
9,866,539 buildings in the Netherlands, shaded according to year of construction - pjvds
http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer47b76&utm_medium=twitter#50.8485,5.7066,15
======
primigenus
Check out all the colours in Rotterdam:
[http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/#51.9159,4.4974,14](http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/#51.9159,4.4974,14)

Kind of gives you an idea of how large parts of it were destroyed during the
second World War and then has had multiple levels of reconstruction and
changes taking place throughout the decades since.

------
jbverschoor
It suffers from a Y2K bug: My house in Amsterdam (and a lot of others) are
noted as constructed in: 1005 instead of 1905

~~~
DouweM
And my colleague's house is from 1605 rather than 1005. It's not quite Y2K,
but it's interesting that the last two digits seem to have survived whatever
error occured.

~~~
VaucGiaps
[http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-
workcentres_...](http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-
workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning)? ?

------
mtts
Starting position is Maastricht? You sneaky bastard ;-)

(For non-Dutch people: Maastricht is one of the oldest continuously urban
centers in the Netherlands, which makes it nice to show off this kind of
technology but it's also very far away from the rest of the country. Nice city
though, definitely worth a visit).

~~~
niekmaas
Very far for Dutch standards of course. Maastricht is only 2-2.5 hours away
from cities like Utrecht, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. For other countries this
would be considered close neighbors.

------
ilamont
Nederlanders: When was the BAG established, and how was the dataset created?
That must have been an incredible collection/standardization/digitization
project.

~~~
tinco
The BAG itself is something a government organisation called the 'Kadaster'
maintains. I would be surprised if the US doesn't have a similar organisation.

Basically whenever a house is sold, (I never actually bought a house so
someone more knowledgeable should correct me) information about the purchase
and the state of the house is submitted to the Kadaster. As far as I know the
kadaster is something that has its roots in the middle ages, but I could be
mistaken.

As for the digitization, that probably happened somewhere in the late 60's
early 70's out of necessity along with many other governmental databases (like
taxes).

What is news is that one apparently can query the entire kadaster database,
this is something done by
[http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/](http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/), a European
project so maybe we'll get info like this from other countries as well.

~~~
Angostura
It sounds as if the UK equivalent would be the Land Registry
[http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/media/all-releases/press-
rele...](http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/media/all-releases/press-
releases/2013/land-registry-goes-big-on-open-data)

~~~
bazzargh
It's not the whole UK - just England & Wales. ROS do the same job in Scotland
([http://www.ros.gov.uk/);](http://www.ros.gov.uk/\);) not sure about NI.

The land registry is woefully incomplete. Things only get into the registry
when there's a change of ownership, and some land has been in the same family
since the Domesday book. This was a problem when I used to work on software
processing planning applications as some councils thought they could use the
land registry to validate addresses.

The planning applications had great data in them if it could be opened up (eg
they are generally submitted with a property boundary map!) but generally the
councils wanted to either monetize this data or not release it at all; so you
just get pdfs&metadata out, even when the user submitted in a vector format.

~~~
Angostura
Thank you, fascinating.

------
akgerber
Many Americans claim that American cities are difficult to walk or bicycle in
because they are all so much newer than European cities. But maps like these
demonstrate that a huge proportion of European cities were built in the
automobile era, including a great deal post-WWII; the difference in
walkabality, mass transit, and bikeability of European cities is not the age
of the city center but simply the decisions of what modes of transportation to
prioritize in new developments.

------
Jongseong
I just have to say "Dank u" for choosing a colour scheme that is friendly to
those with Colour Vision Deficiency of the red/green variety. A huge number of
maps which use gradations of colour to represent data are useless to up to 1
in 10 men because they adopt the rainbow colour scheme with red and green
representing opposite ends of the spectrum.

~~~
Sprint
Cartographers have it easy thanks to the wonderful sets on
[http://colorbrewer2.org/js/](http://colorbrewer2.org/js/) . The scheme looks
inspired by them.

I wonder why this map was done with a divergent scheme though. The data has no
midpoint, it makes no sense to diverge like that. And when you zoom out it,
due to the diverging lightness ramp it highlights the lightest colors which
are 1945 to 1975.

It looks gorgeous but the color choice is not perfect for exploring the data.

~~~
Jongseong
You're right to point that out. I agree that a divergent scheme is not the
best fit for the data. A simple gradient would have worked best, though it
would have been less colourful.

~~~
Sprint
I would use differently colored sequential schemes per building type, that
might look good. Time to grab the data and play around. :)

------
icoder
Awesome! You can read something from every zoom level. I couldn't find my
house though, it seemed to be swallowed by my neighbours, but that may be the
result of the max zoomlevel. Any reason that one can not zoom in further?

~~~
joelhaasnoot
These systems generally use prerendered PNG tiles at several zoom levels -
it's not vector based.

When you click on a house, the click is converted to lat/lon and compared with
the database to show which house you clicked.

------
ghc
This is really cool, but why don't the color gradations go back further? Is it
a matter of how records were kept? I would have loved to see how many
buildings survive from each century from, say, 700AD on. Pre-1850 as a
category seems like such a waste for a map of the old world.

~~~
DouweM
Quoting Wikipedia
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam):

> Originating as a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdam
> became one of the most important ports in the world during the Dutch Golden
> Age, a result of its innovative developments in trade.

So I doubt there are a lot of buildings from 700AD left. But I agree, they
could've gone back to ~1500AD.

~~~
mverwijs
Funny thing is: the non-profit that created this map is De Waag Society,
located in De Waag in Amsterdam - a building dating from the 1400s.

------
jaap_w
Wow. Even the garage of my parent's house is on it, which isn't finished yet!

~~~
Cthulhu_
Sounds logical; you have to request a building permit for it, along with the
plans for the garage, which is sent to Kadaster for kicks.

------
skore
Wow, Brielle is _bananas_.

[http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/#51.899,4.1585,15](http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/#51.899,4.1585,15)

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=brielle+netherlands&hl=en&ll=...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=brielle+netherlands&hl=en&ll=51.899032,4.162788&spn=0.02619,0.066047&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=67.208178,135.263672&hnear=Brielle,+Zuid-
Holland,+The+Netherlands&t=h&z=15)

~~~
ilamont
I was wondering about those giant, closely spaced industrial-looking buildings
on the outskirts of town. Apparently greenhouses:
[http://goo.gl/maps/qIQxk](http://goo.gl/maps/qIQxk)

~~~
Someone
Yes, those are greenhouses. Move north-east for a bit, and you hit the
Westland
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_(region),_Netherlands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_\(region\),_Netherlands)),
an area of greenhouses with the occasional road or house in-between.

At night, from the ground: [http://straatkaart.nl/2286JK-Albert-
Schweitzerlaan/media_fot...](http://straatkaart.nl/2286JK-Albert-
Schweitzerlaan/media_fotos/lichtvervuiling-westland-vanaf-sterrenwacht-iSP/)

At night, from space:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/astro_andre/6769497883/in/set-7...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/astro_andre/6769497883/in/set-72157628937567511/)
(the large bright spot are greenhouses with artificial lighting to speed up
plant growth)

------
oscilloscope
This is initially stunning yet rich, data-dense, detailed and simple. I would
refer to this when travelling in the Netherlands and especially for looking at
apartments and real estate.

~~~
tripzilch
Maybe for tourist travel it's a cool way to spot old historic buildings you'd
otherwise not find, but for real estate? I would expect that whatever real
estate catalogue you browse will also list the build year. As another
commenter said, that data is in public databases (called the "kadaster"), I
would assume every real estate agent is aware and uses the kadaster-data :)

Which doesn't detract from the fact that this is a beautiful visualisation.
And also I doubt the general public can query those data in the bulk amounts
required for this map :)

~~~
jmulder
I'm one of the designers at funda (largest Dutch real estate listing site) --
though on the Personalisation team and not the Search or Presentation teams.

This is definitely a beautiful and useful visualisation and something we've
been thinking about for a while too. We've found that in an average real
estate search people very much appreciate information about the neighbourhoods
they come across when finding relevant properties. The thing I love about this
is -- like some others pointed out already about Rotterdam -- is that it tells
a genuine story about a neighbourhoods history in a way a real estate agent
wouldn't be able too.

In the US there's Trulia Hindsight built by Stamen Design which includes
animation: [http://hindsight.trulia.com](http://hindsight.trulia.com)

~~~
tripzilch
Interesting, I stand corrected, yeah I could see it work in that context.

------
DouweM
This is incredibly cool; looks like my house and office were built in 1978 and
1850 respectively!

------
Jagat
Awesome. Here's a building that was built in 1300
[https://www.google.com/maps/preview?authuser=0#!q=Keizer+Kar...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview?authuser=0#!q=Keizer+Karelplein+6+6211TC+Maastricht&data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d5.686389!3d50.849285!2m2!1f130.49!2f86.68!4f75!2m5!1e1!2m3!1s0qyuSiw-
Tqe-i4x8LdnziQ!2e0!7e5!4m10!1m9!4m8!1m3!1d2148!2d5.691413!3d50.848159!3m2!1i1366!2i655!4f13.1&fid=5)

------
davedx
Our house was built in 1976. It took a while to find it though, could use some
overlay options or a search bar. Really interesting and cool though! :)

------
digitalengineer
You can see the oldest inner cities and each 'ring' of newer buildings around
it. Example: Amsterdam:
[http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/?utm_source=buffer&utm...](http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer47b76&utm_medium=twitter#52.3582,4.9145,12)
Very cool.

~~~
Jagat
I see a lot of buildings in the old inner city were built in the year 1005 CE.
Is there any historical significance to that year?
[http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/?utm_source=buffer&utm...](http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer47b76&utm_medium=twitter#52.3732,4.9003,16)

~~~
DouweM
Yeah, none of those are probably accurate. My colleague owns a house in the
area you linked to that was built in or around 1605, but it's listed as 1005
as well.

Fortunately, the site links to this page where you can report incorrect data:
[http://www.kadaster.nl/web/Themas/themaartikel/BAGartikel/BA...](http://www.kadaster.nl/web/Themas/themaartikel/BAGartikel/BAG-
terugmelden.htm)

------
nodata
9M reads like a brand, I think the title should read "9 M".

~~~
rjwebb
A successor to 3M? I suppose there's always the old "MM" notation, or it could
be written "9m".

~~~
galaktor
"9 million" would work, too.

~~~
pjvds
I like the detailed number it now has

------
Caged
If anyone is interested, I did this for Portland, Oregon back in June.

[http://labratrevenge.com/pdx](http://labratrevenge.com/pdx)

[http://dealloc.me/2013/06/30/the-making-of-
pdx.html](http://dealloc.me/2013/06/30/the-making-of-pdx.html)

------
dubcanada
Really cool, but every single move I made on my ipad added a new history. And
trying to go back after spending 10 minutes playing around was the most
annoying thing I've ever experienced. So annoying I had to close my browser
and reopen HN.

------
vonbladet
Pretty much all my suburb of Groningen was built in the late 70s and early
80s. It is cool that many people live in cooler districts, but the Netherlands
has a long history of <i>nieuwbouw</i>.

------
bilalq
This is really cool. I'd love to see something like this done for other parts
of the world as well. I just wish it wouldn't push to history every time you
drag around.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
The reason this exists is that the Dutch Government is forcing municipalities
to put every address/building into a central database, the "Basisregistratie
Adressen en Gebouwen"(BAG, "Registration of addresses and building")

It has uncovered some interesting issues with addresses - some student housing
for instance has complicated numbering schemes that don't fit in the database
(i.e 10 B 5). Municipalities that don't cooperate are cut national
contributions.

------
RKoutnik
My favorite part is here:
[http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/#51.9004,4.5486,16](http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/#51.9004,4.5486,16)

There's a building older than my country sitting right next to one built while
I was in college. The casual blend of old and new is one of the things I love
about European culture _.

_ I'm sure it's found in many other places on our humble planet, but I've only
been to Europe (so far!).

------
namenotrequired
I love finding things on HN that my mom can also appreciate. :)

------
samstave
Wow.

>Building

>Constructed: 1300

>Address: Keizer Karelplein 6 6211TC Maastricht

>Area: 3,306 m²

>Function: Public

Here is the street view:

[http://goo.gl/maps/On8Dw](http://goo.gl/maps/On8Dw)

------
gmapsmania
Google Maps Mania posted about a few similar maps last week.

As well as the Netherlands map there is the Portland map, a map of Ljubljana,
Slovenia (similar to the Portland map) and the Brooklyn map.

[http://www.mapsmaniac.com/2013/08/view-age-of-10-million-
glo...](http://www.mapsmaniac.com/2013/08/view-age-of-10-million-global-
buildings.html)

------
isaacb
What a terrible use of the browser history. I was trying to get back to HN and
had to trace through every movement I took on the map.

------
frozenport
The website is really messing up my back button. For example I can't press the
back button and return to this page.

------
contingencies
An excellent example of the techno-fetishism and efficiency/dataset worship
surrounding a modern nanny state. To quote some prominent graffiti I walked
past this morning in central Rotterdam, one mere hour ago: "Is this freedom?"
Clearly, no. Holland's pretty totalitarian these days.

------
smoorman1024
You could easily make a similar looking map with the NYC Pluto data.
[http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/applbyte.shtml](http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/applbyte.shtml)

------
kylelibra
I would really like to see this for a city like NYC or SF.

~~~
bdon
Here is one for Brooklyn:

[http://bklynr.com/block-by-block-brooklyns-past-and-
present/](http://bklynr.com/block-by-block-brooklyns-past-and-present/)

I published some instructions on how to generate such a map using the recently
released PLUTO data:

[http://bdon.org/2013/06/29/working-with-pluto-and-
pad/](http://bdon.org/2013/06/29/working-with-pluto-and-pad/)

To the best of my knowledge, San Francisco doesn't have a public building age
dataset. There is a building footprint dataset on
[https://data.sfgov.org/](https://data.sfgov.org/), but the quality of the
shapes isn't very good.

------
PaulHoule
sugoi!

------
rsgong
It's beautiful.

