I was reading through the Google Earth Blog today, and saw that Brussels, Belgium is looking pretty slick in Google Earth thanks to thousands of new 3D models that Google pushed out recently. Yes you read that correctly, thousands of new 3D models. And the amazing thing is, they’re all user-created, so somewhere we have thousands of “digital Frank Gehry’s” to thank for such an amazing collection of work!
I’ve long been a fan of Google Earth, and I think that it’s greatly underutilized in many schools, especially as a simple way to explore cities, locations, and environments students may be studying in History, Geography, or Literature courses. So I wandered over to Google’s 3D Warehouse, where users can post and share their 3D creations made using SketchUp (Google’s 3D sketching software), and started poking around the Cities in Development Collection. I did a quick sort by popularity, clicked on each of the continents, and low and behold, these are 30 of the most popular city collections of 3D models by continent (sorry Antarctica fans, it didn’t make the cut).
Africa
- Harare, Zimbabwe
- Cairo, Egypt
- Casablanca, Morocco
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Pretoria, South Africa
- view other popular collections of 3D models of African cities here
Asia
- Dubai, UAE
- Osaka, Japan
- Mumbi, India
- Fuzhou, China
- Tokyo Bay, Japan
- view other popular collections of 3D models of Asian cities here
Europe
- Paris, France
- London, England
- Rome, Italy
- Istanbul, Turkey
- Barcelona, Spain
- view other popular collections of 3D models of European cities here
North America
- New York, USA
- Miami, USA
- San Jose, USA
- Philadelphia, USA
- Los Angeles, USA
- view other popular collections of 3D models os North American cities here (Canadian and Mexican cities included)
Oceania
- Sydney, Australia
- Adelaide, Australia
- Melbourne, Australia
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Wellington, New Zealand
- view other popular collections of 3D models of Oceania cities here
South America
- Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
- Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Buenos Aries, Argentina
- Santiago, Chile
- Lima, Peru
- view other popular collections of 3D models of South American cities here
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