Thursday, October 09, 2014

Mapping the History of Manhattan's Growth


Urban Layers is an incredible new mapped visualization of Manhattan's building history. The map uses building construction data from PLUTO with Mapbox GL to create a highly responsive and interactive tool to explore the history of building construction in central New York.

The time-line function provides a great tool to explore the building history of Manhattan. You can use the time-line to view how many buildings were constructed during any period of Manhattan's history. The time-line also includes a graph showing the number of buildings built in each year.

The time-line control may also be used to quickly animate through the whole of Manhattan's construction history in set lengths of time. For example, you can set the time-line for any decade (say 1970-1980). You can then drag the time-line control backwards and forwards to view Manhattan's construction by decade.

The use of Mapbox GL means that the data loads amazingly quickly on the map as you zip through the time-line. It also means that you can right click on the map to adjust the map orientation (when the map first loads West is roughly at the top of the map - which helps to fit most of Manhattan onto your monitor /screen).

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