Google Street View's Unmappable City

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0:35Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast. As a reminder, 404 Media is a journalist-owned company and needs your support. Subscribers get bonus episodes, bonus segments, and early access to interview episodes like this one. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. I'm Jason Kebler, and this week I'm talking to documentary filmmaker Chris Parr. Chris goes by Chris the Producer on YouTube and has made a number of short tech documentaries that I've really liked. This week, I'm talking to him about a video he made called, I mapped Google's only secret city, which is about a Google Maps anomaly I had no idea about until I saw his video.

1:11In just 18 years, more than 10 million miles driven across 100 countries using cars, planes, and camels, stitching over 22 billion images together gives us all access to planet Earth. Except for one place. Chris grew up near a town called North Oaks, Minnesota, which is one of the richest, most exclusive towns in Minnesota. It's also the only city in the United States that is not on Google Street View. This is because of the way the town is set up. The entirety of the town is owned by the people who live there, and there's no city-owned property. Even the roads are owned by the people who live there.

1:50This has created a situation where North Oaks has been able to ban Google Street View cars from entering, raising questions about who gets privacy in America and how they get it. Chris set out to map North Oaks and went to pretty absurd lengths to do so. Turns out it's actually pretty easy to become a registered FAA pilot. So I strapped my 360 camera to the bottom of my drone and headed straight for North Oaks. Here's my interview with Chris about this process.

2:21i'm talking to chris parr very good uh documentary filmmaker who did uh a video recently that i thought was amazing um you mapped the only unmapped city in america on google maps street view i had no idea that there was anywhere in the united states that's not on street view can you tell Tell me a little bit about North Oaks, Minnesota and why it is not on Street View. Yeah, for sure. So North Oaks, Minnesota is a suburb of the Twin Cities. It's about... Well, I live in Minneapolis. It's 14 minutes away from me. So it's very close to the urban metropolis. It's known by Minnesotans as a place where executives and CEOs live.

3:12Famously, Walter Mondale is from North Oaks, but also like UnitedHealthcare executives, Target executives. Why people know of it in particular is because in 2007, when Google Street View was launched, Most of the country was on Google Street View, including North Oaks. But the North Oaks mayor at the time sent a letter to Google saying that they trespassed because technically speaking, the entire city of North Oaks is private property. So Google complied. They took the images down. Up until a few weeks ago, you could not view any Street View images on Google Maps in North Oaks. so so as i understand it like it's not just that they put up no trespassing signs it's that literally like the roads in this town are owned by the private residents of this town like it's a it's kind of a complicated setup that they have right yeah and to be honest i don't fully understand it i talked to a mapping professor uh dr patrick mcaffey who kind of did some background research after I asked him.

4:26Basically, what he told me is that my house, I don't know where you live, Jason, but most people's houses, their property does go into the center of the road, but there's an easement that allows the public to access the roadway. In North Oaks, that easement does not exist. You own, your property goes into the center of the road. The person on the other side of the road from you owns into the center of the road, leaving no public passage. So the entire city is owned by the residents and managed by effectively a homeowners association. So you set out to add North Oaks to Street View. How, I guess like, what was the plan originally?

5:13Like, what were you going to do originally? I mean, honestly, I just wanted to do a video essay about North Oaks. It's a fascinating place. It's not geographic. Well, yeah, it's a geographic oddity. I mean, the fact that it's the only unmapped city in the country on Google Street Views is like a powerful YouTube title and thumbnail. So being a YouTube filmmaker, I thought this will be fun. As I was making the video, I realized that the airspace above it operates differently than the property on the ground. So having a little bit of knowledge of drones, I thought you could effectively map the city with a drone.

5:55There's like a gray area on how low you can fly the drone. Technically, though, if you launch your drone from public property, which anybody can do if you're a registered drone pilot, you can fly it straight up and above private property. Yeah, this is actually something that I used to report on a lot was like FAA drone regulations and things like that. And that was something quite interesting that I learned is basically the feds own the airspace, starting arguably from one foot above the ground. I know there's been a couple of different court cases about the specifics of that. But generally, it's like the airspace is public airspace starting like really low so what did you do you like stood just outside of north oaks and you flew a drone around and took video essentially yeah i mean i just i just uh parked my car on the shoulder and i mean i went to like i think six or seven different spots the city's like fairly large it's you know it's three miles by three miles so it's nine square feet, or nine square miles.

7:05But yeah, I mean, I just pulled my car over onto the shoulder and popped my drone up and flew it over. And I don't know if I should be able to do that. I know that I am able to do it, but should we be able to do that was kind of the question that I wanted to tackle. And the YouTube comments are pretty, pretty crazy, man. They're all over the They're very split 50-50 on that question.

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9:28I think what you did is super interesting and kind of cool, for sure. That's why we're talking. But also, it's weird because this is something that a very rich city can do. This is not something that like the only reason that it is this geographic anomaly is because it is like super exclusive and rich and like planned for this and then also from what i could tell from your video it's like this city has a lot of surveillance like it's not just that they have no trespassing signs it's that they have like automated license plate reader cameras at every entrance to the city don't they i don't know about every entrance but definitely like the main I think there's at least five entrances that have, yeah, surveillance cameras at the entrances, entrances and exits.

10:16Yeah. There are some that, there are some like more obscure entrances, I think, that don't have cameras. But yeah, for the most part, yeah. There's another little ripple to this that I thought was very interesting as well, which is basically like FAA regulations say that you have to have line of sight of the drone at all times. meaning that you need to be able to see the drone at all times. And the city is big enough that that was impossible. And so it was impossible to map the whole thing without going into North Oaks. And so you went to this park that's in North Oaks, but you had to be invited to the park.

11:01Can you just tell me what's the deal with this park? uh yeah so from from what what i um found online uh according to north oaks ordinances you can you can go like visit a friend you know or if you're a contractor working on a house you can you can go into the city but you have to be an invited guest so yeah i i being on the shoulder of the road outside of north oaks i couldn't get access to the the interior of the city uh so i made a craigslist post asking for somebody to invite me. And I got an absolute ton of responses. I think I took it down like an hour or two after I posted it. And yeah, started texting with this woman named Maggie and she invited me.

11:55So I technically had the invite to go to the park. I know a lot of people have asked me like oh do you think she really is from North Oaks I do because she's told me that when she was a kid she used to love going skating on the ice rinks at West Rec Park and the only way that you would know that because there are no street view images of that is if you have been skating uh at those rinks so yeah so I went to the park and launched the drone from the park and flew around the interior of the city from there. Did Maggie know what you were doing? Actually, I might have mentioned that I was going to fly a drone.

12:37I'd have to go back and look at the text messages. But a friend of mine that's a drone enthusiast, we used to go to a park and fly drones together. So I didn't think it was super unusual. but okay so you you did map it and um you were able to submit you know images to google street view and i believe you mapped you you put it on the map for the first time ever but i'm looking at street view now and and it's not mapped it's it's gone um do you know what like what happened so i've been in a battle with uh people that flag the images from what i understand if you if you flag the image as a privacy concern, I would imagine that Google doesn't want to deal with it, so they just immediately take the image down.

13:31There's like thousands and millions of photospheres, so they can't manually go and review all of them. But there's also nothing stopping me from just putting more up there. So actually, if you go onto Street View and zoom into Westrec Park, and take out your little peg man, I think there's one very small photosphere remaining. Do you see it? Oh, I see. West Direct Park. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. It says uploaded by Chris Park, 21, January 2026. And it's very snowy. I see a basketball court. I see some... I'm actually flying below that image. If you can zoom straight. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see you.

14:20So I don't know why that dot is so small. I think that whoever... I got to think somebody from the town or somebody involved is flagging all of these. And because that dot is so small, they just haven't gone and flagged it. It's pretty funny because usually on Street View, you can click around and essentially drive your man. And it's like this, you can't. It's just, I'm just stuck here. Yeah, I know. So have you heard from anyone from North Oaks, like the mayor or the town in any way? Yeah, I would say no. But as of yesterday, I don't know how much I want to say about this because I want to talk to a lawyer.

15:10I have to talk to a lawyer now. But I did get a legal letter from the law firm representing the HOA. It's not asking me to take any of the videos down or anything. Basically, they say don't come back. I see. Is the gist of it. I see. I don't know. I don't know. I think that it is very odd that only one town in the entire country is not mapped. I mean, from what I understand, it is the only municipality that has been built with that easement property line set up. So that's why it is the way to... I mean, there's a lot of gated communities. If you can't physically drive into a space, it's not on Street View.

15:53But there's no single municipality except for North Oaks. Well, keep us updated. I'm going to hear how this how this ends but I think it's a cool project and sort of just talks about like who who is allowed to have privacy and who is not I think yeah for sure I I think the last thing I'll say I I think um I think the only reason that um my cause has sympathy is because it is a wealthy community uh if it was not I think everybody would be like why why'd you do this, man. This makes no sense. I mean, I think that's right. I think that's right. But it is also like the only reason that this system is set up in this way is because it's such a wealthy community.

16:40Yes. Cool. Well, that's all I have. But this is very cool. I'm glad you did this. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for taking an interest in it.

16:55thanks so much for listening this episode was produced by kaleidoscope and edited by elissa mccalf we'll be back with a new episode in a few days

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