One for the future

Yesterday in the offices of the Youth Cabinet we were debating the foundational information needed to do spatial/service/business planning in the City of Toronto (ie take action of any sort). As open data policies spread through the City and throughout local civil society, the common denominator is geography. Each department, agency or major local organization depicts/divides Toronto's geography in different ways. The alternative ways of administering or servicing Toronto's Districts gives us insights into the "Why" of jurisdictions. Equally important, it shows us where overlaps occur and exactly which public servants or civil administrators are responsible for an area. Conclusion: every city should be collaborating internally to produce a "super base map" composed only of border files layered together in an easy-to-understand way.

Amassing all these layer files from every group in the City is no small task, but to do anything less would be to defer democracy. Every actor and resident is deserving of a full picture of Toronto and a full directory of responsible servants/administrators correlated to their coded areas or zones of engagement.

How do we get there from here?

At our City Hall meeting yesterday we sketched out a framework that should help guide this mammoth effort. It's daunting but once it's done we can move on to really using Open Data - to further programmes development and neighbourhood planning. Without a map as we've described the plotting of geographic data will be impotent - action and redevelopment of the city requires an understanding of, jurisdictions, effected entities, combined of course with the ability to convene motivated parties.

The rough framework sketched out November 25th, 2014 follows.

Types of Geographic Shapefiles for Management & Development of the City--

1. Areas of Governance (Official, Wards, other)

2. Areas of Administration (Departmental/Agency relative division of the City)

3. Areas of Strategizing (Delimited areas of the city in sync with geographic objectives)

4. Zones of Experimentation (Zones nested within areas of strategizing or administration where investment is being encouraged)

5. Spaces of Opportunity (Specific parcels/multiple parcels identified for special investment, with year of availability)

6. .. is there one more category / layer of geography?

That's my contribution for the Fall. Hope 2014 wraps up well for Planning. Looking forward to helping Planning work with its brethren throughout the City in 2015. Open Data efforts are not about data, as your department understands well. It is .. an historical opportunity to -- a)  get reacquainted with the challenges faced by "adjacent departments" in the city, b) rediscover a common language for expressing departmental data based on shared commitments and responsibilities in the City, and c) model for Ontario and the globe what a collaborative, aspirational bureaucracy looks like in practice. Normalizing progressive practices requires aggressive targets in order to overcome inertia and make it up the current hill to a new plateau. The 5 types of geographic data outline a daunting and aggressive set of targets that meet the challenge given in November's meeting - "let all zones be known". If some parts of the Official Plan can't be digitized, then let's move the conversation into an affirmative space - what all can be shared and how can we do so in concert with other struggling but committed departments?