Satellite Imagery of a Decade's Transformation

Trends in land use and development are made obvious with satellite imagery tracking changes during the 2010s.

1 minute read

January 1, 2020, 5:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Copernicus Sentinel Data

New Orleans, as seen in 2019 with help from Copernicus Sentinel Data. | lavizzara / Shutterstock

Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui of The New York Times, worked with Tim Wallace and Krishna Karra from Descartes Labs, a geospatial analytics company to track trends in development over the past decade.

"With [satellite imagery's] growing power and precision, we can see both intimate details — a single home, bulldozed; a tennis court, reinvented — and big patterns that recur across the country," write Badger and Bui.

The trends they spot from above are illustrated in the source article, but they read as follows:

  • The Exurbs Boom Again
  • The Urban Core, Redeveloped
  • Diversity Becomes the Norm
  • Big Tech's Imprint
  • Big Tech's Big Boxes
  • Rust Belt Homes, Demolished
  • Transit Transformations
  • After Disaster, Renewal

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