Albany, NY

Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York’s Capital District. Roughly 135 miles (217 km) north of the City of New York, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 10 miles (16 km) south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. The population of the city was 97,856 at the time of the 2010 census.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany,_New_York

1973 Crossgates Mall

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1973 Crossgates Mall

By 1973 the area around the future Crossgates Mall was much more built up but still a fair amount of open space remained and the area of the mall was still fairly heavily forested.

Kings Road Dunes

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Kings Road Dunes

I have been interested in the height of various dunes and had the LiDAR data loaded up, so I made hillshade - contour map of the dunes off Kings Road.

Year Building – Constructed in Albany

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Year Building - Constructed in Albany

I used the NYSGIS tax point database with building years joined against the Albany County Tax Maps to make this pretty map that shows the year of building construction in the City of Albany, showing the steady march westward of sprawl in Albany neighborhoods.

Crossgates 1985

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Crossgates 1985

Stage 1 of the Crossgates Mall was done and open in 1985. Within 10 years, they would propose a much larger mall. The hog farm on Rapp Road art this point had been abandoned, it was starting to revert back to woods.