New Westminster has published a bunch of datasets under its Open Data portal, one of which is building age. A couple of months ago I grabbed the dataset, converted the SHP file (details forthcoming, mostly because I did it a couple of months ago and can’t remember how I did it) and followed Mapzen‘s One Minute Map tutorial series to make a map showing every building in New Westminster coloured by when it was built!
I’ve made two colour schemes for this map. The first colours buildings along a seven-colour spectrum. Basically red is old, white is mid-century, and blue is new:
- earlier than 1900
- between 1900 and 1919
- between 1920 to 1939
- between 1940 and 1959
- between 1960 and 1979
- between 1980 and 1999
- between 2000 and older
The second one uses the pre-1941 cutoff used for the Queens Park Heritage Conservation Area. Buildings built before 1941 are afforded greater protections in Queens Park and are coloured orange in this colour scheme. I came up with this one to see if there are any areas in the city that have similar age distributions to Queens Park, and maybe spur people to ask why Queens Park is considered more special than, say, parts of Moody Park, Sapperton, and Glenbrooke North…
Toggle between the colour schemes by using the little ‘layers’ icon in the top right corner.
You can also click on any building to find out when it was constructed and who the developer and architect were! And if you move around and zoom into a specific spot you’d like to share with friends, the URL will reflect that. For example, here’s Port Royal in Queensborough.
Interesting articles. Thank you.
I have browsed around this map before and it is really interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to open it today. Can you help me with access?
Thanks.
Yeah, mapzen shut down and I haven’t had a chance to update the maps to use some other provider. 🙁