Canada > Manitoba > Winnipeg - New Housing Development

[jprogram]

There's a new neighborhood in development but houses are yet to be built. "Bridgwater Centre" has some roads already constructed, but there are no houses yet. Rather than draw it as an actual sub-locality, it should be appropriate to claim the area as a housing development for now. A website is provided on the edit for more information on the neighborhood.

Link: http://goo.gl/D6TF6

[Flash]

If it is a housing development, it should never be drawn in as a sub-locality.  Use "Housing Developement".

People refer to the few blocks around them as a neighbourhood, but in reality neighbourhoods are very large areas as they include housing, schools, parks, industry and many other elements.

[jprogram]

The area is considered to be a sub-locality according to the city. However, since the area is not fully developed yet, I wasn't sure the area should be declared as a sub-locality yet; but I was basing my edit on similar "Housing Development" areas nearby. If you look near the area, there are about three neighborhoods are there drawn as "Housing Development."

This is my original thought when adding that area:
1) Draw the area as a "Housing Development" when new homes are currently being built, especially if the area is new to new houses. If the neighborhood has matured enough to include schools, parks, industry, etc. then...
2) ...turn the "Housing Development" area into a sub-locality.

[Flash]

That area is incredibly small.  Yes, you are right in thinking that if the city itself defines it as a neighborhood then we ignore the normal definition of a neighbourhood (which is not just Google's definition, but is the accepted definition used by urban planners, economists, geographers, etc.); but there would need to be clear evidence that they consider it as such.  Can you point to some, as my own search of winnipeg.ca didn't find any.  I do find that Manitoba Housing, the developers, are calling it a neighbourhood and defining what you have mapped as "Phase I".  I am still being given the impression that this is a housing development, and that the final development will be even larger.  I'd love to look at what you've found from the city.

[Saikrishna Arcot]

I don't think you can change a feature from Housing Development into a Sub-locality/Neighborhood. Among other reasons, they have different data fields, which makes a simple conversion difficult, if not impossible (at least for us; I don't know if Google has tools to easily convert from one to the other).

[jprogram]

I got three links that may help you.

If you look at http://winnipeg.ca/interhom/maps/ , you'll find what's called "iMap" to show the map of Winnipeg. Once you are there, make sure the drop down menu is set to "assessment" and scroll to the neighborhood. You should see the boundary of the neighborhood, although the name for what supposed to be "Bridgwater Centre" is incorrect. This it to show they in fact made "Bridgwater Centre", among others, considered to be actual neighborhoods.

As for the name inconsistency, if you take a look at one of Winnipeg's major projects at http://winnipeg.ca/publicworks/MajorProjects/WaverleyWestARP/default.asp , you'll see a map that identify the neighborhood as "Bridgewater Centre."

There's a website about the neighborhood along with some maps of the land development. http://www.bridgwaterneighbourhoods.com/bridgwater-centre/

It's a good thing you have mentioned the phases in development because that would be more ideal to map out the housing developments that way. In this case, all phases of each neighborhood development are drawn within the boundary, but it would be appropriate to modify those boundaries occasionally to shape the areas that are still in development or in new phases. Which reminds me: "Bridgwater Forest" is already done by the looks of it.

[jprogram]

That's true. That means once the housing development is finished, that boundary shall be removed and, if the city legally calls it a neighborhood, add the sub-locality/neighborhood boundary.

[Flash]

I work in assessment.  In assessment we divide things up into neighbourhoods based on the similarities between house prices, in other words in each neighbourhood the house prices are rise and fall together, and one can set factors for that neighbourhood to multiply against the base house prices when providing assessed values.  In other words, all we look at to define neighbourhoods in housing price patterns.  These assessment neighbourhoods are something completely different than actual neighbourhoods in definition, size, determining factors, etc.  The neighbourhood I live in as per my city is completely different than the assessment neighbourhood I live in.  There is probably also a census neighbourhood used by Statistics Canada, but we are not mapping either assessment or statistics neighbourhoods.

The map you point out for the Waverley project does have the Bridgepoint Centre name on it; but the map seems to indicate even more that these are names of housing developments.

The website I had already found.  That is to promote the development.  Developers will often call what they are building a neighbourhood; that is an advertising method, but that does not make it a neighbourhood.

You will notice that you yourself are calling this a development.  I think that's an important indicator right there, you call it that because developments are built.  Neighbourhoods cannot be built or dictated.  Neighbourhoods are defined by areas in which, in general, the people have similar economic status and similar political views among other things.  These developments are small and right beside each other; there is not going to be significant differences between the residents in each one.

You also talk about calling it a housing development until it is complete and then turning it into a neighbourhood.  You are not understanding that there is a big difference between the two.  We don't do that; neighbourhoods are made up of multiple housing developments plus much, much more.  These have all the hallmarks of housing developments and nothing beyond that.

[Flash]

On Sunday, December 23, 2012 7:01:35 PM UTC-8, jprogram wrote:

That's true. That means once the housing development is finished, that boundary shall be removed and, if the city legally calls it a neighborhood, add the sub-locality/neighborhood boundary.

I searched the city website using both their own search feature and Google.  If this was an official neighbourhood name, I should find dozens of references to show me that.  I found none. 

[jprogram]

I have read about adding "Housing Development" features at the help article, but I find it too vague and lacking important examples. There are some, but they didn't quite help me.
It is true that I don't know exactly what the feature "Housing Development" means other than taking the feature's title and interpret as new developing homes. I was relying too much on other accepted "Housing Development" features nearby and just went with it. Now, since the terminology is far from clear, I won't continue to declare new developing areas as sub-localities or neighborhoods. Therefore, I'm cancelling my edit as linked to this topic.

[Flash]

It can be confusing, especially since most of us grew up thinking the three block radius around our house was our "neighbourhood".  That doesn't quite make sense when you think about it now, though, as how can everyone live in the exact middle of their neighbourhood.

I have taken multiple university courses that have defined and studied neighbourhoods; but of course the average mapper has not.  Also, what do my courses matter if Google defines a neighbourhood differently.  Fortunately, it turns out that Google's definition very closely follows the scholarly definition.

The topic has come up many times.  Back when this was not a user support forum, the best description of the differences between neighbourhood and housing development that came straight from Google can be found at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/google-mapmaker/I6LtWTxLcxA/bsADeqEhO80J.