How to find surrounding or nearby areas in Google Maps?

Suppose I have a Google maps co-ordinate in one sublocality, is it possible to find surrounding sublocalities in, say a 5 mile radius?

My guess is we can probably zoom into that co-ord at a hi开发者_开发技巧gh zoom level, like 13 or 14,but can we capture the labels on the map around our co-ord? That would be fine for my purposes.

Has anyone attempted this, or is there a demo lying around somewhere?

Google places webservice is the thing you are looking for.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/places/

I've never tried this before, but this api should be what you are looking for: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/localsearch/