THE CITY, LAYER BY LAYER
A city’s worth
of open questions.
A growing guide to the data behind Philadelphia: places, streets, history, water, buildings, and everyday life.
Start with what’s useful on the ground.
Explore public art, bike facilities, historic properties and streets, stormwater systems, public amenities, traffic-calming devices, 2024 building energy reports, and SEPTA stops and station entrances. Schuylkill to the Delaware · Vine to Washington.
Public access and open reuse are different. The full index includes archived records, applications, restricted sources, and datasets outside this district. Only the implemented layers have been tested end to end here. Source metadata dates are not necessarily observation dates.
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How to read this atlas
Next useful experiments: trace the river trail at its real deck elevation, connect service alerts to routes and stops, then add surface inlets and historical waterways. Building-linked permits, assessments, zoning scans and document links are available by selecting a building on the map. Large lidar reconstructions and photograph textures take more processing and rights work.
Download the complete source index (JSON) ↓Download the research notes ↓