Visualizing Urban Expansion

"A set of three new map animations from my colleagues at NYU’s Stern Urbanization Project tracks the history behind these decades of geographic expansion. The visualizations show successive booms in the physical footprints of Paris since 1800, São Paulo since 1881, and L.A. since 1877. The team will release their full research, covering the history, future, and implications of urban expansion in 30 cities, at the World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia, later this week.

Built from data in Shlomo Angel’s Atlas of Urban Expansion, these show the quick expansion of city centers and suburbs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, along with the much more astoundingly rapid expansion of suburban and exurban areas in the second half of the twentieth century. During this time period, many cities saw their built area increase by a factor of more than 10."