Google Updates New Orleans Street View Imagery

The history of Google’s Street View is rife with cities and towns that are less than thrilled at the sight of those little cars driving down the street (remember when a Street View driver ran into an angry mob of UK villagers?), but the reaction today is quite different in New Orleans.

Seven years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, Google has finally replaced the old images of destruction with new images taken over the past year or so.

To show the difference, compare this old photo of a New Orleans street taken by Google in August 2007 (top) with one of the new images that’s now online, and was taken in April 2011.

On the Google blog, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu talks about the importance of having more current images of the city available in Street View:

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

Last month we wrote about the Update Google Street View in New Orleans! blog, a citizen-led effort that exposed the need for new Street View images. The reaction there today pretty much says it all:

MAJOR thanks to Google for updating!