Top 10 Google Maps Tricks

Daniella July 12, 2010 Tech No Comments

Tags: birds eye view, craigslist, google maps, james howard kunstler, real estate, roofray, street view, transit directions, urban design

To start off Tech Week, we’re going to talk about something that is near and dear to the hearts of many urban planners – Google Maps! Here’s a Top 10 list of great features in Google Maps:

Directions – You already know that you can get directions from A to B on Google Maps, but did you know that you can get those directions for transit or for bikes? Just click on “directions” on the top left hand corner – the train looking thing represents transit directions and the bike icon represents cycling directions. They aren’t perfect, but they are pretty good!
Street View – Street view is a great way to nab some precedent images or other images that show what the street looks like today. You can capture a screen shot of the street view and then import it into a graphics editor to create a representation of what that street could look like or something else! To get to street view, click on the little yellow person icon at the top of the zoom bar in Google Maps and drag the icon to the road or intersection where you want street view. Here’s a silly link to Street View Photoshops. Here’s another link of James Howard Kunstler talking about areas with an accompanying Street View video. (Side note – I also like to use Street View to check out businesses, like hotels, just to make sure they look as great in “real life” as their press photos). Microsoft Bing has a neat feature that is also useful for planners – birds eye view! To use it, just zoom all the way in to your destination, click “aerial” on the map menu, and then click “bird’s eye view.” This perspective is useful for urban design and checking out urban form. You can kind of do this in Google Maps by clicking “Earth,” zooming in, and then using the tools to tilt the perspective.
Quick Asset Map – So you need a map really quickly that shows restaurants, pharmacies, schools, and other amenities around a site. Good thing you know how to use Google Maps!Make sure that “Map” is selected instead of “Satellite” view. Now you have a map that labels the important streets, transit stops, restaurants, bars, hotels, grocery stores, etc. Here’s what this might look like for Downtown Charlotte, NC.
Quick Context Map (with scale!) – Another thing you can do with Google Maps is turn off the labels (under the Satellite button). This way, you can get a satellite image with a scale on the bottom without the roads and businesses highlighted. Here’s an example. In many areas, you can also see terrain (under the More… button) and 3D images (Earth button). In some cities, people have imported 3D buildings that you can see. You can also screen capture this image, import it into Photoshop and whip up a quick and dirty figure ground drawing. Awesome!
My Maps – My Maps are great. You can collaborate with other people to make public or unlisted maps. These maps can have routes or areas identified with markers. If you want custom icons, there are many tutorials and websites that use Google Maps to create better looking maps.
Measure distances and area – You can get a pretty good estimation of the length of a route or the area of a site by using the line and shape tools in My Maps. One interesting application of this is Roof Ray. This lets people find their house on Google Maps, draw their roof, and then calculate the cost and payback period for installing solar panels.
Go Mobile – You can get Google Maps on your smart phone! Often I use Google Maps to get transit or driving directions on my iPhone. But wait! There’s more! If you give permission for the App to see your location (or go to m.google.com/maps), Google can tell you where you are on the map, even if you don’t have GPS! That can be really handy if you’re lost. You can also see Street View, find out local business listings, find real time traffic information, and see what’s happening nearby with Buzz or Latitude all on your phone.
Find out where congested areas are – Real time traffic information! Google Maps, if you turn on the “Traffic” button, will color busy roads red. Clicking the “change” link on the traffic menu will let you switch from live traffic to traffic data at a particular day and time.
Find Walkscore or Real Estate Prices – Walkscore is a site that uses Google Maps to evaluate how “walkable” an area is. Trulia lets you search Google Maps for real estate for sale or rent in an area. Here’s a Charlotte example. Padmapper puts my two favorite things together – Google Maps and Craigslist.
Google Earth & Google SketchUp – Ok, so not technically Google Maps, but they’re both tools you can download onto your computer to extend some of the features available on Google Maps. As mentioned before, Google Maps has an “Earth” button that lets you see images that used to be exclusively available on Google Earth. You can build models in SketchUp and import them into Google Earth to show a building or neighborhood in a larger context, make video tours, and other things. SketchUp is easy to learn, and you can always download objects, buildings, furniture, textures, etc. from the image library.