Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by LastTrain | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

LastTrain·

Also, there is absolutely nothing “flat” about Salt Lake City.

View on HN

It's surrounded by mountains, but the urban part of the city is indeed very flat.

Maybe a decade ago, but there are now over a dozen buildings over 300 feet in downtown SLC[1].

I was there last week; it's not a "big" city by any means, but it's also certainly not flat by any means. Compare this to Buffalo, which is bigger, older, and still has fewer buildings over 300 feet[2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_S...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_B...

Pretty sure we're talking about ground elevation, not building height.

The original context was "flat and squat," so I assumed we were including building height. But it's entirely possible that was wrong!

Fair, I may have missed "squat"!

Huh? The city itself is really flat - I've been through it, and a quick image search confirms as much. There are mountains nearby, but saying "there is absolutely nothing 'flat'" about it is pretty disingenuous.

I mean, sure, there are flat parts - as with all cities. But if we are ranking cities by flatness, SLC would be somewhere in the bottom 10 percent. "Flat" is just a horrible descriptor for that city.

I lived in SLC city and it is flat in a similar way a bowl is "flat" The middle valley is very flat with a pretty steady elevation around 4500 ft or so IIRC but nestled between 2 very big mountain ranges and the great salt lake up north.

See for yourself

https://en-us.topographic-map.com/map-nptp/Salt-Lake-City/?c...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com