A case study: 60/60, Ural Mountains, Russia
By Bruce E. Camber
First posted: March 2009
First update: February 2012
Most recent update: 12 June 2021
Background: Let us look into the information that is available today about 60°N/ 60°E and open a discussion about how a destination, The 60/60, might evolve and what it would mean for the world. This page was introduced in March of 2009 and it will be expanded over the years.
Global Positioning redefines the value of “where I am.”
So, where are you? How do you know? How is that important?
The Magic of Numbers: There is a certain magic within numbers. From childhood, part of our basic education is to learn to use the tools that use numbers — thermometers to measure our temperature – our health, rulers and measuring tapes to learn our height, and scales to measure our weight. Then we learn more sophisticated tools that measure the other vitals of our bodies, automobiles, and homes. And then, we are forever learning how numbers apply to the value of goods and services.
One of the most remarkable tools to be added to our vast array (yet this one started for use in airplanes), is the GPS, also known as a Global Positioning System.
GPS. Formally known as the Global Navigation Satellite System, the earliest version of the system was developed in the 1960s by the US Department of Defense (DOD) yet a functional system was not opened to the general public until 1993.
Thank you, Ronald Reagan. In 1983 he issued a directive that DOD’s system be made available for civilian use. That order was a direct result of a security report that was given to him on September 1 describing how and why the Korean Air Lines passenger jet, KAL Flight 007, had been shot down. If they had a GPS system on board, they would not have strayed off course, mistakenly flying into very secure Soviet airspace.
GPS is a science and a technology. It creates a new value system.
Though based on human conventions, it is an absolute system. With every passing day and greater use, the probabilities increase that the GPS coordinates will continue to remain the same — yesterday, today and tomorrow. GPS technology transcends time and defines space uniquely. It is the intersection of the quantitative with the qualitative. We naturally impute meaning and value to numbers, i.e. the simpler the GPS number, the more valuable it is.
So what else can the GPS do and why is it important?
60/60: What would it be like to be standing on the one spot on land that everybody in the world says, “This is absolutely on the 60-degrees longitude and 60-degrees latitude intersection.” There are four possible locations on the planet earth, yet only one is on land.
50/50: 50 Years Old. A big birthday! So, what are you going to do? Where are you going to celebrate? How about going to the 50/50 intersection of the world and soak up what it means to be 50? How much more meaning can be imparted into those quadrants? The answer, “Plenty.”
There are about 90 very simple GPS addresses:
In 2013, these locations are perhaps the most valuable-inexpensive real estate in the world. This will not last for long.
Though cheap today, it is priceless real estate. Many of the best GPS quadrants are literally nowhere. Nobody has been thinking about them. But you will. It is a magical idea. Yet, today, there aren’t even roads to the best quadrants. To get the ball rolling, a proposal is being prepared for the World Bank to develop a GPS Scenic Roadway and the GPS Highway from 60/60 in the Urals south through 59.59, 58.58 and so on down to 50/50 in Kazakhstan and down to the 43/43 in Georgia, and then into Turkey.
Why not have a scenic parkway to connect these sites and then a major highway anywhere from 10 to 30 miles from the parkway yet paralleling it?
Someday it will happen… new cities and towns will be known for their GPS quadrants. These new cities and towns will spring up just because meaning for that quadrant can be readily imputed. Besides becoming the place to be on one’s birthday — you can imagine the endless sounds of “Happy Birthday” being sung in many languages — these just might become the places to learn as much as possible about the meaning and value of a particular number.
Numbers take on special meaning.
Instantiated numbers, a brief history. The GPS system uses the existing longitude and latitude lines of the earth. And, those lines were established as recently as 1884 when delegates from 25 nations, all using their own map, convened the International Meridian Conference and formally adopted a system that used the Greenwich, England meridian as the Universal Prime Meridian. It established or instantiated the 0-points for longitude, and, of course, the equator established 0-points for latitude. The rest is just an extension based on elliptic geometries. These lines are just a convention. Yet, recognized now for well over 100 years, these lines have become the standard that is used by every scientific person in the world.
In this instance, to instantiate was the act of imparting quantitative meaning to physical space.
Hypostatizations. To hypostatize is to impart a universal perfection to an imperfect quantum and physical world. After all, numbers are just numbers.
So, if 60/60 becomes the #1 place in the world to learn and experience the meaning of the number 60, it will only be because people have hypostatized that meaning into that physical space. I predict that 60/60 will eventually become a city where everything within it explains and personifies 60.
On turning 60 years old. Probably of any age group, the 60-year old people have the most discretionary cash and could take a trip along the 60th latitudinal parallel and make a special stop at the 60/60. American Airlines and the One World Alliance will be delighted to set it in motion. Beside Anchorage, Alaska, there are many other remote places but most substantially there is Saint Petersburg and Norway (in the summertime).
Numbers are more than numbers when the qualitative and quantitative share meaning.
OK, now, where did you hear it first?
If you act on these ideas, please drop us a note. Yes, ideas are a dime a dozen, just .001% of the task. We all know that. Yet, it seems that sometimes we are looking right at an idea but nobody is talking about it.
The television show. The focus is on people with too many ideas so they just give them away. However, it is a good thing to acknowledge the source of an idea when your thoughts bubble up from somebody’s original idea. It is like a citation or attribution in literature or science. More…
We would like to think that this page, like so many pages within this site, is thought provoking. We hope it stimulates actions. We would hope entire villages would come together and create new towns and cities that are known just by their simple coordinates. There is elegance to a town known as 6060, or 5050, 4040, 3030, 2020, and 1010 and everything in between.
The purpose of pushing such an idea out into the world is to help others unleash their own deep-seated creativity and actively work on ways to nurture it and enrich it. Certainly our world needs all the richness that we can instantiate and then hypostatize within it.
What is your genius? What is your expertise? At that intersection are the foundations for your success and the success of for your business. More…
P.S. This page was made public on March 21, 2009. To date, there are no known cities or proposed cities defined by their GPS coordinates. We had hoped to see the first such destinations begin to take shape in 2009. Nothing happened. Then nothing happened in 2010, so in 2011 we started an initiative to become a global movement to designate such places as World Heritage sites to involve the best architects and the best city planners of the world! Why not? Why not create a parkways to link sites and a highway to parallel it within 20 years?
This concept has been on the author’s mind for many years.
The author, Bruce Camber welcomes your comments and questions.
Photographer, Maksim Antipin
What does it look like near the 60.00.00 N 60.00.00 E ?
The few pages of images here open to dozens more.
The Degree Confluence Project (pop up) has images of a forest area by Dmitry Volgin, John Kulaev and Vasiliy Nikiforov.
Question: How large an area would it be? At the 60° latitude-longitude, it seems that entire degree of latitude-longitude is an area approximately equal to 70 square miles (181 square km). Of course, then one minute would be a little over one square mile (1.85 km). Within one second of latitude and longitude, a rough, quick-and-dirty guess is about 100 feet by 100 feet (30± meters).
An example to study to get started:
Grigor’yevka 60.00.00N 60.10.00E (pop-up locator) is
just 3.5 miles from the center point of 60/60.
Karpinsk, Latitude: 59.75.75 Longitude: 60.01.11
Карпинск (Russian), is a town in Sverdlovsk Oblast. Also, the Turya River runs through this town (population over 30,000). It is north of the city of Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Oblast (Region) of Sverdlovsk.
Selected images from within the 60/60 coordinates.
• Falling Rain – web site to find the coordinates (pop-up)
Neighboring towns:
Volchnask : Latitude 59.93.47 Longitude 60.07.17
Severoural’sk: Latitude 60.15.47 Longitude 59.95.64
Krasnotur’insk: Lat. 59° 45′ 44.19″ N Long. 60° 11′ 35.25″ E
Yekaterinburg: Latitude 56.85.00N Longitude 60.60.00E
Now, how about 50/50? It is sitting in a quiet part of western Kazakhstan just waiting to be developed.
Of course, there are hundreds, yes even thousands, of other GPS numbers where significance could be hypostatized with meaningful information, design and activities that would be attractive to many, many people.
Check it out: 40/40, 30/30, 25/25, 20/20, 15/15, 10/10, and then, of course, there is 61/61, 59/59, 70/70, and then one’s imagination can take over…
Pi City Anyone? Latitude 3.14.15 Longitude 3.14.15 The problem with that magical number is that in all quadrants it would be a floating island out in the Atlantic Ocean. The same is true with 0/0. Yet, 30/90 could become the new New Orleans.
A GPS Book of Significant Locations?
Please somebody get busy and publish a tour book based on significant GPS coordinates. You’ll get everybody traveling to unusual places.
Tours to GPS Locations on Significant Days
Let’s wake up the airline and tourism industries. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to end up in a place 60-60 for your 60th birthday and meet people from around the world who are 60 as well. Can’t you sense some magic happening with that mix of people? …all the seminars on longevity? …on health and wellness? …on the meaning and value of life.
This 2009 page marks our first public GPS discussions.
April 2010: The most simple GPS positions
May 2010: Wanted – New Entrepreneurs
July 2010: New Orleans is very close to the 30/90
August 2010: 90 key locations
June 2011: The 30/90 Block is East New Orleans
July 2011: 30.00.00°N 90.00.00°W Interactive map
Worldviews limit perspective 