November 9, 2009, marked the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin wall in Germany.
The wall, constructed in 1961, separated the 1.28 million residents of East Berlin from the 1.75 million residents of West Berlin. The wall was later extended to surrounding regions and became a symbol of the “Cold War.”
Landsat imagery illustrates the change in the Berlin region in the last 20 years. In the 1988 image, much of the urban area (shown in dark purple) is within the wall confines (the wall shows up as light colored lines, especially evident in the western half of the 1988 image.) By 2007, the combined population of Berlin was 3.45 million and urban areas expanded into the surrounding region.