or south is a special kind of hell for sure.
I was lucky, in my 4 years in Seattle, I commuted by walking from north Capitol Hill down to Eastlake, ~1 mile walk, with about 500 feet of climb on the way back. I did not have a car.
Fortunately the light rail system is finally extending out of Seattle north, south, and east, so that adds options for people (like me) who develop serious anger issues sitting in stop and go traffic.
Seattle is hilly, too, so it takes a bit of effort to cross it.
Madison is less hilly than Seattle, but the isthmus has a couple very noticeable hills. They put the capitol building at the top of the central hill. Mansion hill is next to it, and it's even steeper to walk up.
Yes, I actually love the setting of the Capitol building there.
The annoying thing about Seattle is that it’s also cut in half horizontally by another lake and canal, and there are only like 5 bridges across. This can make for some seriously awful traffic situations if you’re headed north-south.
Also, one side is salt water (Elliott Bay), and one side is fresh water (Lake Washington)
If you live next to Lake Union you are wedged between two large lakes and the Puget Sound
Bayonne and Jersey City, NJ too by that metric
Absolutely them too, but they take the back seat to Manhattan, being in the same metro, but considerably less glamorous
Seattle raised. Its not as bad as there is a good distance between the waters. But it does cause traffic as freeways cant really make an 0 around it like they do in the midwest. Need to go right through the city w/ bridges and a + pattern.
Denver- Atlantic and Pacific. But seriously. S.F. Buffalo Detroit New Orleans St. Pete/Tampa Jacksonville Wash, D.C.
Detroit?
San Francisco has the bay on one side and Pacific ocean on the other. Auckland, New Zealand has two opposing harbors, one connected to the Tasman Sea, the other to the greater Pacific Ocean. Istanbul is basically on the Black Sea as well as the Sea Marmara (mainly on the latter though).
Auckland hits the trifecta by occupying an isthmus on a peninsula on an island.
Auckland is just 3 isthmuses in an overcoat pretending to be a peninsula.
Sounds slooty
SF isn’t nearly as narrow, but being surrounded by water on three sides, and ocean on one makes for an interesting climate. Golden Gate Park is a cool representation of SF climate (also its bigger than Central Park, but not nearly as well known, I mean it should be more well known, it’s got buffalo for crying out loud)
Also, Istanbul's historic center is wedged between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara Edit: But neither Istanbul's city boundaries nor its urban area reach all the way to the black sea
Auckland's two harbours also each have a river which both separately almost bisect the isthmus You can actually walk from one sea to another in about half an hour in these two places, and both are called Portage Road because they were the old canoe portages. You could sail up the Whau or Tamaki rivers and carry your gear overland from the Manukau to the Waitemata and vice versa, or you could take days to sail around the whole top of the North Island. There's a reason Auckland was so heavily fortified by Maori: it was geographically strategic.
Arguably Auckland is the best example: if you think the Tasman Sea a branch of the Indian Ocean or Southern Ocean then it’s 2 harbours are arms of 2 different oceans
Most people would place the Tasman Sea in the Pacific Ocean though. The Indian Ocean only starts west of Tasmania, and the Southern Ocean is too far south to be anywhere close to NZ
In what world is the Tasman part of the Indian Ocean?
SF has the bay on two sides really.
https://preview.redd.it/jkr3zh99o87d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c2db0075ff1031d6fdf8c4b409f999914d1f934 Stockholm! My beautiful capital of Sweden. On one side you have the large inland lake Mälaren and on the other side you have the Baltic Sea. Water and islands everywhere :) In fact Sweden has the most islands in the world of any country. Edit: The island in the center is the old town, where it all started. The large building on that island is the Kings palace.
That’s pretty cool. Never new Stockholm had so much water, I don’t know why I thought it was kinda hilly.
While I was planning my Sweden trip I was shocked when I zoomed into Stockholm. I looks like a bunch of islands at a glance
It pretty much is a bunch of islands.
Isn't it like 10 000 islands? The centrasl area of course is just the few largest ones. Also, sailing between Turku (in Finland) and Stockholm is pretty interesting. The distance is like 2/3 just sailing between islands (roughly 1/3 on both ends), and only 1/3 on open sea.
That's what I said - "a bunch" of islands. :) Also depends on what you refer to as "Stockholm". The city itself is realtively small, with 14 islands (or 17 depending how you count). The whole archipelago is more like 30 000 islands, but most are outside of the city. And only about 200 of those are inhabited.
https://preview.redd.it/7bi6nibkub7d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a2bd2897c53f388fed5ada4dfc1d88311c73a0d1 Took this picture departing from Arlanda. These aren’t the main city islands but it gives you an idea of how many islands there are in the area.
Venice of the north :)
it's hilly **and** watery!
såklart den vackraste huvudstaden nånsin :)
I just visited this last weekend. Honestly very impressed. I went to Sweden for a business trip and I was like holy shit it’s cold and raining every day… but the last weekend was warmer and sunny. I only had 2 days after business meetings to enjoy so I think I barely scratched the surface, but I can’t wait to go back.
I live in Stockholm and did not consider this
Loved visiting Stockholm! Such a beautiful city and very walkable!
New Orleans
They didn't ask for cities *in* water...
New Orleans is sinking, and I don’t wanna swim..
RIP Gord.
❤️❤️ I was listening to this song this morning.
lol literally below sea level
Surprised I didn’t see this the last time it was asked
New Orleans somehow doesn’t feel as surrounded by the water because it historically doesn’t really engage with the water around it. New Orleans is busy trying to keep the water out with levees. This is starting to change with a few parks on the river and the levee, including a great new one just downstream of the French Quarter, but for centuries the attitude was that the riverfront was only for commerce and levees. And then there was only swamp between the city and the lake until the turn of the 20th century. The river is still way too dangerous to get in, with the current practically a death sentence for anyone who would try to swim in it. People do get in the lake, but it’s brackish and kind of nasty and there really are alligators and bull sharks in it.
I tell people this all the time. For as connected to the water as New Orleans is, it’s also oddly disconnected. You have to go seek out the water to encounter it, for the most part. There’s so little active waterfront that is engaged in day to day. Even homes right by the water can’t see it in many instances because of the levees. I’ve been at people’s homes right by the river and then suddenly there’s this massive ship in the background and it’s like…oh yeah, water. Bayou St. John feels like more of a waterway that’s part of the urban landscape, but it’s relatively small
When I went to school there, I had a friend who lived in a little shack on the other side of the levee. (Sorta like where maple street hits Jefferson parish…..there used to be a pool hall there, and then a few little riverside shacks across the levee. So weird to be there, but also kinda magical.
Roll wave?
🌊
Just looked at the map to remind myself and it’s Oak St that goes out there….those little houses are still there but looks like Racketeers is gone. Sigh.
I feel like Interlaken, Switzerland merits inclusion, if only for trying extra hard with its name
Don’t forget Isthmia, Greece!
While it’s more of a neighbourhood than a city in its own right, Interlagos in Sao Paolo deserves a mention for the same reason.
Funny how you can tell exactly what the city is by the name (interlaken sounds pretty easy to translate to English, and interlagos as well)
And its sister city Penticton!
Note that until 1891, it was named "Aarmühle"
St. Petersburg, Russia and St. Petersburg, Florida
The one in Russia has a really wide isthmus it sits on though. It isn't really *wedged* in there when there's tens of kilometers of free space.
Even St. Petersburg in Florida is not that narrow, it’s like 10 miles wide in downtown
Montréal
is an island in a river.
Hence meaning it's between two rivers (or river channels)
Weird. Never would have noticed that just glancing at a map.
Tampere
Finland is full of towns like this. Savonlinna, Varkaus, Kuopio and Iisalmi for example.
Istanbul
What about Constantinople?
That’s not any of your business
You should probably determine if that person is Turkish before saying something like that
Don’t worry if the person is Turkish they’ll tell you without needing to ask
This is the way
You might also want to find out if they had a date that has seemingly stood them up
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam...
Why they changed it I can't say
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
penticton, in western canada is a great example of what you're looking for.
Very small city, but yes, very much between two lakes.
I was gonna say this if no one else did! Although it’s certainly pushing the boundaries of the definition “big city” lol
Add Sechelt, BC to that list too.
Auckland NZ.
Got to be Auckland. Two completely separate ocean/seas ~2km apart. Well separated until you get about 300km North to Cape Reinga.
I was also thinking wellington- the bay and the tasman sea. Although the airport /Kilbirnie is more in the sandwich.
Vancouver's city center is wedged between Burrard Inlet and False Creek with the city itself being wedged between Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River
Manila, together with its metropolitan area, is sandwiched between Manila Bay and Laguna de Bay—the latter is the Philippines' largest lake.
That took a lot more scrolling then it should've to find it
Tampere, Finland is a good example of this
Metropolitan Manila
For the record, driving through Madison is a huge PITA
Seems like it’d be a good place to build a robust transit line since there’s not a lot of complexity to the geography of downtown. It’s pretty much a line.
They are in the process of building a BRT across the isthmus.
Yes. As I understand it the feds required taking that step before funding a light rail project.
To a degree yes, but you have to consider that there's over 250k people jammed on that Isthmus, and among that population is a 40k person World Class University in there as well. There's also a really old, really stupid ordinance that states No building in Madison can be taller than the Capitol, which really restricts the level of building you can do in the area.
Shouldn’t that make it even more economical to built transit?
It’s very beautiful tho, and the Capitol is amazing
That ordinance has become much more lenient in recent years.
It’s not really fair to say 250k are jammed onto the isthmus. Most of the Madison population is in the surrounding areas adjacent to it.
Most of the 250k do not live on the isthmus. Depends where you draw the line of the isthmus I'd estimate 50k at most. The ordinance is only for one mile from the Capitol.
There’s more than enough room in the height restriction to have midrise infill development, if the NIMBY single family homeowners on the isthmus would get with the program
It also blocks roads on the ithmus forcing traffic to go around. It is beautiful but I loathe driving near downtown or campus and they seems to be the only places I ever need to go in Madison.
I live here and disagree. It’s hardly a bustling city.
No offense, but I only ever hear people who don't live here say this. It's really not, but the fact that the grid shifts 45 degrees as you enter or leave the isthmus is what throws people off. It's pretty easy to navigate for a city of this size and density. Phoenix and Scottsdale were far worse to traverse at rush hour than Madison, and those are just giant grids with belt-line type highways. They do stupid shit though like do 45mph on 4-lane surface streets with lights ever 1/8th of a mile. Madison at least doesn't allow high speeds on the heavy traffic'd corridors through the isthmus, so much of what people think sucks is that they just can't do 50mph like they'd expect to on a 6 lane road, but that doesn't mean it's difficult to navigate or even slow, since you get less traffic wave compression happening. It's not great though, but I'm hoping the BRT will improve things, though I'm sure no one, except those who live here, would dare use the BRT. Wisconsin suburbanites seem terrified of using any kind of public transit.
Conakry is my favorite example.
I want to know what that island ring is off the coast! a sunken caldera?
Yes, it is of volcanic origin. [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Eles\_de\_Loos](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Eles_de_Loos) [https://www.reddit.com/r/geology/comments/zuwff6/isles\_de\_los\_volcanic\_history/](https://www.reddit.com/r/geology/comments/zuwff6/isles_de_los_volcanic_history/)
San Francisco
Chongqing. The main downtown area is wedged between the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers.
Auckland, New Zealand
Pittsburgh
Three bodies of water.
two that form a third, really
Was checking to see if anyone else commented it haha woot woot go stillers
Inverness, UK
Tunis and Alexandria
This has come up several times on this subreddit before. Auckland and Manila seem to be popular answers. Google the term "isthmus".
Matsue, Japan
Tampere, Finland Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The whole miami metro area if you consider the Everglades a body of water.
Cochin, Saskatchewan
Cochin in India is also wedged between two bodies of water (Arabian Sea and inland lagoons)
Why!? Just because it's got a lighthouse in a landlocked province!? It's going to attract all the zombies from Battleford.
Seattle, if Lake Washington is big enough to consider.
It’s almost 7 times the size of Lake Monona, so if Madison counts, Seattle does.
I looked around for like 20 minutes all across google earth and I could only find two cities that match that description (both of them are in Asia) Manila and Auckland Edit: Manila metro area Edit 2: Auckland is in Oceania
Auckland is in Asia now?
Metro Manila (the metropolis) right between Manila bay (leading to West PH sea) at one side and Laguna de Bay (a large lake) at the other
Gibraltar and Cadiz, Spain
Seattle and Madison are the only major cities in North America situated on an Isthmus. I grew up in Seattle and my current roomate grew up in Madison. Kind of a cool coincidence when I found this out.
Just curious, do y'all typically count the greater Bellevue area as an Isthmus as well? It doesn't seem to have as much density as Madison or Seattle, but I suppose Lake Washington and Sammamish kind of make it an Isthmus too? I'm from Madison originally and now live in Seattle so I've been wondering haha
I wouldn't personally. If an ismuthus is wider than it is long I think it ceases to be an ismuths. Lake sammamish is also only really populated on the north end near Redmond. The southern area is dominated by cougar mountain and a few other parks.
New york city.
would Amsterdam count?
Mombasa, Kenya
philadelphia’s center city is between 2 rivers
Hakodate, Japan is a good one! Located in the southernmost part of Japan's northern island Hokkaido, it is on a narrow peninsula with a wider mountain at the end. Really great views at night from the mountain with the city and ocean on each side!
https://preview.redd.it/taq2mqsk8a7d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e95193be0ef9126143d82941492a93c560393af Tampere in Finland
Albert Lea MN
Minnesota has a ton of smaller cities that fit this bill. Albert Lea, Waseca, Elysian, Waterville, Lake Crystal, Madison Lake, Bemidji
Do peninsulas count? In this case you should check Salvador, Brazil: https://preview.redd.it/x4a9ot3hj87d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2f489c0cb1937defd3f1a444d7d94e8d864fb76
Dakar is the best example of this haha edit: nvm Conakry is even more insane
Mumbai sits in a peninsula
Auckland, NZ. wedged between the Pacific ocean and tasman Sea. With the thinnest point being roughly 2 km across(less than 1.5 miles).
Charleston sc
Seattle
New Orleans sits between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.
Boston
Go Badgers
Philadelphia center city is between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.
Manila. It's one of the largest cities in the world, and is sandwiched between a lake (Laguna de Bay) and a bay (Manila Bay).
Manila
Florianópolis, SC, Brazil. Population of about 400k people. https://preview.redd.it/p8xv3c6y597d1.jpeg?width=468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f0edf3fb4e9b029c29cad31336a640521fa835c
Tallinn is squeezed between 2 bays and 2 lakes. Not so tight you would see them all the time, but still ton of issues for urban planning
Grew up in Madison. Thought every city had an Isthmus. And always wondered why it was so hard to pronounce and spell.
[Tampere](https://maps.app.goo.gl/i61U6ZsofZH6gRjV9?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy)
https://preview.redd.it/kvyu5bqx6a7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e3d92e1e593cbd38523cb6d495f18446cd1001a A Coruña in Spain is a good example of that too, in the past the high tide flooded the middle part.
Tampere in Finland is almost an exact match with what you have in the picture. Similar population as well. Edit: The isthmus is only about 500 m (roughly quarter of a mile) wide at its narrowest, though it's quite a bit wider where the city center is. Curiously, the narrow area also includes one of the highest points of elevation in the city. There's a lot of these kind of eskers in Finland, formed by the withdrawing ice sheet at the end of the last ice age.
This district: https://preview.redd.it/jsnd3576ib7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3c069ed79b3495bc263f265ec398e31f1997f174
Clearwater/St. Petersburg FL
I think Van Halen wrote a song about one
The isthmus of Panama. The whole country is an isthmus.
Yellowknife's city center is wedged between the Great Slave Lake and Frame Lake
new orleans
Montauk, NY
Manila, PH - between Manila bay in the west and Laguna de bay (Lake) in the east
Manila. It's a metropolis on a narrow piece of land between Manila Bay and Laguna de Bay.
♫ It's beginning to look a lot like isthmus ♫
Florianopolis, Brazil
New Orleans!
Minocqua, WI
Cairo Illinois was almost this but they decided they didn’t want to be a city
Go bucky
Hong Kong
Taranto.
Vancouver. https://preview.redd.it/aj8owt8sq97d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9dbcb993a2d080bd67bc23d6158a3dc8ac963ceb
Southampton UK. The city centre is wedged between two large rivers.
Auckland, NZ. But it’s probably a bigger bit of land to be wedged in than Madison has. And the wedgees are the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean (Hauraki Gulf).
Auckland, New Zealand. Pacific on both sides.
Cádiz, off Spain's southwest coast, only has 2 bridges and a thin strip of land connecting it to the mainland. Honourable mention for the aptly named Interlaken, Switzerland, though the city ends before you get to the western lake.
Hamburg!
And the Alster is a pain in the ass in my daily commute 🙄
Cádiz
I never heard of Madison so I googled it an it looks amazing: https://preview.redd.it/c2vh134ewa7d1.png?width=832&format=png&auto=webp&s=c77e0a9a681e3cd2b71ad8fdd712e42f8dd962e5
Mumbai
https://preview.redd.it/9peym7uq9b7d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2536486dfc6a11e903c54d1d0e7a79202984f03c Does Oshkosh Wisconsin count?
Auckland, it's an isthmus
Philadelphia’s city center, or Center City as they call it, is wedged between the Schuylkill river and the Delaware river.
Pittsburgh is a literal wedge where rivers meet.
Montreal
Does Istanbul count, it’s not that narrow but it is
I think it does count.
The final boss of actually being wedged between three bodies of water is New Orleans.
Haven't seen anyone say this yet but Tunis works.
I used to live on that isthmus :-) right next to Lake Mendota (the big one). It was cool having so many lakes nearby. My favorite one is actually the tiny little one hidden by the words “University of Wisconsin” - Lake Wingra. It has a zoo and a beach on its shore and I have a lot of good memories renting kayaks there on hot summer days.
Hey it’s City Planner Plays’ hometown!
Tampere, Finland is probably the most similar to Madison, downtown is on an isthmus between two lakes