Such is the beauty of open data that when I saw the excellent Portland: The Age of a City by Justin Palmer, I immediately wanted to do something similar, but for my town. The people at the government office (GURS) were kind enough to provide me with the files, and after some coding, here it is.
It’s an exploration of how the city grew through the last century. Blue is old, violet younger, res still younger, bright red the youngest.
Launch the interactive map showing structure ages in Ljubljana
Here’s the number of structures built by years. I was able to identify causes for some spikes in building activity, but not all:
- 1899: four years after the big earthquake,
- 1919: rebuilding after WW1? I’m not sure there was much destruction here,
- 1929: more building – in 1929 Ljublaana became the capital of Dravska banovina,
- 1949: rebuilding after WW2,
- 1959, 1969, 1979, 1989: might be effects of Yugoslav loans, but I suspect it’s more of an effect of administrative laziness, resulting in entering new buildings into evidence at the end of each decade,
- 2004: the last surge of prosperity in independent Slovenia.
Generally, it’s been going downhill from 1969 on. The best spots were probably taken by then.
Here’s a animation of the whole thing. It shows city evolution between years 1500 and 2013, since there’s not much happening before that.
City of Ljubljana – growth between years 1500 – 2013 from Marko O’Hara on Vimeo.
Map was made with TileMill, animation in Processing.
See also the real estate prices map.