Thursday, October 27, 2016

The 3D Building Age Map


Building age maps have been very popular over the last couple of years (you can view a long list of city building age maps here). I predict that the next trend in building age maps will be to show building ages in 3d.

The first example of a 3d building age map that I've seen is this map of Vallvidrera in Catalonia. Edificacions dels Barris de Muntanya colors the extruded 3d buildings of Vallvidrera on the map based on the age of construction of each building. A building age map seems to me to be a very appropriate place for using Mapbox GL's new extrude property to visualize buildings in 3d. The result is that individual buildings are much more identifiable on the map from their extruded 3d shape than they would appear by simply showing individual building footprints.

Other good examples of Mapbox GL's new 3d capabilities can be seen on the Vancouver Zoning Map map and the Toronto Zoning Map. The Population Density Inspector also allows you to explore the number of people living in each census block in America in 3d, thanks to the Mapbox GL extrude property.

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