I’ve always been fascinated by questions around the origin and location of cities. How did they get their start and why did they get founded where they did? Access to water and resources are obvious factors. But it could have also been for defensive reasons. 

In some cases, the location makes intuitive sense. Quebec City, for instance, is founded on high ground at the point “where the river narrows.” Both of these elements come in handy when you’re trying to fend off intruders. But in other cases, the exact location of a city or town may not be as obvious.

Thankfully, Wendover Productions – which is a YouTube channel entirely focused on explaining how the world works – recently published a video called: Why Cities Are Where They Are. (Video embedded below.) It’s about 16 minutes long and it has gotten over 1 million views at the time of writing this post.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PWWtqfwacQ?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

They also have a video that I watched today called: The Economics of Airline Class. It covers why airlines don’t care about coach and don’t make money off coach travellers. The real estate developer in me enjoyed the part about revenue per square foot for each “class” section of the plane.