Google Street View Gets New Imagery of a Rebuilt City in New Orleans

New Orleans is one of the most original and intriguing cities in the US, it's culture not found elsewhere. Unfortunately, in recent years it's been perhaps better known for the devastating hurricane that ravaged it. Hurricane Katrina left a hurt but not broken city behind it and ever since its citizens have been rebuilding their city.

For many though, their efforts seemed somewhat in vain or at least not celebrated enough, since Google Maps still showed years-old images of destroyed cities and post-apocalyptic landscapes, images that aren't representative anymore for large parts of the city.

Many people asked Google to speed up the Street View capture process and get its cars roaming the city streets sooner than planned. Thankfully, Google obliged.

"Nearly 7 years after Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures in 2005, the resilient people of New Orleans are making remarkable progress," Mitch Landrieu, none other than the mayor of New Orleans, wrote in a Google blog post.

"The Street View imagery in Google Maps, which has just been updated today, more accurately reflects the major construction and renewal that’s underway," he said.

"It’s everywhere you look, from the nearly 2-mile long, 26-foot-high Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (IHNC) Hurricane Protection Barrier to the major construction near downtown that will be the future site of two hospitals and a biomedical research corridor," he explained.

The mayor goes on to talk about all of the efforts to not only rebuild New Orleans, but also improve it and make life better for the ones that stayed and the ones that are returning.

You'll have to take his word for it when it comes to educational reform and entrepreneurship, but you can see for yourself whether New Orleans looks new and whether it still shows its scars simply by browsing the new imagery in Street View.

Via: Google Street View Gets New Imagery of a Rebuilt City in New Orleans