NYC Shadow Map: How Much Shade Is Cast on Your Street by City Buildings?

NEW YORK, NY — Just in time for the shortest and darkest day of the year, the New York Times has gone all out on a gorgeous, time-intensive mapping project that helps New Yorkers visualize, season by season, the amount of shade being cast on city streets by the tall, dense forest of buildings rising around us.

The aerial maps were created using satellite images taken throughout the day, "from one and a half hours after sunrise to one and a half hours before sunset," on three dates: Dec. 21 (winter solstice), June 21 (summer solstice) and Sept. 22 (fall equinox).

On a macro scale, the maps are just plain pretty to behold — our streets and structures softened, brought to life by their true-to-life gradients of light.

Pictured: A snapshot of the New York Times shadow map. Explore the full map here.

On a micro scale, though, there's real utility here. Zoom in on the block where you live, or the streets you normally roam, and you can see which areas of your life are perpetually cast in darkness or light. (Perhaps giving some sense to the depression that sets in every time you pass between, say, William and Pearl streets on Cedar in the Financial District — "one of the shadiest strips in the city," according to the Times.)

Other points of notable shadiness reportedly include "dozens of streets north of 42nd Street in Midtown"; Bed-Stuy's brownstone rows in winter; "home plate at both Citi Field and Yankee Stadium" (also in winter); the "slender supertalls" that continue to rise just south of Central Park, casting tall but skinny shadows "that reach far into a third of the park"; and, even more so than the supertalls, the "shorter but more regal buildings on Central Park South, like the Plaza, Ritz-Carlton, Central Park and the Hampshire House" — which, despite topping out between 200 and 500 feet, "can cast shadows onto Central Park that are several blocks long and that last the entire day."

Explore the map further to find the "shadow profile" for all your stomping grounds. Could explain a few things about the feels you feel as you make your way through the city.

Lead photo by marnalbano/Flickr. Shadow map via the New York Times