Let's map our gathering spaces!

Neighbourhood asset mapping is a community-focused way of sharing information about local resources. Asset mapping projects typically focus on resources such as community spaces, skills and strengths of residents, or organizations in the community. Taking an inventory of community assets and displaying them on a map helps to easily identify available resources and address community needs.

Our neighbourhoods team is developing a gathering space asset map and we need your help! Mapping locations will benefit residents who require access to spaces for neighbourhood meetings and events. This tool will also help enable COVID-19 community recovery by supporting the return to in-person gatherings when it is safe to do so.

Neighbours will be able to browse locations across the community, see details about the spaces (capacity, size, amenities), and access contact information to book spaces for meetings and gatherings. To give residents a better sense of each space, photos will be included where possible.

Categories of spaces will include:

• Indoor gathering spaces within recreational facilities, religious spaces, businesses, and community buildings
• Outdoor gathering spaces within parks and green spaces

Developing a gathering space asset map was recommended in the City of Waterloo neighbourhood strategy. The interactive map will be displayed on the city’s new online hub for all things neighbourhoods, currently under development.

The interactive gathering spaces asset map is planned to be available early 2022. For more information, take a look at the workshop session from our Neighbourhood Summit.

Next steps

We have collected information on great spaces to host meetings, events, and social gatherings across Waterloo. Thank you for your help and input throughout the data collection stage. We also have concluded survey #2, thank you to all respondents for your valuable feedback. To check out some of the survey results, visit the news feed below. The project team is currently working to include this feedback in the map tool - stay tuned for more information.