We just updated our satellite imagery for one of the biggest cities in the world – Shanghai. Let me show you some of this fresh data:
The old and new financial districts are at the center of the city. West of the river is the historic Bund; on the east is Lujiazui, with its enormous skyscrapers. Four of the towers are well over 400 m (1300 ft) high and qualify as “supertall.”
Zooming in around People’s Park in Huangpu District. The building in the middle of the park is City Hall. There’s also an opera house, a Michelin three-star restaurant, and the May Thirtieth Movement Monument in this view. Huangpu is one of the densest neighborhoods in the world.
It’s not just downtown that we’ve refreshed. The update covers 163,394 km² of Shanghai and Jiangsu – about 63,000 square miles. If the area of this update were its own nation, it would be just ahead of Australia in GDP, at about $1.5 trillion per year, and right behind Japan in population, with more than 100,000,000 people. It’s one of the fastest-developing places in the world, with construction everywhere. Shanghai Disneyland opened last year:
Or take Hongqiao Railway Station, next to Hongqiao International Airport – ten years ago it didn’t exist, but now it’s the largest train station in Asia, with a solar panel roof and high speed rail connections to the rest of China:
Zoom in and you can find a bullet train headed toward Beijing:
Some of our favorite details are outside the built-up areas. We noticed these boats gathered near aquaculture beds in Luoma Lake, by the Grand Canal in Suqian:
We identified the greater Shanghai area as an update priority with help from aggregated telemetry density statistics, which highlighted the metropolis as one of the most heavily used places on our map. We decided it would be the perfect place to kick off a new series of wide-area satellite imagery updates. You’ll see more soon!