
There are only 3 things in the world cooler than modern architecture: Legos, Steak Frites and Google Earth. We try and work Legos in wherever we can and this isn’t a food blog so that leaves us with Google Earth for today’s entry. We’ve rounded up a series of images on Google Earth displaying patterns of human habitation from around the globe – or Dwelling-Scapes if you’ll allow us to fabricate an architecty term. “But are the images all at the same scale so that we can compare and contrast?” – you ask. You bet they are, we didn’t buy Photoshop just to dinker around with finished photos of hot modern homes. Collecting images from Google-Earth can be overwhelming so we gave ourselves a few stipulations:
1. The images focus on practical, utilitarian forms of habitation (beat-it St. Peter’s Piazza)
2. The forms of habitation are in use today (86 Pompeii).
3. Each image is taken at an elevation of 2,500 feet above the Earth’s surface.
4. Each image is cropped to show a ½ mile x ½ mile swatch or 2,640 feet square (a 6.46 inch square crop in photo shop for the mathematically inclined).
Here’s what we came up with:
Broendby, Copenhagen

Levittown, New York, U.S.A.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Celebration, Florida, U.S.A.

Sea Ranch, California, U.S.A.

Venice, Italy

New Delhi, India

Palm Springs, California, U.S.A.

Nairobi (Kibera slum), Kenya

Antigua, Guatemala

Mexico City, Mexico

Naples, Italy

Reykjavik, Iceland

Caracas, Venezuela

Casablanca, Morocco

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Nuuk, Greenland

New York City (West Village), New York, U.S.A.

Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.

