March 20, 2026
3D maps, 2D patience
Just Put It on a Map
Map shows Manhattan’s value towers; commenters roast the 3D and the math
TLDR: An open-source map project visualizes massive city-center value spikes—Manhattan clocks a dramatic 100x. Commenters split: some say the 3D map confuses and mislabels “land” versus property, while others argue it’s decades-old econ 101, igniting a showy-visuals vs. clear-data showdown that matters for public persuasion.
A new post from Progress & Poverty dropped a flashy 3D “money mountain” map showing how property values skyrocket in city centers—think Manhattan towering over the Bronx by 100x. The team behind it says maps change minds and built open-source tools like CivicMapper and PutItOnAmap to prove it. The comments? Absolute chaos—in the fun way.
First swing: “Is this even ‘land value’?” One sharp-eyed reader says the maps use assessed property values, meaning buildings, not just dirt, are doing the heavy lifting. Second punch: the 3D vs. clarity war. Bar-chart loyalists and old-school cartographers piled on, calling the skyline-style rendering pretty but confusing, with one user saying they couldn’t even orient north. Another asked the killer question: what problem does this solve besides being neat to look at?
Then the econ historians showed up, dropping names like Alonso and von Thünen to say, “Congrats, you rediscovered a 1960s textbook.” Cue the memes: “Minecraft skyline is cool, but where’s the legend?” and “Show me a bar chart, not SimCity!” Still, even skeptics agreed on the core point: central land (and buildings) are wildly more valuable. The fight is over how to show it—wow factor vs. truth serum.
Key Points
- •Assessed land values in Manhattan are reported as over 100 times those in the Bronx and exceed the rest of New York City combined.
- •The article notes NYC assessments are generally under-assessed, yet relative concentration patterns remain clear.
- •Similar land value gradients—peaking at city centers and decaying outward—are observed in New York State, Spokane (WA), and Cincinnati (OH).
- •The Center for Land Economics uses maps to correct misconceptions about land value concentration, leveraging its CivicMapper tool.
- •CivicMapper has been upgraded, and the open-source PIOAM suite now includes five free tools: CivicMapper, PIOAM Visualizer, GIS Data Fetcher, GIS Format Converter, and GIS File Constructor.