Most cities have so much in common that a generic “map of every city” can seem similarly familiar to people living in London, Paris, New York or another metropolis entirely. General types of neighborhoods aren’t the only things different cities share, though — much less obvious but pervasive are sets of codes, symbols and markings that can communicate meaning across different times and urban spaces.

Even though (or perhaps because) people drive over and walk by them every day, it is easy to overlook the rich, colorful and cryptic utility markings spray-painted onto streets and sidewalks. Like graffiti tags or hobo codes, this language of scribbled text, dots, lines and arrows may seem indecipherable at first, but lives depend on engineers, city workers and utility companies understanding what they mean.

Utility markings tell excavators working on subsurface projects where to dig and (more importantly) where not to dig. A vocabulary of symbols (with its associated grammar of colors) helps diggers steer clear of dangerous power, sewer and water lines as well as other pipes and cables.

Like any language, utility codes have evolved what one could call regional “accents” of a sort — linguistic conventions that vary from one state or country to the next. Standardization, though, is important in helping keep people safe, which is why there are often local or national rules governing what different colors and symbols represent.

Long before cities came around to the idea of utility markings, train-hopping nomads were working out similarly symbol-based systems of communication. As these travelers roamed America looking for work, particularly during the Great Depression, they learned to leave messages for one another — so-called “hobo codes.” These relatively simple symbols could help fellow travelers find good places to camp and kind people who might give them meals, for instance.

At the time, being nomadic was a mixed bag — some travelers were known as bums or tramps, disparaged for drinking or idling rather than working. The term hobo, though, was more specifically applied to those actively seeking work and willing to take on jobs others didn’t want to do — hobos were met with various degrees of caution and generosity. Many were illiterate, however, so coded symbols with intuitive meanings helped them convey messages through etched or chalked markings. The relatively discreet size and abstract shapes made these marks easy for people not in the know to overlook.

Some symbols represented fairly specific suggestions about how to behave and what to avoid. A cross, for instance, could indicate that talking about religion might help a person get free food from a particular resident. Other markings might caution hobos about heightened crackdowns on vagrants and beggars by local police. While train-jumping culture has changed, some modern travelers have attempted to digitize the idea of hobo symbols through QR codes.

Mural and graffiti art sit somewhere between officially sanctioned and illicit urban communication, depending on the location and surface being tagged. These interventions, too, have evolved a lot over the years. Definitions and genres have sprung up along the way, helpful for tracking and analyzing but also understanding different works — there are pieces, tags, stickers (or: slaps), throw-ups, stencils, heavens, blockbusters, wildstyles and more.

A piece, for instance (short for “masterpiece”) and is usually a complex and multicolored affair difficult to do illegally given the time they take to make. A blockbuster can go either way, often made using rollers and designed to cover up a surface — sometimes one that has already been tagged. A heaven, however, is generally illegal, defined by the difficulty of putting a work up high on something like the back (or front) of a highway sign or the surface of a billboard advertisement — not generally places where one can get official approval to paint.

Some typologies are pretty self-explanatory, like bubble letters or fat caps, the latter of which are usually done with wide spray tips, making them both easy to deploy and easy to read (in turn rendering them useful for get-in-and-out-quickly situations). Shadow letters can also take a bit more work, but help a tag pop off a surface, giving it a somewhat more weighty and three-dimensional appearance. Indirectly, the forms and shapes of letters and symbols tell the observer something about the artist’s intent and constraints. Graffiti can even be broken down into characters, alphabets and fonts, which an informed onlooker can use to better understand a given work.

Some artists and art fans have gone to great lengths to classify different types of graffiti, but such a task is destined to be forever incomplete — graffiti is personal and location-specific, not based on any shared font or type. But some, like artist Evan Roth, try anyway to collect, identify and compare examples of letters, creating order out of the seeming chaos of conflicting tags. He also took his project full circle by pasting up alphabets along the city blocks in which they were originally found, encouraging people to look at tags in a new light, offering temporary glimpses into the linguistic ties that bind them loosely together. With any street communication, legal or illegal, there will always be some give and take between fluid creativity and efforts to categorize, standardize and simply understand.

The truck stops here… stops serving, that is, and these closed and abandoned food trucks won’t be serving anything soon unless it’s as scrap metal.

Van Green

Visitors to the promenade and beach at Portobello in Edinburgh, Scotland will likely recall The Little Green Van and may have even enjoyed some of the delicacies sold during business hours. Sadly for Flickr members byronv2 and martin Hartland, however, their visits in November 2014 and October of 2017 (respectively) did not occur at the optimum times, leaving them… green with envy?

Woe Canada

This quintessentially (and apologetically) Canadian food truck is surely courting a parking ticket from Toronto’s notoriously industrious parking patrol. Then again, the disturbingly anthropomorphic illustrations on the side of the Steve’s catering truck – not to mention that horrifyingly hot hotdog dog – just might keep the urban revenuers away ’til the owner can cheese it. Flickr member Daniel Lobo snapped the van-glorious vehicle in July of 2017.

No Perchases

Time was, visitors to the Kingsville Ferry pier could score a meal of delicious deep-fried perch from the cringingly stereotypical O’Ryan’s Fish and Chips food truck. That was then, this is… well, let’s just say “Lake Erie gonna be eerie” and leave it at that.

While Irish fries may be smiling, there’s been no actual frying inside the long-park abandoned food truck for ages. According to photographer and Flickr member stephenweir, the converted step van “is now rusting into oblivion”… or should that be “O’Blivion”?

Pastel Imperfect

“Oh Mandy’s, well you came and you gave without taking”… which might explain why this awesome pale pink food truck is parked in back of a gritty Montreal factory instead of serving pricey gourmet salads to working stiffs and stiffettes. Also, does Barry Manilow know you raid his food truck? You mess with the bull, he honks the horn. Flickr member Coastal Elite captured the forlorn yet still blushingly beautiful food truck in late May of 2017.

Checkered Passed

The paint has faded, the lettering’s been stripped and it’s wonder this weathered old former food truck still has its hubcaps – among other things. We’re not saying Templetown is a bad neighborhood, just that life in Philly isn’t exactly a picnic.

Picnics may be coming back in style, however, as students attending nearby Temple University have been known to eat and drink like, er, university students. Seems like a great location for a food truck… just not THIS food truck. Flickr member Ezra Wolfe snapped the seen-better-days food truck in early January of 2009.

It’s Been A Slice

Flickr member Christine und Hagen Graf don’t state exactly (or even inexactly) where this old abandoned food truck is located but if the Mediterranean-looking landscape and the Euro-look of the van itself are any indication, it may be the south of France. By the way, the much-faded “Pizza au Feu de Bois” legend on the truck’s side translates to “Wood Oven Pizza” so you’ll know what you’ve been missing.

Just Desserts

It’s not too late to jump aboard the booming food truck bandwagon, you just need the right food and, of course, the right truck… like this one. Better yet, it just happens to be For Sale according to photographer and Flickr member Paul Sableman, who captured the slightly worse-for-wear step van in July of 2013. OK, yeah, that was over six years ago but what are the odds the snow white van’s still parked out there in Austin, baking away in the Texas sun? Sometimes, “hot” deals DO last this long.

It takes just one artist to raise this annual micro-village, putting out a fresh scene daily featuring miniature people going about their everyday lives, navigating repurposed objects designed for different purposes at larger scales.

The new Miniature Calendar by Tastuya Tanaka is the latest in a series of 7, each one featuring 365 snapshots of lives lived small. The figures are often framed by items that are easy to recognize and yet also simple to reimagine in context.

The little humans populating each scene can be seen riding camels over sand dunes, diving between the spirals of a notebook, scaling toothpick architectural towers, strolling down bustling streets with neon sticky note signage and more.

Notebooks, sticky notes, thin plastic sheets and other items found at any art store make up the backdrops for these shots. These are, in turn, turned into books, postcards and calendars by the artist.

The NYC Parks Department offers an amazing resource in the form of an online map that “includes every street tree in New York City” (spanning 422 species) first mapped by volunteers in 2015 and now updated daily by their forestry team. “On the map, trees are represented by circles. The size of the circle represents the diameter of the tree, and the color of the circle reflects its species. You are welcome to browse our entire inventory of trees, or to select an individual tree for more information.”

Clicking the trees reveals not just species and size but also ecological benefits provided, quantified in dollar terms, from things like capturing storm runoff and reducing air pollution. “We know that trees improve the environment and the health of a city in measurable ways. Trees can capture storm water runoff, reduce energy costs, and make the air less polluted and easier to breathe. We can calculate the benefits that each tree provides to the people of New York City based on a formula developed by the Center for Urban Forest Research. The benefits each tree provides varies based upon its species, size, and location.”

Fans can even track their favorite trees over time and add notes about tree-related activities. So far, nearly five thousand trees have been “favorited” and 20,000 activities reported. For those interested in doing even more, the Parks Department also encourages people to become involved: “It’s easy to become a tree steward! We host volunteers all year long. We can train you in basic activities such as watering trees, adding mulch and soil, and removing weeds and litter; as well as advanced activities such as installing a tree guard, expanding tree beds, and installing or removing stone or brick pavers.”

One caveat: the map only shows trees that grow on land under the jurisdiction of NYC Parks, but this includes trees planted along sidewalks or other public rights-of-way (still, it doesn’t have all trees maintained by the state or federal government or, of course, on private property). Still, with over 600,000 trees to explore, urban plant fans should have plenty to do just tracking and examining the ones that are covered!

Within two years, the city of Chengdu aims to swap out its ground-based street lighting with the soft glow of an artificial moon, casting light across 50 square miles of the urban landscape.

Wu Chunfeng, chairman of Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute, announced the news at a national mass innovation and entrepreneurship event earlier this month.

Reflective panels on board the machine will pick up and redirect the sun’s rays. The satellite will actually glow multiple times brighter than the moon itself, creating a dusk-like atmosphere on demand. The precise illumination can be varied in different sections of the city as well.

The project may sound like a moonshot but it’s not without precedent: Soviets tested similar light-reflecting satellites decades ago, aimed to illuminate darker northern regions, and on the ground: cities in valleys have also been known to use giant reflectors perched on adjacent mountainsides.