Mapping 25 Years of Urban Expansion

The Vivid Maps website shares the mapping work of Reddit user mappermatt, who recently created a visualization of sprawl using data from the 2016 Atlas of Urban Expansion, created by New York University and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

The map traces the "urban extents" of 66 cities over a period of 25 years. The cities are shown at the same scale to allow for easy comparison, but also going beyond administrative boundaries. Instead, the maps represent the "contiguous built-up urbanized area of each city’s respective metropolitan region," according to the article.

The Vivid Maps article also provides insight into what the maps make apparent, such as the kinds of growth in some cities, the relative lack of growth in others, and what the map reveals about the changing density of these cities. The map's revelations about density, according to the article, reveal some of its most interesting takeaways.