Trulia Hindsight

Taking a look at Bolinas, CA in Hindsight you’d be forgiven for thinking there was something wrong with our data. There’s a steady growth up until 1971 and then suddenly: nothing.

Thankfully, this article Controlling Growth by Controlling Water from the New York Times of October 2005 explains:

The same urge to remain pristine has led to one of the most extreme anti-growth policies in the nation. For more than 30 years, Bolinas has refused to authorize a single new water meter, needed for hooking up to the town water supply. There are now 580 meters - the same as in November 1971, when the moratorium began.

I wonder if Bolinas is unique, or if there are other communities that have limited growth in similarly inventive ways?

Even though we look at these kinds of maps and data visualizations every day, Hindsight is prompting us to look closer. On purely aesthetic grounds, this animation of properties northeast of Reno is one of our favorites. A little further north though, you can see that the assessor database Trulia has is a little bit behind Microsoft’s aerial imagery for the same area.

But then if you zoom out again, you can see the satellite imagery at that level is older than the data we’re drawing. This is one of the side-effects of this kind of visualization: it’s always a work in progress where the edges and seams between the different datasets are often the most interesting parts.

CHS: Capitol Hill Seattle (“Tales from the fancy pants part of Seattle’s Capitol Hill”) has a great theory about growth in Seattle around the turn of the last century:

“You can see that most homes in our neighborhood came into existence prior to 1930 with a big spike in 1906 — that’s the same year as the legendary San Francisco earthquake, of course, so it seems like Seattle may have benefited from the destruction to the south. It’s also interesting to note where most of the area development has occurred post-1950 — you only find the more-recent blue and purple dots down the hill off Madison for the most part with a few scattered here and there between this part of the hill and Broadway.”

Correlation or causation? Does anyone know more about the relationship between the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and growth in construction rates in Seattle around the same time?

In our introductory post on the Trulia Blog, we highlighted Aspen, Colorado:

Just 700 people called Aspen, Colorado home in 1935, when international outdoorsmen came to the Roaring Fork Valley in search of the ideal location for a ski resort. In 1947, Aspen Mountain opened with the world’s longest ski lift. In 1950, Aspen became the first ski resort in America to host an international competition, precursor of today’s World Cup Races. With the opening of three more mountains—Buttermilk (1958), Aspen Highlands (1958), and Snowmass (1968), housing developments blossomed in Aspen and the surrounding valleys as the modest silver mining town transformed into a premiere international resort.

See the website of the Aspen Historical Society for more details.

Gloucester is a small fishing town on the bay of Cape Ann. It is America’s oldest Seaport, dating as far back as 1606. Gloucester is located 30 miles northeast of Boston. It was first a shipbuilding center then later became an important fishing port due to its proximity to the Georges Banks and other fishing banks off the northeast coast. Gloucester’s beauty has also attracted many artists and writers since the early 19th century. Today Gloucester has many attractions and activities from musuems, antique shops and galleries. You can sail on a schooner or go whale watching. The small town has a large concentration of colonial (pre-revolutionary) and federal (1780-1830) architecture.

Detroit saw rapid growth in the first half of the twentieth century as the automotive capital of the world. Its rapid decline began in the 1960s. The city has lost almost half of its population since the 1950s. Detroit has become a symbol of urban decay. Abandoned buildings and overgrown vegatation on structures are pictures of the present state of Detroit. See The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit and this photo album on Flickr.