Watch The Quad Cities Grow Over The Past 37 Years… From Space!

Cities and towns grow. New businesses, homes, and buildings are always being built in the Quad Cities. The land is being developed around the center of each city in the Quad Cities which is expanding our footprint. But development doesn't happen over time. Sometimes, things take years to be built and for plans to come to fruition.

But what if you could see the Quad Cities' growth over the past, let's say, 36 years? Google Earth has a tool that lets you do that and it's pretty sweet!

Get our free mobile app

We have to first give a shout-out to Quad City memes for sharing this link on their Facebook page. They shared it on Thursday to show people it's "really neat seeing the QC grow and build," they said in their post.

The tool from Google is called Google Earth Engine. According to Google,

"Google Earth Engine is a geospatial processing service. With Earth Engine, you can perform geospatial processing at scale, powered by Google Cloud Platform.

Google says that the purpose of Earth Engine is to:

• Provide an interactive platform for geospatial algorithm development at scale
• Enable high-impact, data-driven science
• Make substantive progress on global challenges that involve large geospatial datasets

Inside of Google Earth Engine is Google Earth Timelapse. The timelapse feature allows you to look at a small or large area of the planet to see how things have transformed over the years. 37 years to be exact.

Google Earth Timelapse shows you how the Earth has changed from 1987 to 2020. A lot of things have changed virtually on every inch of planet Earth, including right here in the Quad Cities.

Take a look at Google Earth Timelapse's images showing how the Quad Cities have changed in the past 37 years below:

And thank you to Quad City memes for sharing this awesome link!