How to tell if there is a hill on a satellite image?

Question

I was trying to find a way to tell on a satellite image of a city if a street is on a hill. For regular landscapes with out any building I can tell from the water run off patterns, however for a city on a satellite image, it's all concrete, buildings and asphalt. Is it correct to look at telephone pole shadows based on the angle of the shadow to the pole, the angle would be different on a hill compared to a level street, but the telephone pole would still be straight up in both cases. This is for the satellite images that are slightly off that show the sides of buildings and the top. Would this be a possible solution for some cases.

Answer 1

That would depend on their being set more precisely that they often are, but it might be a partial answer. If you have the res (and if you can see shadows well, you should), can you see the way building foundations are built? A foundation will be higher on the downhill side. I first jokingly thought of looking at which way the front tires were pointed on parked cars, but that might be a bit much.