Evolution of Manhattan

From the homeland of the Lenape people to a small Dutch colony to a battlefield of the American Revolution to the global cultural capital it’s become today, the island of Manhattan has undergone extraordinary transformations over the past several centuries. Rendered in 3D animation and created without the use of AI, this video from the YouTube channel City 3D Timelapse chronicles how this island of around just 22.7 square miles has evolved. It captures the spread of the population in the industrial era and, more recently, the reshaping of its skyline as supertall skyscrapers have gone up in rapid succession.

The result is an extraordinary feat in its own right, condensing the making of modern Manhattan, in great detail and from several angles, into just eight minutes. For more from City 3D Timelapse, watch this video on the evolution of Paris. From Celtic village to world capital: how Paris became Paris Walt Whitman’s poetry frames scenes from 1920s New York in this film classic A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey A brisk, tactile jaunt across an urban landscape’s many surfaces Scenes from Midtown Manhattan form a ‘play of texture, rhythm and interruptions’ Racing through time on a Brooklyn Bridge trolley ride in 1899 New York City, 1986 – the grit, the graffiti, the glory A guided tour of New York’s public art in 1973, in all its charms and contradictions Rituals of leisure on the grass one sunny day in Central Park