NYC Building Materials is a dynamic mapping platform that leverages public data, machine learning, and advanced data visualization to map the building materials of New York City. By using these materials as a lens, it explores what exists, what is being lost, and what should be built in the city's future.
By overlaying five distinct colors, we can uncover hidden urban patterns throughout NYC. Each hue and stroke on the map reflects a unique historical context and design logic that shaped the city’s built environment. Here are a few patterns to look out for!
▘Colors
Cash Green
Central business districts with lots of glass facades. Ex. Midtown, FiDi
Kaleidoscope
Dense mixed residential areas. Usually gentrified neighborhoods. Ex. Sunset Park
Purple-ish
Less-gentrified neighborhoods with lower skylines. Ex. Corona
Tomato
Areas with industrial roots. Lots of brick & steel buildings. Ex. Maspeth, Red Hook
Dotty
Urban outskirts populated by single-family housings. Ex. Whitestone
▘Cuts
Valley
Arterials or railways wide enough to carve a path on the map. Ex. Jamaica Ave
Ridge
Rapid development along major roads with lots of tall buildings. Ex. Queens Blvd
Stripes
Historic road networks among quieter residential areas. Ex. Liberty Ave
Thread
Roads or railways in urban outskirts. Ex. Queens Village
▘Clusters
Mono-Cluster
NYCHA buildings and housing projects that occupy large areas. Ex. Starrett City
Poly-Cluster
Neighborhoods with newer buildings and older centers. Ex. Far Rockaway
Anti-Cluster
Areas with significantly lower buildings than their neighbors. Ex. Fieldston, Sea Gate
Built on Openness
This project relies solely on open-source data for machine learning training and data visualization. No monetized data or subscription services were used in its development. For details on the machine learning data, refer to the full story in the "ABOUT" tab.
Dot sizes represent the concentration of each material type. They don’t compare weights between different materials, but show how much of a material is used relative to other parts of NYC in its own category.
Dot sizes represent the concentration of each material’s embodied carbon. Unlike the material view, these dots can be compared across different material types—they all share the same color and scale, allowing direct comparison of carbon impact regardless of material category.
Over 75% of the city's buildings are two stories or less, and more than 50% were built before 1940.
Over 50% of the materials come from two or fewer story buildings, nearly 70% of which are from buildings built before 1940.
The embodied carbon data comes from the Carbon Leadership Forum’s (CLF) Material Baselines dataset. Per-person values were calculated by dividing total carbon by resident and worker counts—residents from census tract data and workers from energy and water disclosure submissions. However, worker data is limited for factories and does not account for non-stationary workers like drivers.