Los Angeles wasn’t always so big, this new animated map of the city’s growth shows. Seen on the site I Got Charts, the map shows roughly where and when Los Angeles absorbed neighborhoods from south to north, causing the city boundaries to expand.

"There [are] plenty of maps out there that show the boundaries and neighborhood breakdowns," says mapmaker Alex Pudlin, who has a day job with the City of Los Angeles. "But I thought it would be even more informative to track the actual progression of a City from a small, roughly five-mile by five-mile square to the 470-square miles of land we have today."

One of the things that Pudlin found surprising was seeing the visualization of just how much of the Valley was added in 1915, the year that about 170 square miles of the Valley was annexed into Los Angeles.

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