As any 911 dispatcher or Pokémon Go player can tell you, the modern megalopolis consists of at least two layers.

First, there’s the physical stuff that makes up the city. This is the asphalt, the fire hydrants, the refrigerators, the pick-up trucks, the trees arranged in neat rows. When you see these things in a photo—whether of San Antonio or San Francisco—you know that humans live nearby.

Second, there are the virtual rules that define the city and guide its flows. These are the laws, the traffic patterns, the delivery routes, the Yelp check-ins and the Pokéstops, the “soft infrastructure.”

Since it launched, the core proposition of the ride-sharing company Uber has been that it will use the virtual layer to guide people and things around the physical layer. You call for a ride or for food on your phone; a person and a car appear on the curb in front of you.

This year it has started running that pattern in reverse. Uber is now plumbing the physical stuff of the city to improve its understanding of the virtual layer.

On Tuesday, DigitalGlobe, a satellite-imagery company, announced that it will provide high-resolution pictures of the planet’s surface to Uber. DigitalGlobe is the primary provider of satellite imagery to Google, Apple, and the U.S. government. When you see a satellite image of your home on Google Maps that shows individual cars and trees, odds are that it was captured by one of DigitalGlobe’s four satellites.