On A Clear Day...You Can See Flatbush Avenue

This photo comes from a Real Estate Site: YIMBY ( Yes in my Back Yard )

 The view shed map below was produced using ARCGIS  online and the analysis feature.  As said earlier, it is sooo... easy to use.  No x, y, coordinate?  No problem.  Bring up some reference layer, either a subway map, street map, building plan and click the point.   340 Flatbush Avenue Extension is the first supertall planned for Brooklyn, compared to the lower developments around it.  Current plans for this supertall to be 1,400 feet tall with 95 stories.  This building will be much taller than anything else in  Brooklyn. Will it be built?  I do not know the amount of NIMBY's here or if the project is monetarily feasible.  Using ARCGIS on line, I added the point by looking at a map.  Height is 1,400 feet and the range is 9 miles.  The observer I choose was 6 feet.  The green areas below means that if there were no other buildings in the area, the new building would be visible from the green  areas, or, at the top of 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension,  an observer may see the surface of the green  areas.  ARCGIS on-line treats shape files differently than ARCGIS desktop.  The shape file here is kept in a feature listing MY CONTENT and must be exported to be used by ARCGIS desktop.  The domed structure at the base is the former Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn at Albee Square and Dekalb Avenue.   This spot is rich  in transit history:  The elevated lines, subways, trolleys came all together here.  I believe that at this location, in the 1930's the first models of PCC streetcars were on display.

This photo was taken from Al Ponte's Time Machine.  This is a 1948 shot of a older Brooklyn Streetcar (Peter Witt?) in traditional BMT colors at Albee Square in Brooklyn.  This is at or near the proposed supertall at 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension.  This streetcar seems to be a bi-directional one because it has two sets of trolley poles and doors.  In the proposed drawing above, you can see the bank building shown here in the background at the base of the proposed building.

The Manhattan Municipal Building Water Shed

   Several of my last postings dealt with the ease of creating a watershed map using ARCGIS on-line vs. the difficulty of doing it several years ago in GRASS.  One blog that deals with streetlamps and New York and various forms of Transportation (Forgotten NY) had a posting on the mysterious and perhaps haunted Chamber Street subway station at Chambers  and Centre Street Manhattan, under the Municipal Building.  That station has what is called a "water condition" and the site where the Municipal Building  is located was once the site of a pond or some sort of collect pool, according to old maps.  I ran a watershed analysis in ARCGIS on-line and the results are above for a focal point of Chambers and Centre Streets.  The watershed is shown bounded by the red line..  It is interesting to note that in the bounded region, there is a park called the "Collect Pond Park" and is one source perhaps of the water.  The range was set at 1000 feet.  Larger ranges over 2000 feet creates a watershed that goes to Brooklyn, which is an impossibility because of the East River.

Smith-9th Street View Shed Again: But this time with ARCGIS On-Line

   ARCGIS ESRI has a on line service that although you have to pay for it, has  many interesting features.  One of those that I stumbled across is their analysis section is that of viewshed analysis.  Will the object in question be visible, let us say a power windmill 9 miles away?  How tall shall we make a windmill so less people will object?  How about the Smith-9th Street station, the highest in the NYC subway system?  I used GRASS to calculate this before, but it is cumbersome: You need an X and Y coordinate and getting the resultant map in the proper format is hard.  In ARCGIS on line, you can go to the analytic section and locate Viewshed.  Pan the base map that you choose to the location that you want.  You can use a pointer to add the point of interest.  Add the height of the object, this time the Smith-9th street subway station.  You can get the location by bringing in a NYC subway stop shape file that you need to zip.  The second height is that of the observer.  In the first map above,  I used the default value of either 0 or 6 feet, the size of a person.  You can add a range.  In the second map, I ran the analysis but I added that a ground viewer would be on a 40 foot building.    The results of the first and second analysis is shown on the joint map above.  Being on a higher location will result in a larger range.  In Manhatan, very high buildings will block your view and you will not be able to see the Smith-9th Street station.  The reverse of this analysis is also true:
"If I am at the Smith-9th Street Station, what can I see?"  If the city consisted of 40 foot buildings, the map above is what you can see.  Check out ARCGIS on line if you have an account or if you have a free one.
Tramway Null