You would have to be living under a very large rock not to have noticed the housing crisis in Canada. Skyrocketing prices, labyrinthine planning processes and a seemingly insurmountable backlog—it’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as the past decade. Enter Esri Canada, a company that’s been mapping the country for 40 years, and now plans to help us navigate the housing crisis with a game-changing acquisition.
“Right now, it’s a very information opaque-business,” says Miller. “You have to be an expert to understand how to navigate the system, and policy-makers are getting bogged down in the details. That’s when we found Ratio City, a company that’s tackling exactly this.
One of Ratio City’s contribution’s is the ability to import open data directly into a widely shareable database. Their user-friendly platform, aptly described by Miller as “no assembly required, batteries included,” is purpose-built for ease of use. Even laypeople can grasp the intricacies of planning data after about an hour of training.