5: New Delhi

Our first mention takes us to India’s capital city, New Delhi, which is home to a population of nearly 14 million within its metropolitan area. From those who responded in the IBM survey, 62 percent say traffic has negatively impacted their school or job performance, and 96 percent say traffic has negatively affected their overall health! Looking from above, it’s hard to spot any real lane usage by any of the multitude of buses, cars, and rickshaws!

4: Moscow

64 percent of the surveyed commuters in Russia’s capital city said that the city’s traffic nightmares have worsened in the last three years, and the city ranked worst on the average duration of its traffic jams. It’s got to be nerve-racking to know that once you hit traffic, the average expected delay is nearly two-and-a-half hours! At least people are somewhat following lanes here behind the street view car.

3: Johannesburg

South Africa’s largest city of Johannesburg ranks the highest amongst those cities commuters believe have worsened over the past three years. Eighty percent of those surveyed agreed that the traffic situation isn’t getting any better, and the city scored 97 points out of 100 on the scale of the emotional and economic toll of commuting. We have access to the 45° Imagery on Google Maps this time to get a closer look, and sure enough the delays are easy to find.

2: Mexico City

Mexico’s capital city scored a nearly “perfect” 99 out 100 on the survey. More than half of the commuters surveyed say that traffic has negatively affected their school or job performance. Just like before, it doesn’t take long to find some backups with Google’s street view car. Looks like we could be here a while.

1: Beijing

Ranking the highest (or worst) on our list is China’s capital city of Beijing, which is home to nearly 20 million people. Even outside of rush hour, many roads to and from Beijing remain clogged with traffic. The daily rush in traffic also causes air quality issues around the city; so much so that during the 2008 Olympic games, drivers were only allowed to drive on either even or odd days (based on their license plate number). Today, Beijing has a limit on how many license plates they issue a month to try to control the number of vehicles, and non-Beijing plated cars are banned from entering certain areas of the city during rush hour.

Beijing also holds the record for the world’s worst traffic jam… ever! In 2010, a clog between Beijing and Jining stretched for 100 kilometres (62 miles), and lasted nearly a month! Needless to say it took a large effort from hundreds of police to keep order. Hoping to catch a glimpse from Google, all we could find on the imagery today was this little congestion near the Great Wall.

Locations: China, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Crowds, Other Vehicles, Street Views

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Above is Estadio Lluís Sitjar in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Built in 1945, for over half a century the 18,000 seat stadium was the home of football club RCD Mallorca. The stadium has sat unused since 2007, but the word ‘Mallorca‘ can still be plainly seen spelled out in the seats. The field of play, however, is already in a sad state.

On another populous Spanish island, Gran Canaria, lies Estadio Insular, which was the home of UD Las Palmas. Built in the same year as Lluís Sitjar, the 21,000 seater was abandoned four years earlier. Grass and trees are already rooting themselves in the stands, and the walls are covered in graffiti.

Stade des Charmilles in Geneva was the site of five FIFA World Cup games in 1954. Much of the facility was dismantled in 2002 and the field is completely barren, but the grandstands remain in place. In the rival city of Zurich, the demolished Hardturm also hosted World Cup games. Satellite imagery shows the shells of the grandstand are still intact, and Street View shows the rubble surrounding it.

In Germany, Gelsenkirchen’s Parkstadion was the home of the Bundesliga’s Schalke 04 from 1973 to 2001. Since then, about one-half of the seating has been removed, but the rest remains.

The largest abandoned stadium seen on Google Maps is the Estadio Fonte Nova in Salvador, Brazil. Originally built to a capacity of 66,080, the stadium was expanded to a monstrous 110,000 seats in 1971. Tragedy struck Fonte Nova in 2007, when an upper terrace collapsed during a Third Division championship final, killing seven spectators and injuring forty. The stadium was immediately closed. Since this imagery was captured, Fonte Nova has been demolished.

At one point the largest arena in the Czech Republic, Brno’s Stadion Za Lužánkami has sat in state for the past decade. Not only is the old playing field easy to make out, but even the goalposts are still standing. Around the edges, though, trees up to 3 metres high have sprouted in the bleachers.

Not all abandoned stadiums are left to rot. The Dell, the former home of English side Southampton, was redeveloped as a housing estate after its 2001 closure. Not only does the estate retain the shape of the original stadium, but all of the apartment blocks are named for famous Saints players.

Naturally, there aren’t only modern abandoned arenas to be found on Google Maps. The Plaza de Toros in Cartagena, Spain has been abandoned for nearly a century. Built on top of an ancient Roman arena, the location is set to be the home of a new Roman museum. Over in Merida, this ancient amphitheatre dates all the way back to 25 BC. The gladiator pit is exposed in the middle of the arena.

We end the first part of our tour in South Africa, where in Cape Town, Greenpoint Stadium was torn down to make way for the neighbouring Cape Town Stadium in advance of the 2010 World Cup¹. Here we see demolition crews working to dismantle the arena. The north grandstand, however, remains standing.

Read part two of our abandoned stadium tour: Abandoned Stadiums of the United States.

Locations: Brazil, Czech Republic, England, Germany, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland / Categories: Abandoned, Stadiums and Sport

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The countries receiving updated imagery are Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Additionally, there is brand new coverage of two of Britain’s Crown Dependencies, the Isle of Man, and Jersey.

Peel Castle, Isle of Man

Mont Orgueil, Jersey

Of particular interest in the United States, brand new imagery has been added throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego, taking in sights such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Staples Center, and USS Midway which are now shown in stunning high-resolution.

What can you find in the new imagery? Send us your finds via our suggestion form, or on Twitter, and we’ll post a roundup later in the week of your best finds!

Read the full story at the Google Latlong blog.

Locations: Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, North America, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom / Categories: Street Views

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The Street View car has come fairly close to several fires over the years, and many remain to be seen – such as this sidewalk garbage fire in a Marseilles underpass which has filled the air with acrid black smoke, or this small roadside brush fire midway between Cardiff and Newport, Wales.

In Sao Paulo, this petrol station is nearly obscured completely by the smoke from a car fire.

The most inflammatory encounters for the Street View car, however, may be these large roadside fires in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa and Chiapas, Mexico.

I wonder if they’ve tried putting these fires out with the world’s largest fire hydrant? Then again, it probably wouldn’t help, seeing as how as it’s located over in Columbia, South Carolina. Besides, the Street View Car in general has bad luck with hydrants.

Fortunately, there are usually emergency workers on the case. Here in Wiesbaden, Germany, an upper-level house fire is being attended to by a number of fire trucks.

At Philadelphia International Airport, this burned-out husk of an airplane sits in a paved circle. The helpless victim of firefighter training, it joins its comrade at Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base.¹

This small brush fire on the North Island of New Zealand was likely set deliberately as part of the annual process of getting the land ready for the season’s planting, and this field fire in Bulgaria is also deliberate. This other brush fire in Botswana captured by the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, however, appears to be far more dangerous.

Then there are full-on forest fires. In the wilderness of the Northwest Territories, this forest fire is caught in the heat of the moment, sending a giant plume of smoke into the air that can be seen over 20 miles (30 km) away.

Just as ominous is this massive fire in the far east of Russia, seen here blazing a path toward the Pacific Ocean.

What’s worse than an out-of-control wildfire? Try three, as captured here in Cameroon.

Finally, here’s the Street View car getting incredibly meta, as it takes a picture of someone taking a picture of a fire along the South African coast.

Locations: Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Florida, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Northwest Territories, Pennsylvania, Russia, South Africa, South Carolina, Wales / Categories: Aircraft, Natural Landmarks, Other Vehicles, Street Views

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The most famous of the mines is the Kimberley mine, better known simply as the Big Hole. Between 1872 and 1914, the giant 17 hectare (42 acre) pit was dug to a depth of 1,097m (3,599 ft), which at the time made it the largest human-dug hole in the world. Since then, the pit has been refilled to a depth of 215m (705 ft), and a lake now occupies the bottom.

The Big Hole isn’t the only huge pit in Kimberley; five giant mines in total were dug in and around the city. The Wesselton, Dutoitspan and Bultfontein mines operated right into the 21st century.

Here we can see a table plateau off in the distance – only that’s not a table plateau but the edge of the massive tailing pile at the De Beers operation.

Many of those tailings are uses to fill in old mine pits, like this one just to the east of the city centre, where vegetation is once again beginning to take hold.

The giant pits and other mine sites are, naturally, fenced off for safety reasons. This fence north of the Big Hole has been covered in colourful murals by local schoolchildren (and colourful graffiti by others).

Kimberley is not just famous for its mines. One of the largest sieges of the Second Boer War took place here in 1899 and 1900, when residents were forced to take shelter in the mines. In one of the city’s major roundabouts lies the Honoured Dead Memorial, fronted by the cannon Long Cecil, named for De Beers founder/British imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

Much of the labour for the mines came from the outlying townships. The Street View car mostly avoided the poorer townships in the area, but does capture a few street scenes, such as this transaction at a tuck shop. The district municipality that takes in Kimberley was renamed in 2001 for Frances Baard, one of the major labour activists in the region during the apartheid era. A statue in the city centre commemorates Baard, but the Street View face-blurring technology evidently found the statue a bit too lifelike.

As Kimberley expanded over the years, much of the city’s runoff was used to fill Kamfers Dam, an ephemeral pond turned into a protected wetland. In 2006, an artificial S-shaped island was built in Kamfers Dam which now hosts thousands of breeding pairs of flamingos each year.

Locations: South Africa / Categories: Monuments, Natural Landmarks, Street Views, Structures

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Take Monaco, for instance, where the cameras approach the eastern border only to be greeted with this giant abstract sculpture at the crossing (or is that just Monaco giving a massive middle-finger to Google’s camera?).

The western entrance to Monaco is quite stunning, with the road descending into the principality as cliffs loom overhead.

Moving south into the Pyrenees, we reach the border of Andorra, where we can sneak a peek into the ski resort of Pas de la Casa, including some oddly-coloured apartments on the hillside.

For sheer impressiveness, however, it’s hard to beat the sight of the Rock of Gibraltar looming over the Spanish border at La Linea while a thunderstorm prepares to hit overhead:

The prize for ‘Most Ornate Entrance Captured on Street View’ might have to go to the border between Rimini, Italy and Serravalle, San Marino, where the microstate has constructed a pedestrian overpass and an observation tower for tourists, leading into a major shopping district. The other main entrance to San Marino would probably be described as ‘quaint’ by comparison.

The absurdly complicated Dutch-Belgian border at Baarle (documented previously on Google Sightseeing) is likely to have presented special challenges to the Street View team. However, they have cleverly managed to avoid publishing any images captured on Belgian soil – despite examples such as this, where the camera car must drive from Holland at one end of the block, across a tiny sliver of Belgium, and back to Holland at the other end.

Baarle’s not the only town cut in half in Street View. Here’s a place where you park in France to dine at a cafe in Luxembourg:

Near the tri-point of Italy, Austria and Slovenia, we get this multi-national flag arrangement at an old Austrian customs building. Further into the Alps, the Street View car camera ends its trip at the ski resort of Nassfeld, where one of the ski lifts lies right next to a field of grazing cattle.

The lone glimpse of Russian soil captured so far on Street View is the view across a small lake from Norway (the only place you can actually drive south into Russia from), where we get a blurry view of a building on a hill overlooking the lake. Hmm, a regular house, or a Cold War spy shanty? You be the judge…

South Africa is the only African country so far visited by Street View, but sadly most of the border shots are not particularly notable. For example, the images simply stop by a fence on the middle of the road at the border with Swaziland, while the border with Botswana couldn’t be any more different, merely possessing a single stop sign.

We end our forbidden borderland odyssey with a glimpse from Singapore across the Straits of Johor to downtown Johor Bahru.

With luck, one day we’ll be able to get a glimpse beyond those borders as Street View continues to roll out coverage in countries across the globe. (Then we can finally find out just what it is they’re trying to hide from us…)

Locations: Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Crown Dependencies, France, Italy, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views, Structures

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With a capacity over 91,000, this is the largest stadium in Africa. It originally opened in 1989 and has hosted numerous important events, including the 1996 African Cup of Nations, Nelson Mandela’s first speech after his release from Robben Island prison, and the funeral of assassinated apartheid resistor Chris Hani.

Soccer City will host the opening game between South Africa and Mexico, the final, and 6 other games. It has undergone significant upgrades for the tournament, including a new exterior design based on traditional African clay pots, with lights added to simulate fire beneath the vessel. Today’s launch of Street View for South Africa arrives just in time to provide us with an excellent exterior view.

And for the very first time, Street View takes us inside the stadium! We can see that the orange seats are punctuated by ten black lines, which at first glance appear to be random. In fact, nine of the lines point towards the other stadiums being used in this World Cup, while the tenth points towards the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, host of the 2006 tournament. These lines are echoed by lines of windows in the exterior design.

The updated Google satellite imagery shows the stadium complete and work progressing on a number of nearby facilities, which one assumes will be used by media and organisers of the event.

We can also see this building with a soccer ball-shaped roof, which is the home of the South African Football Association and the host committee for the World Cup.

Street View reveals that the ball-roof is not quite as round as you might expect of a tournament-quality ball.

In Durban, a short distance from the beach and the Indian Ocean, Moses Mabhida Stadium is one of five newly built venues, holding 70,000 spectators for each of the 7 scheduled games.

The arch spanning the stadium is somewhat similar to the one at the new Wembley Stadium in London, and is an attraction in its own right. The north end has a funicular to carry people to the viewing platform at the top, while more adventurous visitors can climb the 550 steps on the south side.

The truly brave (or foolhardy?) can take the quick way down in the form of a bungee swing, as seen in this YouTube video, which is allegedly “the world’s only stadium swing and the largest swing of any kind anywhere”.

South Africa is unique in that it has three capital cities¹. Cape Town, the legislative (parliament and government) capital has the third largest stadium – the newly constructed Cape Town Stadium – which has a capacity of 69,000.

Eight games will take place here, including a semi-final, but sadly this is one of only a couple of stadiums which weren’t visited by Street View, so we have to be content with a look from a nearby road.

Pretoria is the executive (administrative) capital. Its 51,000 capacity Loftus Versfeld Stadium needed minimal upgrades to meet the standards necessary for the six early-round games it will host. Street View shows it still set up for rugby games.

Bloemfontein is the country’s judicial (legislative) capital. The Free State Stadium will also host six early games, but required significant additions, including new floodlights, and a second tier of seating which brings the capacity to 48,000. The closest Street View access is the barred gate at the entrance to the pitch.

In addition to Soccer City, Johannesburg (the country’s largest city) features Ellis Park Stadium which dates to the 1920s, but which was modernised in the 1980s. It is most often used for rugby (as shown by Street View) and hosted that sport’s World Cup Final in 1995. Temporary seating will bring the capacity to 65,000 for this tournament where it will host seven games.

This stadium has a black moment in its history – in 2001, more than forty people died as a result of a stampede when an estimated 120,000 people (more than double the official capacity) crowded into the stadium during a football match.

The third new venue constructed near the ocean is Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium² in Port Elizabeth. The petal-like roof design has been nicknamed The Sunflower by locals. Eight games will take place here, before almost 50,000 people.

The other two new stadiums are both in the north-eastern part of South Africa, and each will have a capacity around 45,000 for the 4 first-round games they will host.

Polokwane’s venue was named for Peter Mokaba, former leader of the ANC’s youth league. The pitch looks in terrible shape on the satellite image, but Street View reassures us that it is in better condition now, with the sprinklers running as we enter the stadium!

Nelspruit’s Mbombela Stadium is under construction in Google’s satellite images, but we can see the distinctive and vibrant seating patterns. Street View allows us to clearly see the roof supports which were designed to resemble giraffes, a nod to nearby Kruger National Park³.

The final venue on our tour is Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Phokeng⁴. Owned and operated by one of South Africa’s many tribal groups, this 11 year old stadium had to be expanded to a capacity of almost 45,000 for the World Cup, when it will host six games and be the base for the England squad.

More information about all these venues can be found at Wikipedia and the tournament’s official site.

Enjoy the World Cup everyone; may your team (or the team you’ve been allocated in your office sweepstakes) win!

Locations: South Africa / Categories: Buildings, Stadiums and Sport, Street Views

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Of course many of these are easy to see without any special equipment, so for many years scientists on Earth wondered if we can see them all so easy up there, why can’t we see them down here on our planet? Then along came aerial photography…

GSS visited some of the most recognizable impact craters on Earth already, including Barringer Meteor Crater in the United States and Manicouagan Impact Crater in Canada, but updated and enhanced imagery makes these sites worth a second visit.

We start our tour with the largest verified impact crater on Earth, Vredefort Crater in South Africa. Measuring a staggering 250 – 300 km (155 – 186 miles) across, this crater was formed over 2 billion years ago by an asteroid estimated 10 km (6 miles) in size.

Today, the most recognizable feature of the crater is the northwest rim that created the mountains near the town of Parys. Vredefort was also added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2005.

Our next stop is a crater in Northern Ontario, Canada near the city of Sudbury. The Sudbury Basin was formed by a meteorite impact 1.85 billion years ago, creating a round 250-km (155 miles) crater.

Subsequent geological processes like tectonic plate movement then stretched into its current oval shape, which is hard to see on the satellite image. However, the crater shape is strikingly obvious when using Google’s terrain mapping. It is the second largest verified impact site on the planet.

Perhaps the most famous meteorite impact of them all is the one that slammed the Earth in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, and also is the one that scientists believed killed 75% of the species on Earth including the dinosaurs¹.

About 65 million years ago, a 10 km (6 mi) wide meteorite slammed into the Earth and created a 180 km (110 mi) wide crater centered just off the coast of present day Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, the south to southeast rim can still seen with Google’s satellite maps if you know where to look. The Chicxulub crater is the third largest verified impact crater on the planet.

Be sure to check out the other GSS articles on impact craters and other natural landmarks, including the Kebira Crater. Check Wikipedia for more information about the Vredefort Crater, Sudbury Basin, or the Chicxulub Crater. Since there are so many sites around the Earth, we’ll be sure to have more crater articles soon!

Locations: Arizona, Mexico, Ontario, Quebec, South Africa / Categories: Natural Landmarks, World Heritage Sites

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The Republic of San Marino

The unique thing about visiting an enclave is that no matter where you’re coming from, you must travel through another country first, in this case Italy. San Marino is one of the smallest countries in the world, only 60 sq km (23.5 sq mi) in total area, ranking it number 221 out of 233 countries (and outlying territories) in total size.

The Kingdom of Lesotho

An enclave within the country of South Africa, Lesotho‘s other most interesting geographical feature is that its lowest point is the highest of any country in the world! Lesotho also produces one of the most striking visual borders we’ve seen on Google’s satellite images, due to the change in vegetation as you pass from Lesotho’s west side to South Africa.

Vatican City

The smallest sovereign state in the world, Vatican City is an enclave not just inside Italy, but also inside the city of Rome. This is also the world’s only walled enclave, since its small border is marked almost entirely with a city wall.

Of course it’s also home to the Pope and the governing body of the Roman Catholic Church, and although not commonly known as its own country, Vatican City offers clergy, guard members and other workers optional citizenship; they generate their own income from tourist sales; and they even issue their own Euro coins.

Be sure to check out other enclave/exclave GSS articles like Point Roberts, USA, Complicated borders featuring the split personality town of Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau, and Interesting Exclaves of the United States.

Also check out Wikipedia for more information about landlocked countries, San Marino, Lesotho, and Vatican City!

Locations: Italy, South Africa / Categories: Weirdness, World Heritage Sites

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The South African courts convicted Mandela on charges of sabotage committed while he led the military arm of the ANC in their struggle against apartheid.

In 1964, Mandela began his sentence on Robben Island (which we covered in detail last year), where he spent the next 18 years.

In March 1982 Mandela was transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison, south of Cape Town, where he was held at the maximum security building, which is today known as the admission centre. He described Pollsmoor Prison as “the truth of Oscar Wilde’s haunting line about the tent of blue that prisoners call the sky.”¹

In 1988 Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison, a low security farm prison that was often used as stepping stone for releasing lower-risk political prisoners. It was here that the world’s media gathered to record the moment that Mandela was finally released, 27 years after he was first imprisoned.

Of course that was just the beginning. Following his release, Mandela helped lead the way towards multi-racial democracy in South Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and in 1994 became the first President of South Africa to be elected in a fully representative democratic election.

Today there are roads, squares and statues of Nelson Mandela all over the world, all standing as testament to the positive change he helped make possible. This is Nelson Mandela Gardens in Millennium Square, Leeds, and a statue of him in Parliament Square, London.

Sandton Square in Johannesburg was renamed Nelson Mandela Square, and features a 6 metre statue of the former president. Sadly there’s no Street View, but you can actually just about see the statue in the satellite imagery, right in the centre of our thumbnail image (ground-level photo).

In November 2009 the United Nations General Assembly announced that from 2010 the 18th of July, Mandela’s birthday, would be known as ‘Mandela Day’ to mark the enormous importance of his contribution to world freedom.

Locations: England, South Africa / Categories: Buildings, Monuments

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