Google Maps Victoria Street View
Fanny Lococo
So when Tawanda Kanhema moved to the United States in 2009, he looked up his hometown of Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city, on the map of panoramic images. A self-described tech enthusiast now some 10,000 miles away from home, he was eager to see a virtual tour of the city.
"When you look at Street View, you're looking at this mosaic of images that show how people live across the world, how people conduct commerce, how people get around," he says. "I found it quite jarring that a lot of the countries in the region were not on the map."
As services like Google Maps have increasingly become our primary map of the world, being left out of features like Street View can have consequences. Street View helps people with everyday tasks like checking out a new commute route, choosing a restaurant or deciding where to go on vacation. The platform also provides a trove of data used by Google to improve its mapping services, by academics for research and by local governments looking to make improvements to an area.
So he decided to try to get Zimbabwe on Street View. Kanhema, who works as a product manager in Silicon Valley and is a freelance photographer in his spare time, volunteered to carry Google's Street View gear to map what amounted to 2,000 miles of his home country. The Berkeley, Calif., resident has filled in the map of other areas in Africa and Canada as well.
"We should do more to make sure that those communities are represented," Kanhema says. "We should do more to showcase the businesses, the local businesses in those areas and also the tourist attractions."
Google says it has "largely mapped" only 87 of nearly 200 countries on the platform, which launched in 2007. Many other countries on the planet have at least some Street View coverage, Google says. But there are sizable gaps in regions like Africa, Antarctica and Central Asia, while areas such as the U.S. and Europe are mostly filled in. While users can see almost every street corner in places such as Paris or New York, they can't do the same for Algiers, Algeria, or Kabul, Afghanistan.
He says the team is working to expand the service's reach. To do that, Google often relies on volunteers who can either borrow the company's camera equipment or take photos using their own. Most images on Street View are collected by drivers, and most of these drivers are employed by third parties that work with Google. But when it comes to the places Google hasn't prioritized, people like Kanhema can fill in the gaps.
In 2018, Kanhema applied to borrow a 360-degree camera through Google's Street View camera loan program, and in the fall, he took a two-week trek through Zimbabwe with the equipment. There was a speedboat ride across the Zambezi River and a safari trip through a national park. Most of his time, though, was spent driving down the streets of Harare and the highways that connect Zimbabwe's major cities.
"It's so conspicuous to have a 4-foot contraption attached to the roof of your car," Kanhema says. "People are walking up and asking questions about, 'Is that a camera? What are you recording? What are you filming? It is for Google Maps? Will my house be on the map? Will my face be on the map?' "
Many of the places Kanhema photographed were tourist attractions, such as the massive Victoria Falls, which he captured from 400 feet above, strapping the Street View camera to the dashboard of a helicopter.
"Imagine being able to lend a ticket to get on a helicopter tour of one of the seven natural wonders of the world and being able to bring at least a million other people with you by creating these images that people can look at and feel as though they were there," he says.
Marquardt says Google currently has no plans to compensate its volunteers, adding that it pays contributors "in a lot of other ways" by offering "a platform to host gigabytes and terabytes of imagery and publish it to the entire world, absolutely for free."
"Google Maps is not a public service. Google Maps is a product from a company, and things are included and excluded based on the company's needs," Dalton says. "Sometimes that means that things are excluded that have a lot of merit but that don't fit the business plan. And sometimes that means that things are included even if that feels like a violation of our privacy."
The company has been criticized for violating privacy through the mapping project. In 2013, Google paid a $7 million fine to settle claims that it improperly collected data from unsecured wireless networks across the U.S. using its Street View cars.
For now, Kanhema has found other ways to receive compensation for his work. Most recently, in March, the Mushkegowuk Council, in northern Ontario, paid him to document the network of ice roads that connect indigenous communities in the area.
Often Street View contributors can also receive funding from tourism boards or travel agencies, but Kanhema says he wants to avoid that model. Those arrangements can mean restrictions on what he maps and when, like business owners who want to make sure their storefronts look busy or clean when the photographs are taken.
The City of Victoria offers access to a variety of maps and applications. VicMap is a map of City owned assets which enables residents, developers, consultants, and others to view a wide range of data and download raw data from the map directly.
VicMap also includes search categories including by address, intersection, parcel identification, park, or neighbourhood. Users can add text, lines and shapes to maps to print or share with others, or add their own data to create custom maps.
These data are derived from a variety of sources, historic and current. Accuracy, completeness, correctness, and currency are not guaranteed. Persons accessing the map agree to and accept that their use of any information contained therein is entirely at their own risk. The City of Victoria assumes no obligation or liability for the use of the map data. Distribution of this data is for information purposes and should not be considered authoritative for construction, geotechnical, engineering, navigational, legal or other site-specific uses. Consulting the map service should not be considered a replacement for on-site inspections and appropriate investigations.
Ongoing updates and utility connections may not be immediately incorporated into the information available on the City of Victoria website. The underground infrastructure displayed here is not to be used as a substitute for calling before you dig. Infrastructure locations must be verified with the City of Victoria Engineering Department and BC One Call before commencing work. All zoning should be confirmed with Planning and Development Services at the City of Victoria.
If there is a conflict between the information on the web map and information contained in any other records of the City of Victoria, or documents that may be prepared by or delivered to the City of Victoria, the City of Victoria reserves the right to rely in all cases upon the record which it considers to be the most accurate and complete.
The City's Open Data Portal contains data that can be searched, sorted, filtered and explored with a few clicks. Data is categorized to help guide people toward what they are looking for. The portal also highlights different data themes and the applications that have been built with the data.
Using Maps URLs, you can build a universal, cross-platform URL to launch Google Maps and perform searches, get directions and navigation, and display map views and panoramic images. The URL syntax is the same regardless of the platform in use.
As a developer of an Android app, an iOS app, or a website, you can construct a common URL, and it will open Google Maps and perform the requested action, no matter the platform in use when the map is opened.
It is recommended that you use a cross-platform URL to launch Google Maps from your app or website, since these universal URLs allow for broader handling of the maps requests no matter the platform in use. For features that may only be functional on a mobile platform (for example, turn-by-turn navigation), you may prefer to use a platform-specific option for Android or iOS. See the following documentation:
Important: The parameter api=1 identifies the version of Maps URLs this URL is intended for. This parameter is required in every request. The only valid value is 1. If api=1 is NOT present in the URL, all parameters are ignored and the default Google Maps app will launch, either in a browser or the Google Maps mobile app, depending on the platform in use (for example, ).
The map actions available are: search, directions, display a map, and display a Street View panorama. You specify the action in the request URL, along with required and optional parameters. As is standard in URLs, you separate parameters using the ampersand (&) character. For each action, the list of parameters and their possible values are enumerated in the Search Parameters section.
The search action displays results for a search across the visible map region. When searching for a specific place, the resulting map puts a pin in the specified location and displays available place details.
In a location search, you search for a specific location using a place name, address, or comma-separated latitude/longitude coordinates, and the resulting map displays a pin at that location. These three examples illustrate searches for the same location, CenturyLink Field (a sports stadium in Seattle, WA), using different location values.
In a categorical search, you pass a general search term, and Google Maps attempts to find listings that match your criteria near the location you specify. If no location is specified, Google Maps attempts to find listings nearby your current location. If you prefer to provide a location for a categorical search, include the location in the general search string (for example, pizza+seattle+wa).
Note: This parameter is optional, unless you specify a destination_place_id in your URL. If you choose to specify a destination_place_id, you must also include a destination in the URL.
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