Google Maps is a mapping application provided by Google. It’s free of charge, relatively easy to use, and encourages collaboration. These attributes make it incredibly useful for both local and virtual communities. In this article we look at three very different uses of Google Maps by different communities.
Cork Greenmap
The Cork Greenmap is used to highlight businesses, services and organisations in Cork, which focus on sustainable living and natural food. The map features organic farms and food producers, a natural food bakery, and wholefood cafes, as well as gardening, fair-trade and second hand shops. This mixture of green goods and services is gathered together by volunteers and collaborators, and invites visitors to the site to contribute if they know of any additional items, not yet included.
There is a sister map available for the Dublin area also, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as lovingly updated as the Cork version.
In an effort to keep the map uncluttered, the designers have taken the unusual step of launching it with only a random selection of items visible. To get a sense of the full scope of green offerings in Cork, it is necessary to play around with the Filter, and select a variety of item types. It’s a curious approach to the problem of overcrowding which many community maps contend with, especially in built up areas.
Street Art Locator
Street art has a tendency to be ephemeral, weather-beaten, unofficial and often, but not always, illegal. All of these things make it difficult to curate and record. Despite all this, street art has many fans across the world who can now share their sightings of street art globally, thanks to StreetArtLocator.com. This site’s community gathers images of graffiti, paintings, installations and sculptures, and records the location on a Google map.
Marrying Google mapping technology and input from the street art community, the site aims to create a definitive global directory of stencils, sculpture, guerrilla art and graffiti. StreetArtLocator.com will showcase the genre in all its forms, whether made in secret, sanctioned by corporate sponsors or accepted by the art establishment.
The screenshot below shows Buenos Aires, which has a variety of sightings, including stencils, graffiti and paintings, and even a few street art galleries.
Community Walk
Less polished than Cork Greenmap or the StreetArtLocator, the CommunityWalk site none the less has a very active community, and contains literally thousands of user-created maps, of wildly varying quality. Its founder Jared Cosulich originally designed the site to help his mother, who was a realtor, but over time he discovered that it could be useful for a whole range of mapping tasks.
CommunityWalk includes:
- a map of mountain biking trails in New Jersey, which categorizes them according to their difficulty level.
- a tourist trail around Yosemite National Park, with markers indicating shopping, parks and hotels.
- a Saturday afternoon walk around San Francisco of exactly 2.27miles, which takes in city streets, parkland and a stretch along the beach, with photographs of particularly scenic parts mapped to the part of the walk they were taken from.
Conclusion
In Google Maps, Google has created something very valuable for the internet community. Some years ago, people revelled in the notion that the internet would be a virtual utopia, free from the tyranny of geography, where ideas could be shared without borders. While the internet has knocked down many communication barriers, we are only now seeing the real power of mapping virtual information back onto physical locations.
Tags: art, communities, Google Maps, Irish, physical v virtual, social media