Site Overview and Section — Zoning Limits, the Area in Numbers, and a 1:1 Skyline Cut
When you make diagrams, a Site overview appears between the map and the panels. It has two rows. The first row is about the site: its zoning, the limits the city's zoning data give for that district, and — once you pick lots or draw a boundary — site area and max floor area. The second row is about the area within the radius: how many buildings, how tall, how old, what use, the nearest rail station, and the ground.
The overview is free for any site in the twelve cities. The Section tab further down (analysis tab 05) cuts a skyline along a line you draw on the plan; without a pass it works on the example site.
Zoning — by area, not by a single point
If you picked lots or drew a boundary, the overview intersects the site with the city's zoning districts and lists each district with its share of the site area. A site that straddles a district line shows both, largest first. If you only placed a point, it reads the district at that point. A point that lands in a street gets the district with the most area within 82 ft — New York's lots and several cities' zoning layers leave streets blank, so a strict point test there finds nothing.
District names are the city's own codes (C6-4, C-3-S, NC3P-75 (M), T6-48A-O), followed by the city's district name where the data have one. For New York and DC, which carry only codes, we add the same broad class the zoning panel uses (C6-4 · Commercial).
Limits — only the numbers the city's data carry
The limits shown are the values in each city's published zoning data. We did not copy numbers out of zoning code tables. Where a city's dataset has no FAR or height field, the overview shows the district and says so; it does not decode the name. Chicago's DX-12 does encode a FAR of 12, but the dataset has no field for it, so the overview does not show the 12.
| City | Shown | From |
|---|---|---|
| New York | FAR (residential, commercial, community facility; the highest is used) | MapPLUTO, per lot — plus special district, overlay and a second district if the lot has them |
| Boston | FAR, height (ft), stories | Zoning subdistricts, Boston Planning Department |
| Washington, DC | FAR, height (ft), stories | Zoning Regulations of 2016 development standards, Office of Zoning — with a note that height also depends on street width (Height Act) |
| San Francisco | Height (ft) | Height and bulk district covering most of the site (e.g. 340-I) |
| Seattle | Height (ft), as a range where the name gives one | The zone name, which states height by rule (SMC 23). SM-SLU 175/85-280 shows 85–280 ft, the lowest and highest heights in the name (they differ by use and with incentives) |
| Denver | Stories | The district's HEIGHT_STORIES field |
| Miami | Stories | Miami 21 transect zones (T6-48 = 48 stories) |
| Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis | District only | No FAR or height fields in the city data |
| Houston | — | No zoning. Deed restrictions and the city's development rules (Chapter 42) still apply |
Max floor area
With lots picked or a boundary drawn, the overview multiplies site area by FAR. FAR here is a ratio (6, 7.52, 10), not a percentage. Example: 2318 Broadway on the Upper West Side, about 20,770 sq ft, zoned C4-6A. PLUTO gives residential FAR 10, commercial 3.4 and community facility 10; the overview uses the highest, so it shows about 207,700 sq ft. An all-commercial building on the same lot would get 3.4 — the breakdown is printed under the number for that reason.
There is no max building footprint. None of the zoning datasets we use carries a lot-coverage field, so the overview has nothing to multiply.
Why there is no land value
The Korean edition shows the official assessed land price. The US edition leaves it out. County assessed values are not comparable from one city to the next. In California, Proposition 13 ties assessed value to the purchase price plus at most 2% a year. In Cook County (Chicago), assessed value is a fixed fraction of market value. In Texas the appraisal district estimates market value. Showing them side by side would invite comparisons the numbers cannot support.
The area around
| Figure | How it is counted |
|---|---|
| Buildings | Footprints whose centre is within the radius or frame — the same buildings as the diagrams. |
| Average height · tallest | From building heights, in feet. We use height rather than stories: stories are missing for most buildings in some cities (filled for 14% of buildings within about 1,000 ft of Union Square in New York, 1% in Montrose, Houston), while every building in the 3D massing has a height. |
| Average year built · share over 30 years | Buildings with a recorded year only. |
| Most common use | By building count, from the building-use panel's categories. |
| Nearest rail station · bus stops | Station positions from OpenStreetMap; names from the transit agency's feed where we have it, otherwise from OpenStreetMap. Distance is straight-line from the site centre, not walking distance — the walking-time panel does that. |
| Site elevation · relief | USGS 3DEP bare-earth terrain: elevation at the site centre and the high-to-low range within the frame. |
Copy puts the two rows on the clipboard as tab-separated text (it pastes into a spreadsheet as a table); CSV downloads the same rows with the caution sentence included.
The Section tab — a 1:1 skyline through the site
Draw a line on the plan and the tab cuts a section along it. The plan is the building height panel for the same site, so you can see where the tall buildings are before choosing the line.
- Line — east–west or north–south through any point (click or drag the plan, or use the slider), rotate about the centre, or draw freely and drag the end points.
- Looking direction — the section shows what you would see standing on the line and facing the red arrow on the plan. Flip view turns you around; left and right swap with it.
- Dark buildings are cut by the line. Grey buildings stand behind it, lighter the farther away. The tan band is the ground along the line from 3DEP, and the lighter ground behind is the highest terrain in the looking direction. A picked or drawn site is the red ground line with dashed edges.
- Vertical scale is 1:1. Exaggerating heights would make every neighbourhood look like a high-rise district, and two sections would no longer compare.
- Labels are in feet: a height grid every 100 ft (every 200 ft when the drawing is taller than 600 ft), the tallest and lowest cut buildings, ground elevation (off by default), a 300 or 500 ft scale bar, and the end letters. Each can be turned off, or use Drawing only.
- Along this section lists the same calculation as numbers: line length, buildings cut and behind, the share of the line under buildings, average and extreme heights, ground range, and the length across your site.
Buildings without a height are not drawn — the same rule as the 3D massing — and nothing below ground is shown. Save as PNG; SVG (for Illustrator) needs a pass.
What it is for
Use the overview to open a site conversation with the right district name and a first order of magnitude: how much floor area the base zoning allows, and how that compares with what stands around it. Use the section to show the site's scale against its neighbours at true proportion. Neither replaces a zoning analysis: the overlays, bonuses and approvals that decide the real envelope are not in these numbers.