Google’s neighborhood boundaries are not the only eyebrow-raising aspect of the information juggernaut’s cartography. The neighborhoods, when mapped in composite as we have done here, leave gaping holes in Brooklyn. Here is what it missed.
Brooklyn Navy Yard
The military complex–turned artsy industrial hub does not contain housing and basically sits in the East River at the foot of Fort Greene, so we could let this slide.
Columbia Waterfront District
The sliver along the New York Harbor above Red Hook is newly residential and does not have a strong neighborhood identity, as its clunky name goes to show, but that does not excuse leaving it a blank spot.
Kensington
The rectangle between Borough Park and Flatbush shows up as a point on the map if searched, but not as a full neighborhood. This should be an easy enough fix.
The sliver between Flatbush and East Flatbush
The area between Bedford and Rogers avenues has got to belong to one or the other. Or should we suggest it be designated “Central Flatbush?”
Ocean Hill
The triangle between Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, and Brownsville is often lumped in with Brownsville, but it is not lumped in with anything by Google’s decentralized team of mapmakers.
Marine Park
A search for the neighborhood that shares a name with the park brings up the park. Marine Park’s outline is obvious, but this might be a trickier thing to address. But don’t ask us how. We are just journalists.— Nathan Tempey
