How Old Is Your City’s Skyline? Map of US & Canada

Map credted by reddit user LivinAWestLife

I love this map. It shows what decade the 50 tallest buildings in each city (including those under construction) were completed. All the way from before the 1950’s until the 2020s.

Here’s what LivinAWestLife had to say about the map:

Back with another map! I hope it’s readable enough – the graph on each city is the distribution of a city’s tallest buildings by the decade in which it was built. If the chart is mostly red then the city’s tallest buildings are pretty old, and if it is mostly blue/purple then the city’s tallest buildings are new or under construction.

I tried to include every city that has a notable skyline. I variously used data from SkyscraperPage and Wikipedia. If your city isn’t here, feel free to share what era its skyscrapers are mostly from.

The map shows that a lot of smaller American cities have more dated skylines, especially in the Rust Belt, while Canadian ones newer. The contrast between the two sides of Lake Ontario could not be more stark. Some American ones are growing just as fast – Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, Seattle, Raleigh, Tampa, and NYC go zoooom (Every city that’s adding people should be growing like that tbh)

Also, since the 2020s aren’t over, the purple bars are “shorter” than how tall they should be in 2030.

It’s interesting seeing the different outcomes of cities that are geographically close together.

For example, Buffalo, NY is dominated by buildings from the 1950s or earlier, whereas across Lake Ontario in Toronto, ON you mostly only have budlings from the 2010s or 2020s.

Similarly for Newark and New York City or Detroit and London, ON.

Texas is interesting because despite it’s large and growing population, only Austin seems to building a significant number high-rises. Fort Worth in particular only seems to have pre-50’s buildings.

What do you notice about where you live? Please leave your comments below: