Check out this slide show for a view of Buffalo that until recently very few people got to enjoy. As much as you might think you know your city there is nothing like seeing it from the air to get a true understanding of the place you live. Seeing from above allows you to see relationships that you could not have fathomed from terra ferma. A bird’s eye of Buffalo reveals a complex weave of buildings and textures, not to mention the ability to see into your neighbor’s back yards. The distinctive patterns of neighborhoods and eras of development are clearly revealed, as is the ongoing sad erasure of the east side.
Until recently you needed to have an airplane to get a personal tour of the city from the sky. Now you can take that tour at will from your own home, without leaving the ground. There are a few new Internet sites that allow you to see the world from space and from the air. A few years go services like Mapquest.com revolutionized the mapping industry with their on demand highly detailed maps of the entire country. Google upped the ante with their high resolution satellite mapping with 3D topography and real-time zoom and scanning services, GoogleEarth and Maps.Google.com.
Now onto the mapping stage steps Windows Local Live. This free Internet mapping service also takes it up a notch by offering extraordinary aerial images of entire metro areas from four different directions. This means you can see every building in a particular city from each side. The service is still new and many cities have not yet been photographed. Buffalo is one of the lucky early recipients of this wonderful new time consuming toy. These images are a small sample of what you can see on Live Local. Enjoy the trip!