Website Allows New Yorkers to Bask in the Glow

Would-be renters in New York City now have a new tool in their apartment-hunting toolbelt. Localize.city offers data for every New York address including noise level, pace of snow removal, and the amount of light.

Localize.city's algorithm tells users the exact amount of sunlight that hits each side of each building in the city, varying by time of year, time of day, and when the light will be brightest, and how each floor is impacted by the shadows cast by surrounding structures. “What’s the most frequent headline in a description of an apartment? It’s something like ‘enjoy the sun-filled living room,’” Steven Kalifowitz, the president of Localize.city tells The New York Times. “That’s a hook in ads, and now people will have somewhere to go and find out if it’s true. Maybe it’s only sunny in the summer, and in the winter it’s dark, and so maybe it isn’t worth the rent. Or maybe people will say, ‘I didn’t realize how nice it would be. This is really a desirable place.’”

It’s an amenity that many people can’t afford (particularly if, as is sometimes the case, it is tied in with a view and thus commands a premium) or one that expresses itself briefly and rarely, a small square of light in a corner of the living room for seven minutes during the summer months. And sometimes the sun is utterly faithless, here today and gone tomorrow — blotted out by the behemoth going up next door, down the block or across the street. Welcome to New York.

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