Detroit Street View

Mapping our city street by street

Detroit is going through a lot of change right now. To understand and document the impact of this change, the City of Detroit regularly gathers its own street level data including: 360 images and 3D street views. Collecting our own data allows us to tell our own story as a city and highlight and track changes to the city. Historically the city has gotten street level data through third parties often means increased costs and less control. Additionally, it is often years out of date. Improved street level data improves citywide communication and planning efforts, the accuracy of property tax assessments and public service delivery.

 

 

What is Detroit Street View?

Detroit Street View is a project run by the City of Detroit’s Department of Innovation and Technology. We collect 360 imagery data of the City of Detroit for use by residents, other city departments and the general public. The data is owned by the City of Detroit and provided to residents and other interested parties for free.

Consistency throughout City Departments

Imagery is an important tool that many departments use on a daily basis. Providing imagery to all departments fosters consistency of data used across departments. 

Accurate Assessments

Up to date image data helps ensure that property tax assessors are using the most accurate information possible to determine fair assessments. 

Proactive Resource Maintenance 

Detroit Street View provides city departments with asset information including street signs, fire hydrants, traffic lights, etc. This will allow departments to track city assets over time to ensure proper maintenance and tracking of city assets. 

Viewing Our City Over Time

Detroit Street View collects image data throughout the year allowing the public and departments to view changes in communities over time. This allows departments to be proactive in mitigating problems as well as seeing progress throughout the year.

What information does Detroit Street View Provide?

All 142 square miles of the City of Detroit is covered and surveyed by the Detroit Street View project, the goal being twice a year. The imagery is made publicly available on free platforms like Mapillary and provided to Departments by embedding the imagery within multiple internal software applications. 

 

Lidar Animation

Emergency Response

Because the City of Detroit runs this project, we can dispatch the Detroit Street View van when there is a fire or flooding in the city to collect imagery data immediately after an event. This allows City Hall to see the damage and deploy resources to the affected area.

3D Data

LiDAR is the technology in many of today’s self-driving cars but can also be used by professionals in many disciplines from engineering to tech startups. Detroit Street View collects LiDAR data as it drives and the City of Detroit Department of Innovation and Technology is working on making that data publicly available for researchers and residents to innovate using this technology.

LTE Coverage

The Detroit Street View project collects real time LTE coverage data from major carriers while it drives and will publish that information to the Open Data Portal.

View Detroit Street View Data