On March 11, 2025, I had the privilege of being invited by Civic Tech Toronto (@civictechto.bsky.social) to present at one of their Hacknights. If you want to check it out, please do so below:
I didn’t know what I’d say until I made that presentation. I got started the same night as I got the invite, a month and a half prior. But as I started to lay things out and explain, and as I learned about the amazing products of, team behind and participants of Civic Tech Toronto, my approach changed.
This whole website started because of walking. It evolved when I expanded it to create projects. And now I offer over 30 datasets for download in a couple formats to make it a more accessible to a user’s abilities, and provided under a free licence.
It’s a lot of information; nearly 3,000 individual features that I have either modified from open data, for created myself from scratch.
In this day and age, now more than ever, I am doing this on a domain space that belongs to me, and I can control. It will not disappear into the abyss because a billionaire buys the platform, starts pulling wires in the server room and slashing the support team.
This is what fueled my content migration from the ex-bird site. But it now also underpins this website, and the information I share on it.
I don’t have enough time right now to do deep dives on this data. But I don’t want it sitting and collecting dust. I put it out there, in case someone else wants to explore it, and maybe make something new out of it.
And maybe, just maybe, make something happen from it.
I alone can’t make all the changes I want to see in the Greater Golden Horseshoe. It takes many voices in a chorus to push for what we want. I’m happy to be part of that movement, and do some of the leg work (pun intended) to help make these proposals evidence-based.
I hope to make more presentations like this in the future. I also have it on my never-ending to-do list to make some videos to help showcase my data, and how to use it.
Metroscapes 