Google Earth ate our town 17 Mar 2008

Here's a question for you: Which is the most Google-optimised town on the planet? Nope - it's not San Francisco. It's Nanaimo, British Columbia on Vancouver Island.

From Time magazine:

"The city's planning department has, over the past five years, steadily fed Google a wealth of information about its buildings, property lines, utilities and streets. The result is earth.nanaimo.ca, a clearinghouse of city data viewed through the robust and freely available Google Earth 3D mapping program. The site sorts and maps every business, from restaurants to car dealers, while a click of the mouse brings up the lot size for every property in the city, including the building permit number and zoning history. Homeowners can use the facility to find out specific information about their garbage collection schedule, while the city's 150-year-old downtown core is rendered in 3D and dotted with 360-degree panoramas."

Citizens can even log on to Google Maps and track Nanaimo's firefighters as they tend to emergencies around town!