14 DAY TRIAL // Google has announced the winner of the Model Your Town Competition. The challenge was to recreate your town in 3D for Google Earth using Google’s own SketchUp modeling software. Several hundred towns submitted their entry each vying for the first place. A month and a half ago, Google presented the five finalists and asked everyone to vote on their favorite. In the end, the town of Barranco - Lima, Peru, was voted as the winner.
“On April 1st, we announced the five finalist towns for the Google Model Your Town Competition and asked the public to help pick the winning town. For the past month, participants reviewed the 3D models, explored the buildings in Google Earth and watched videos of the 3D towns,” Allyson McDuffie from Google SketchUp Team wrote.
“Jorge De Albertis Bettocchi, a 38 year-old corporate business attorney, modeled the Barranco District of Lima. He entered the competition to generate pride among his fellow citizens and created his 3D models to serve as a tool for tourism, promotion, investment and preservation of Barranco’s historic architecture,” she added.
The winning town will get a Google-hosted event as part of the prize along with a visit from Google employees later this summer. A donation of $10,000 will also be made for the town’s schools. You can check out the other finalists here. Over 46,000 votes were cast in this final stage of the competition.
The Model Your Town Competition was started to spur involvement in creating 3D models for Google Earth. Google plans to have as many cities and towns recreated in Earth, making it easy for anyone around the world to explore distant locations or even their own town. With the help of volunteers and its continuous efforts, more and more large cities are now available as 3D models in Google Earth. For smaller towns though, it’s harder to find people willing to devote their time so this is how the competition came to be.