Historic Hong Kong: Visualizing a Changed City

Created with input from historian Mark Footer, this tool overlays street views of modern Hong Kong with historical photos from the colonial era through the 20th century.

1 minute read

December 11, 2015, 6:00 AM PST

By Philip Rojc @PhilipRojc


Historic Hong Kong

Here's an interesting urban visualization tool, this time featuring an Asian city. Historic Hong Kong interposes old photographs of notable locations onto how the streets look today using Google Street View. Users can hover over the historical photograph to switch between views.

According to outreach specialist Yolanda del Peso, the tool is optimized for mobile users: "If you are looking at it on mobile, or you shrink your browser down to mobile size, you can utilise a fader type functionality where you can literally swipe across to see the street now vs. 100 years ago - giving you what is almost a split screen view."

Planetizen has covered similar tools in the past, including an extensive effort to map wild Manhattan circa 1600.

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