MapFilter: Help me grok the terrain of the Big Apple

December 11, 2020 9:22 AM

I'd like to experience the varying elevations and contours of New York City through my computer. Everything is fairly flat in Google Earth, even in 3D view, and color-coded topographic maps leave me cold. Ideally, I want the ability to place myself anywhere in space (virtually fly) to see the city's hills and valleys. I don't care about built environment so much, just the land contours.
posted by timnyc to Science & Nature (8 answers total)

You can change the vertical scale from 1 to 3 in the settings (somewhere...don't have a computer in front of me right now with Earth on it), which may get you close enough.
posted by notsnot at 9:28 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

One thing to check out is the Relive app. I have friends who regularly post cycling routes through the mountains with it and it gives a great sense of scale and elevation over specific, recorded routes. You can search for people who have recorded their routes through various parts of NYC.

For example, here is the NYC marathon route: https://www.relive.cc/view/v1OwxYrPX6A. I found this using the following google search:

site:relive.cc/view NYC

The downside of this approach is you are not in control of the camera.
posted by dbx at 9:50 AM on December 11, 2020

Get Google Cardboard VR (or any inexpensive ($10-30) VR unit for cell phones) and use the app to navigate it in 3D.
For still images try searching for "Angle Imaging Satellite" pictures. (They look at an angle instead of straight down so you can see the heights of buildings in front of each other. Because it's taken at essentially 'infinite' distance, there's no perspective distortion...the buildings all show their true relative heights to one another. The effect is somewhat uncanny.)
posted by sexyrobot at 9:53 AM on December 11, 2020

You might be interested (or already know) that when New York was put on a grid, some intersections, especially in Harlem if I recall correctly, required up to 100 feet of grading to bring them down to the nominal street level. If you look for old maps of New York that topography might be more apparent. The Library of Congress has a number of gorgeous maps from Currier and Ives (yes, them) that seem to show things as pretty flat on the island of Manhattan. Scroll down to "More Maps like this", or do a search by location, I bet there's one in there that shows something of the contours. From a personal standpoint, as someone who has walked from Battery Park to the mid 70s in one go, it's pretty darn flat on an absolute basis.
posted by wnissen at 9:55 AM on December 11, 2020 [8 favorites]

Best answer: In the field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), you are looking for a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) or a Digital Surface Model (DSM). Here's an online viewer for the NYC DEM. There are a bunch of other DEM available, see the NYS DEM website, the index, and the USGS 3D program website.

With a GIS, you can query the data (request point elevation) and convert it to a 3d model. QGIS is a free GIS. Here's the manual for converting DEM to 3D. Here's a download link for the NYC data. Let me know via memail if you need help, it's not entirely trivial. Good luck!
posted by Psychnic at 10:49 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yes the middle of Manhattan is relatively flat... but New York City is more than just the middle of Manhattan. For example parts of Northern Manhattan, The Bronx and Brooklyn are very hilly.
posted by Julnyes at 11:40 AM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

Not quite what you are looking for perhaps, but the Manhatta project still has some online resources: for example, this map says it doesn't load properly but is still zoomable and clickable, showing a landscape reconstruction of Manhattan before urbanization.
posted by Rumple at 11:42 AM on December 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

contours, you say? get the og contour map, usgs 1:24000 quadrangles. here's one for brooklyn. download the geopdf.

basics of reading topography.
posted by j_curiouser at 1:24 PM on December 11, 2020