Nickolay Lamm re-imagines what New York City's skyline would look like if building height were a direct reflection of a neighborhood’s net household wealth. Photo: My New York Lightbox NYC without Lamm's overlay. Photo: My New York Lightbox A photo looking north towards Harlem. Image: Courtesy Nickolay Lamm Once Lamm applies his overlay, you can see a wall of emerald buildings rise above the park and abruptly flatten once it reaches Harlem. Image: Nickolay Lamm The tip of NYC as it normally looks. Photo: My New York Lightbox Lower Manhattan has had a resurgence of expensive residential lofts in recent years. Photo: Nickolay Lamm Harlem looking towards Central Park. Photo: My New York Lightbox Here's the viewpoint from Harlem once Lamm's wealth walls are applied. Image: Nickolay Lamm

New York City is a place of inequality–which might seem pretty obvious when you walk down 5th Avenue past the Trump Tower’s gleaming glass facade. But obnoxiously obvious displays of wealth aside, the city’s growing income gap is often much more nuanced and difficult to visualize, which ultimately makes it a lot easier to ignore. But what if we could tell how wealthy a neighborhood is just by the height of their buildings? It would be a lot harder to brush off the fact that in NYC, the divide between the haves and have-nots just keeps growing. Which is exactly why Nickolay Lamm of MyDeals.com decided to make it happen.

>"I thought to myself, 'What if you could actually see inequality?'"

In his most recent visualization project, the Pittsburgh-based artist and researcher re-imagines what the city’s skyline would look like if building height were a direct reflection of a neighborhood’s net household wealth. "I was inspired to create this project after standing atop Mt. Washington in my hometown of Pittsburgh and looking at the Pittsburgh skyline," he explains. "I thought to myself, 'What if you could actually see inequality?' This relatively even landscape would look much different."

Lamm, who is responsible for other viral visualizations like Normal Barbie, translated Esri’s map of median household net worth in New York City (based on 2010 Census data) into the bright green 3-D bars you’re looking at. Every $100,000 of net worth in a section on Esri’s map equals one centimeter in height on Lamm’s visualization. So if one section (which appears to consist of multiple blocks) had a net worth of $500,000, Lamm’s rendering would measure 5 cm high. Similarly, if another section had a net worth of $80,000, the green would appear at a much flatter 0.8 cm.

This idea is most clear from the vantage point of Central Park looking north towards Harlem. In the photo’s before picture, you see Manhattan’s largest park stretching into the distance flanked by what seem to be perfectly nice, but mostly indistinguishable buildings. It’s only when Lamm applies his overlay that you see a wall of emerald buildings rise above the park and abruptly flatten once it reaches the less affluent neighborhood. Reverse that perspective, and you’ll see what the income discrepancies look like from Harlem’s point of view.

“It’s kind of depressing to think, if you had inequality vision, that’s what it would look like,” he says. Lamm says singling out New York was intentional, given its reputation as the city where supposedly anyone can make their American Dream come true. "The American Dream suggests that if you work hard enough, you can achieve it," he says. "However, it's clear that the landscape in order to achieve that dream is not as even and equal as it appears on the surface.”