Google's Tiny Street View Car Drives Europe's Tiny Streets

While Google Street View's ability to give you a glimpse from the ground anywhere in the world may seem magical, there are still a few streets out there the nosy cars can't roll down.

Some of those roads are found in Belgium, where a crowdsourcing effort is cataloging streets too narrow for Google's all-seeing cars.

To map Belgium's too-narrow streets, there were two obstacles in the way: a car that could navigate the pathways, and finding and marking streets that had yet to be shot. The country's Happiness Brussels, an ad agency, took it upon itself to tackle both these issues.

According to Mashable's Joann Pan, the company was able to secure Google's official blessing and set about developing a panoramic camera-equipped Toyota iQ, which is a "city car," or similar in function to a Smart car:

Google Street View iQ 02.jpg

Then, Happiness Brussels started iQ Street Viewa site where "anyone can tag a roadway or street on an interactive map," according to Mashable. The effort has resulted in 250 digitally identified streets so far.

It's interesting to think about a project like Street View evolves over the years. It started as a way to peek at cities such as New York from the ground, it's grown to the point where the U.S. is almost completely covered, as well as places such as Europe and Japan.

There's a good chance Belgium's narrow roadways would have gone unmapped for a long time, but because of this project was able to join in the Street View experiment, thanks to social contributors.

iQ Street View, via Mashable

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