The View From Your Window Is Worth Cash to This Company

A city window overlooking the street has always been a score in its own right, what with so many apartments stuck opening onto back alleys and dumpsters and fire escapes. And now, a company wants to straight up monetize the view. New York startup Placemeter is paying city residents up to $50 a month for street views captured via old smartphones. The idea is to quantify sidewalk life in the service of making the city a more efficient place.

"Measuring data about how the city moves in real time, being able to make predictions on that, is definitely a good way to help cities work better," says founder Alex Winter. "That's the vision of Placemeter—to build a data platform where anyone at any time can know how busy the city is, and use that."