Mar 08 2009
The Star shines with Toronto neighbourhoods map
The Toronto Star has been doing some good work since I panned their website a year ago.
Now they have comments, which is great (but why do they have “Alert a moderator” when all comments have to be approved by a moderator? And why don’t they mention that a comment won’t appear right away?), and they’ve been doing some cool things with Google Maps.
The latest effort is a map of all the named neighbourhoods in Toronto, which (and I’m sure this is true as well in other cities as well) can be a great source of pride and emotional attachment.
It’s fairly well done, though I’d like to see a bit more information in the bubbles that pop up when you click a neighbourhood.
It could be the beginning of an actual hyperlocal news effort. If they geolocate the GTA stories that go in their database, they could offer a collection of news stories (and other info they have in their toronto.com databases) and then you could select your neighbourhood and see all those stories. Preferably with an RSS feed just for your neighbourhood, OK guys, if you’re thinking this way?
Conversely you could see all those stories plotted on your neighbourhood’s map.
One question for the hyperlocal effort, though, is what they will do with all those grey areas on the map. Stories that occur in those zones should be linked to some kind of named entity, I suppose, even if it’s just the nearest intersection.
Here’s a link to the shapefile they are using. As they say, it’s a work in progress. They’re letting people quibble about neighbourhood names and boundaries in the comments, which is a great idea. It’ll become an important resource for Torontonians.
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