The ultimate assignment

I may have found my new job - being a Trekker for Google Maps (provided I could choose my destinations).

It is all due to another of WebUrbanist's posts - 'Extreme Street View: Google Employee Maps Deserted Island'

The abandoned apartments on Gunkanjima

I've blogged about Gunkanjima before in 2009 in Abandoned towns. Occupied for over a century, and briefly the world’s most densely-populated island - Gunkanjima, off the coast of Nagasaki in Japan is now one of the loneliest places on the planet. A giant concrete wall surrounds the ship-shaped ‘Battleship Island’, giving it its nickname. At one point it was packed with an average of 1.4 residents per square meter of space, almost like an overcrowded sea vessel. In the 19^th century the island was a coal mining facility with residences for 5,000 miners. By the 1970s mining was in decline and the island was abandoned. It has transformed into a decayed yet eerie place as nature has reclaimed much of the land mass.

A tree grows in Gunkanjima

The island featured as the villian’s secret hideout in the James Bond “Skyfall” movie.

Parts of the deserted island have been reopened to the public in 2009 and become something of a tourist destination, but Google secured special permission to go beyond the cordoned-off areas and pass through long-abandoned buildings that only intrepid infiltrators have seen in recent decades past.

The lone urban explorer passing through the haunting multi-storey ruins

Strapped with panoramic photography equipment, this video shows a lone Google employee crawling through rubble, scaling partially caved-in abandonments and standing on precarious roofs, all to document one of the most unique deserted cities on the globe.

Thanks to Google’s Street View mapping, virtual visitors can now tour the corroded corridors, crumbling stairs and uncertain roofs from a much safer distance, a 360° panorama for urban explorers.

The track of the Google Trekker

There are other YouTube clips of other Google Map locations - The Grand Canyon, Venice, the Galapagos Islands..., but I may wait till they improve on the 40lb backpack.