Culture
Should Preservationists Train Their Eyes on Skylines?
Researchers have developed a GIS-based technique to keep track of skyline changes.
As cities grow and develop, their skylines can shapeshift dramatically. New towers rise, historic structures disappear, and once-iconic buildings fade back into a crowded forest of new construction. In a new paper published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, a team of researchers based in Turkey has developed a technique for tracking these changes using geographic information systems, or GIS.
With the historic skyline of Istanbul as their subject, the researchers made a 3D model of the city's skyline. With it, they were able to track changes to the skyline over the previous decade and to simulate the construction of hypothetical new buildings to understand their impact on the skyline.