Building Height Shapefile Downloads

[mtburb]

I am intending on creating a series of building height models for at least Wayne County with Sketchup, inspired by this.

Searches on the Wayne County, SEMCOG, city of Detroit and Michigan and US GIS sites all turned up nothing. Do building height shapefile datasets exist for southeastern Michigan for free download?

[RO_Resident]

http://maps.semcog.org/BuildingFootprints/

I don't see a shapefile, you'll probably have to make a request for the data.

[mtburb]

Sent an email to the linked address on that site, waiting for a hopeful answer.

[mtburb]

UPDATE: Sorry for the double post, but in the interim stumbled upon this, gonna try to create a height model with that. https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/mod...b-daec78545641

[wolverine]

My experience working with lidar data is it's pretty detailed and accurate in raw form and definitely exists within the GIS resource libraries of some large municipal governments. Building height is incidental data since lidar is mostly used to map topography to determine flood plains and storm water management. Governments don't have much use for building heights and most of what you see is simplified geometry for manageable files sizes....and therefore not accurate enough to post to the public. Take the basic 3D forms in google maps. They've simplified the data by eliminating building appurtenances to minimize loading time.

[mtburb]

Sent an email to the linked address on that site, waiting for a hopeful answer.

Finally came today and I received four links to footprint files for the entire area, plus one each of Detroit, Wayne County and Oakland County. A PDF file was also included.

Imported pieces of those files successfully into Sketchup 2016.

[mtburb]

Somewhat related, but I discovered this map of how disproportionate Detroit building heights are when compared to other large cities. In fact, it reveals how despite it's major-city status Detroit is really just one small city combined with a bunch of suburbs which were at first intended as retreats from said city.

http://detroitography.com/2016/04/01...lding-heights/