The United Colours of Vancouver

You can learn a lot about Vancouver from its maps. For example this Vancouver Building Heights map can teach you where all of Vancouver's tallest buildings are concentrated. It can even tell you the height of every building in the city

Building footprints on the Vancouver Building Heights map are coloured to represent the height of the building. If you want to know the exact height of an individual building in the city then you just need to mouse-over the building footprint on the map.


Vancouver's building footprints can also be coloured by the age of the buildings. This Vancouver Building Age Map shows the age of all the buildings in the city.

The data for the building ages is from the City of Vancouver's Open Data Catalogue and the map tiles were created using ArcGIS and TileMill. The property lots of the oldest buildings are shaded yellow on the map. The youngest buildings are shaded blue.


Once you know the size of a building and its age it is also possible to estimate a building's energy usage. The Energy Explorer is a set of tools for exploring community energy use in Vancouver. The site aims to encourage a vision of a more sustainable city through the use of renewable energy resources. As part of this aim the Energy Explorer includes two interactive maps visualizing the city's current energy use and its potential for renewable energy resources.

The Home Energy Map provides a visualization of current energy use by Vancouver households. Building footprints on the map are coloured to show their estimated energy usage based on the age of the building and its size. Vancouver citizens can therefore use the map to see how much energy they use and compare it to the estimated energy usage of their neighbors.


We don't need to stop at building age, building height and estimated energy usage. We can also find out the value of Vancouver's land parcels. The Vancouver Land Prices Heat Map visualizes the price of Vancouver parcels of land based on the 2014 BC assessment data from tax reports. Land parcels on the map are coloured to reflect the price per square foot of the property.

The map shows that many of Vancouver's most expensive properties are concentrated in the Downtown, West End and Fairview neighborhoods. The map also shows that land prices tend to get cheaper the further you move east in the city. If you select a building lot on the map you can view the exact price per square foot for the property.