For example, in Washington Heights and Golan Heights, what does “heights” mean? What does it tell us about the place?

    • glimse@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      See: half the suburbs of Chicago

      Chicago Heights, Harwood Heights, Arlington Heights, Highland Park, Palos Heights, etc.

      It’s purely marketing because they’re all flat as fuck

    • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      That’s generally how it’s used in Australia. There will be an existing suburb named ‘generic suburb’, and developers will come and build a new housing development full of cookie cutter houses on 300m2 blocks with their gutters near touching eachother and call it ‘generic suburb heights’ as an attempt to give the schmucks that buy there some sort of feeling of prestige over the older neighbourhood with larger block sizes and more human compatible dwellings.

      Other guy in here nailed it with the British origins but for some reason he’s been downvoted.

      • Square Singer@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        Because he put in the same comment, that high street and highway are called that way because they where elevated over the other streets, which is nonsense.

        In fact, high street/highway are that way, because in Old English high didn’t only denote elevation, but also a high status/rank/importance.

        Modern English still uses that meaning, but it’s rarer nowadays. For example, high society, high sheriff or high priest aren’t called that because they are tall.

        High is also used with a lot of words where elevation doesn’t matter: high rank, high value and so on.

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      Washington Heights in NYC, at any rate, is physically high in elevation, and it’s not a particularly fancy area at all.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      there is a town in illinois that was called brickton because chicago brick was dug up there. Now its a hoity toity suburb called park ridge.