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UrbanToronto has a surprise for you this morning: we have new features today that will bring you more information, more quickly! Building upon our 2.0 launch in 2010 which brought a hugely improved user experience to the site, we are happy to share the fruits of our latest efforts to make this the best site to find everything there is to know about the ongoing development of — and life in — our wonderful and crazy-making home town.
The Map
The first thing frequent readers will notice is the addition of a new interactive map window, and a simple link to it, to the banner area of our front page. This is our brand new UrbanToronto Development Map: a great new way to search for individual projects geographically, and a fast way to see what areas are seeing a little or a lot of development now and in the future.
Every day the map will open on a different project — one which we are spotlighting as Project of the Day — but like any interactive map, you have full controls for moving about, zooming in and out, you can switch to satellite view, and in conjunction with our dataBase, the UrbanToronto Development Map is fully searchable.
While we are adding new projects all the time, there are currently 577 projects across the GTA from our dataBase linked to their location. Want to see just condos, or maybe just public spaces? There are filtering options for you to refine the results. Want to see just completed projects? Or ones that are under construction? You'll find filters for that too.
You can even ask the map to just show developments by a particular developer, and that includes not only the residential condominium developers, but you could also choose to see just Metrolinx or TTC projects, or Waterfront Toronto projects, or a rental or office or retail developer. As time passes and more and more projects are linked, the map will become an ever more useful resource, no matter what type of development you're looking for.
The dataBase
While the map is a whole new way to search the site, the UrbanToronto dataBase that the map depends upon has gotten a new user interface too. The new landing page is a model of simplicity, but gives you lots of options, and much faster access to what you're looking for.
You can choose to search by project name (that's the default), or you can search via any company involved in a project that we track. That includes developers, architects, landscape architects, interior designers, builders, and sales and marketing firms.
Click on a company name, and our new company profile pages are one-stop place to find out all you need to know about a company, including all of their projects their projects, past & present, that we are tracking. We think you will have some fun with that, and you may be surprised at what you learn too.
The dataBase landing page will also get you quickly to the Forum threads for a project, and while it's ordered alphabetically by default, you'll be able to sort it other ways too. Give it a try, have fun!
Feedback
We'd love to know what you think of the changes. Are you liking them? Do you have more suggestions for us? Do you know of projects that we have missed? Let us know below in the space provided for comments or send a message here!
