The footprints of every building in NYC

(beautifulpublicdata.com)

67 points | by jonathanmkeegan 4 days ago

3 comments

  • adrianparsons 4 days ago
    Great writeup! I work with NYC open data but did not know about this dataset!

    > Garages make up one-fifth of NYC buildings

    I'm quite surprised by this.

    • HFguy 12 hours ago
      Yes, something seems off. Wonder if "Parking" got lumped into "Garage"?

      Type of Building. List of values: 1000 = Parking 1001 = Gas Station Canopy 1002 = Storage Tank 1003 = Placeholder (triangle for permitted bldg) 1004 = Auxiliary Structure (non-addressable, not garage) 1005 = Temporary Structure (e.g. construction trailer) 1006 = Cantilevered Building 2100 = Building 2110 = Skybridge 5100 = Building Under Construction 5110 = Garage

    • pavel_lishin 13 hours ago
      I wonder if this is in the parts of the outer boroughs where detached houses are the norm?
  • bflesch 9 hours ago
    This is amazing. Unfortunately the 1960s, 70s and 80s seem to have been censored in the historic aerial maps. It's a very important period in NYC construction history where buildings with interesting shapes kept popping up.

    The gap between 1951 and 1996 can be seen in: https://github.com/CityOfNewYork/nyc-geo-metadata/blob/main/...

    • ssl-3 18 minutes ago
      Censored is a very strong word.

      Are you sure they aren't just lost/never-digitized/unlicensable/Occam's-razor/something-else?

      Because, I mean: Historic Aerials[1] seems to cover that period pretty well, despite their resolutely awful user interface and extraordinary reluctance towards allowing useful links.

      [1]: https://www.historicaerials.com/

  • xnx 4 days ago
    Direct link to the data: https://github.com/CityOfNewYork/nyc-geo-metadata/blob/main/...

    Article does some nutzo thing where it adds ?ref=beautifulpublicdata.com to outgoing links.

    • dang 14 hours ago
      Thanks, we'll put that link in the toptext as well.