North Oaks, Minnesota is the only city in the United States that is not on Google Maps Street View. YouTube documentarian Chris Parr, who grew up not too far from North Oaks, set out to change that earlier this year. For a brief few days, he literally put North Oaks on the map. And then it was gone again.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s known by Minnesotans as a place where executives and CEOs live,\u201d Parr told 404 Media. \u201cFamously Walter Mondale is from North Oaks, but also like United Healthcare executives and Target executives.\u201dNorth Oaks has managed to largely stay unmapped on Street View because of the way the city handles its streets. In almost every city and town in the United States, property owners give an easement to their local government for the roads in front of their homes (or don\u2019t have any claim to the roads at all). In North Oaks, homeowners\u2019 property extends into the middle of the street, meaning there is literally no \u201cpublic\u201d property in the city, and the roads are maintained by the North Oaks Homeowners\u2019 Association (NOHOA): \u201cthe City owns no roads, land, or buildings. The 50-60 miles of roads in the city are owned by the NOHOA members whose property extends to the center of the road subject to easements in favor of NOHOA,\u201d the homeowners association\u2019s website, which has very little information on it and notes that it is \u201cunable to share most private documents with the public.\u201d The roads entering North Oaks have no trespassing signs posted and automated license plate readers.<\/p>\n
In the early days of Google Maps, North Oaks was on Street View. But in May, 2008, the city threatened Google with a lawsuit because its Street View cars had trespassed. Google deleted its Street View images and North Oaks hasn\u2019t been on Street View since.\u00a0“It’s not the hoity-toity folks trying to figure out how to keep the world away,” then-Mayor Thomas Watson told the Star Tribune in 2008. “They [Google] really didn’t have any authorization to go on private property.”Google Maps allows people to upload their own images, however. And Parr set out to find a way to map North Oaks without actually going there. So he began mapping it with a drone.\u201cIt\u2019s a geographic oddity,\u201d Parr said. \u201cI realized the airspace above North Oaks operates differently than the property on the ground. I thought you could effectively map the city with a drone.\u201d\u00a0Parr is right. The national airspace is technically managed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and \u201cairspace\u201d starts directly above the ground, which is something I covered over and over in the early days of consumer drones as towns sought to ban drones in certain areas.\u201cTechnically, if you launch your drone from public property, which anyone can do if you\u2019re a registered drone pilot, you can fly it straight up and above private property,\u201d Parr said. And so Parr stood at \u201csix or seven different spots\u201d directly outside the boundary of North Oaks and flew his drone around. \u201cI just pulled my car over onto the shoulder and popped my drone up and flew it over,\u201d he added.There were parts of North Oaks that he couldn\u2019t reach by drone from outside the boundaries of the city, so eventually he decided he needed an invite into the city to go to a park within its boundaries to keep flying his drone.\u00a0\u201cAccording to North Oak\u2019s ordinances, you can go like, visit a friend, or if you\u2019re a contractor working on a house, you can go into the city, but you have to be an invited guest,\u201d Parr said. \u201cI made a Craigslist post asking for somebody to invite me and I got an absolute ton of responses. I started texting with this woman named Maggie and she invited me, so technically I had the invite to go to the park.\u201dParr then took his drone footage and uploaded it to Google Maps. For a few glorious days, North Oaks was mapped. And then it was gone.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve since been in a battle with the people who flag the images,\u201d he said. He also got a letter from a law firm representing the North Oaks Homeowners Association. \u201cIt\u2019s not asking me to take any of the videos down or anything, but basically they say, \u2018Don\u2019t come back.\u2019\u201dParr\u2019s experiment and documentary raises questions, of course, about who gets to have privacy in America. A wealthy enclave has set up the legal and surveillance infrastructure to be able to prevent being mapped. The rest of us, meanwhile, are subject to all sorts of surveillance by our neighbors and law enforcement. \u201cThe only reason it\u2019s set up this way is because it\u2019s such a wealthy community,\u201d Parr said. \u201cI know that I was able to do this, but I don\u2019t know if I should be able to do this, and that\u2019s kind of the question that I wanted to tackle. The YouTube comments are pretty crazy man. They\u2019re all over the place. They\u2019re very split 50\/50 on that question.\u201dNorth Oaks did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"