Popularity Contest of the Day: Urban Infrastructure, on Flickr

Paul Krueger/Flickr

We've all got our favorite pieces of urban infrastructure. Some people like manholes. Others enjoy streetlights. But what is the most favored city part of all?

We've come to a conclusion by comparing Flickr tag counts for a number of key city elements. Perhaps the research method places a premium on the photogenic, and it's also true that many of these elements appear in photos and are not tagged. (See above - manholes, street signs, traffic lights, bike lanes and stop signs all appear together; only one was tagged.) That's the cool thing about tags - we don't want to know the frequency of these elements in the city so much as how often they are noticed, prized, held up for praise and disdain. The method does not, however, rule out band names like "Streetlight Manifesto" and "The Manhole Boys."

Without further ado, in ascending order of Flickr popularity (full list at the bottom):

Bollards: 27,368

Photo credit: Flickr user Garry Knight.