Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
- ID
- 22214
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 08 Sep 2026, 2:52 AM
- Fetched
- 10 Sep 2026, 12:03 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://lax-skyline.parcelscope.net/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 10 Sep 2026, 1:10 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
An interactive 3D visualization renders every surviving building in Los Angeles as a box, appearing in the year it was built from 1880 to 2026. It uses LARIAC 2020 building outlines and LA County Assessor roll data for heights, with heights exaggerated when zoomed out.
Why it matters
For builders working with geospatial data or browser-based 3D rendering, this is a reference implementation for rendering tens of thousands of timed building footprints interactively using public parcel and assessor datasets. If you're building similar city-scale visualization tools—potentially for Malaysian cities using JUPEM or local council data—the rendering approach and data pipeline here are worth studying.
Discussion angle
What public parcel and building-height datasets exist for Malaysian cities, and could a similar visualization be built for Kuala Lumpur or Penang using available JUPEM or local council open data?