Satellites

I’ve been looking at landsat data for Everything is Spatial, and it’s fascinating. I wish it had more zoomed-in data so I can look at building and cities more closely, but it’s interesting to look at larger bodies and seeing how things change. It’s nice to be able to access direct satellite data with exact times– one thing that frustrates me about Google is its copyright data that notes everything as Copyright 2017 Google. Who knows when this data is from, consequentially?

Here’s some map data from BC. Our slogan is Beautiful British Columbia, and it’s lovely covered in snow.

I tracked the development of Rio de Janeiro since 2013– I thought it’d be interesting to see how it has changed for the Olympics. A lot of development happened, as you might imagine!

Or, in gif form:

The most striking change is likely the construction of the Arco Metropolitano highway, which was done through 2014, and its later integration into the landscape. You can also see how buildings start to develop the places at the edges, though the city itself isn’t all that changed.

(All these photos weren’t taken at the same time of year– I was prioritizing clearness of cloud cover over preserving the same timeframe.)

For my final, I was originally thinking of doing a political idea (I considered things like tracking and mapping the prices of menstrual products around the world, similar to the Big Mac Index), but occasionally you need a break from activist topics. Consequentially, I considered sillier things: stuff like mapping copycat buildings and landmarks (China famously copies landmarks from around the world) and comparing them to the original.

But the topic I think I’ve settled on is simpler, and inspired by the place where I’m from. Vancouver is the third most common filming location in North America for many films and TV shows, but hardly ever stars as itself. There’s a great video about this topic by Tony Zhou. It stars as Seattle, New York, and countless other metropolises. This has got me thinking about all the towns that have pretended to be New York in film besides my city. Toronto is a very common New York stand-in, for instance, starring as the city for American Psycho. So for my final, I think I’ll map all the places that’ve been New York, and let the user explore the movies with false New Yorks.

Neue New Yorks. Or something like that.