The best way to truly grasp the power of gentrification is to see before and after images. Artist, programmer and designer Justin Blinder took the advanced route, using New York City Department of City Planning data and Google Maps Street View to create Vacated, which showcases then and now pictures of locations from across the city to predict the future for MoreArt's Envision 2017 project.
GIFs make everything better, and Blinder employs something as simple as motion to make the changes really stand out. He explained the method behind his creation:
This project began by examining whether temporal differences in Google Street View's cache could be used device to narrate rapidly changing urban landscapes. Since Google updates major roads on Street View more frequently, buildings located along intersections often contain images from two different time periods. This temporal gap can be large enough to span the entire construction of a new building.
The first image is taken from 190 India Street in Brooklyn; the second from 11 2nd Avenue in New York, N.Y.
