🛰︎Hangzhou 2003 OrbView Satellite Historical Imagery Map

Hangzhou, long praised as a paradise on earth, is a lakeside city in eastern China along the lower Qiantang River and at the southern end of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, where mountains, lakes and rivers meet. In 2003, Hangzhou's urban layout was accelerating from the West Lake era toward the Qiantang River era: mountains around West Lake, the Qiantang riverfront, both canal banks and historic streets formed its distinctive urban fabric. With 1-meter OrbView historical satellite imagery, viewers can clearly observe the road network, building distribution, farmland and forests, and rivers and lakes of that year. These images provide direct evidence for urban-change research, historic preservation, territorial spatial planning and geographic-information comparison.

Unlike ordinary maps, historical satellite imagery is like a time capsule: it freezes ground conditions from more than twenty years ago, allowing planners, researchers and general readers to rediscover Hangzhou at both broad and detailed levels. The following images are 1-meter historical satellite views of Hangzhou acquired by the U.S. OrbView satellite in 2003.