The Skeletal Remains of Neighborhoods Past

Very interesting piece on how the data that Zillow draws from will often show the skeletal remains of pre-highway system American neighborhoods:

This trick doesn’t work everywhere, and not always city-wide in the places where it does. Some counties don’t report that these plots even exist anymore—rendered unusable by the interstate, the old lines have been struck from the records. But in a lot of major metropolitan areas especially in the Midwest, you can zoom in close enough on a bit of highway or interchange and see dozens of examples of the same thing. Cities like Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and even Tampa, Florida will all project these ghostly outlines of what came before the highways.