About NearbyBuilds
NearbyBuilds pulls together what five Canadian cities publish about development and construction into one searchable, mapped place: 657,958 municipal records, grouped into 12,094 projects totalling 277,367 housing units.
This information is already public — but scattered across PDF meeting minutes, ArcGIS map services and three different open-data portals, each with its own structure and vocabulary. None of it answers the question people actually have: what is being built near me? This site turns it into one map, one address search, and one page per project.
How the data is produced
One script per source type queries each city's official feed, then the same pipeline runs over all of them: geocoding against that city's own address register, classifying use and works type, grouping nearby filings into projects, and full-text indexing. No data is purchased, scraped from behind a login, or hand-entered.
| Gatineau | Planning advisory committee (CCU) minutes Ville de Gatineau · docweb.gatineau.ca 946 records, 2019-05-13 → 2026-04-20 |
|---|---|
| Ottawa | Development Applications City of Ottawa · maps.ottawa.ca 1,626 records, 2008-11-24 → 2026-06-26 |
| Calgary | Building Permits (c2es-76ed) City of Calgary · data.calgary.ca 230,409 records, 2015-01-02 → 2026-07-15 · ingest floor 2015-01-01 |
| Edmonton | General Building Permits (24uj-dj8v) City of Edmonton · data.edmonton.ca 171,355 records, 2015-01-02 → 2026-07-14 · ingest floor 2015-01-01 |
| Montréal | Construction, transformation and demolition permits Ville de Montréal · donnees.montreal.ca 253,622 records, 2015-01-05 → 2026-07-13 · ingest floor 2015-01-01 |
Refreshed weekly. Last refresh: 2026-07-15. Per-city figures and licences on The data.
What this site cannot tell you
Each city has a structural limit we cannot work around, because it is in the source. Here they are, unvarnished:
- Gatineau — Gatineau does not publish row-level issued building permits, only monthly aggregate statistics. The CCU sees only work that needs discretionary approval, so a zoning-compliant house extension never appears here. Major projects are well covered — they always trigger a review.
- Ottawa — These are applications, not permits: they say what someone has asked to build, not what has been built. Ottawa publishes no row-level issued-permit feed. Unit counts and descriptions come from the city's application-detail service, which covers roughly 85–92% of 2025–26 applications but few before 2022, so older entries show type and status only.
- Calgary — No storey counts and no written project description — the summaries on this site are composed from the permit's class, work type, unit count and value. Calgary's housingunits field reads 0 on many genuinely multi-unit buildings, so unit totals undercount; the estimated project cost is the more reliable size signal.
- Edmonton — No storey counts and no permit-status lifecycle — every row is already issued, so recency is the only progress signal. The units-added field is empty on roughly a quarter of records, mostly older ones, and about 6% of permits carry no coordinates.
- Montréal — No project value and no status lifecycle. The dwelling-unit field is empty on about 87% of records, so on the rest the count is read out of the French description of the works and is an estimate. Around 2% of records carry placeholder coordinates and are treated as ungeocoded.
Two limits apply site-wide. First, a record is not a building: an issued permit or an approved application means a project cleared an administrative step, not that it is built or even started. Second, classification is automatic — unit counts, use type and works type are derived from the city's own text or codes, and sometimes get it wrong.
Corrections
Something wrong on a page? Every record links to the city's original — if ours disagrees with theirs, theirs is right, and we want to know. Email hello@nearbybuilds.com with the page URL; corrections land in the next refresh cycle (weekly). If the error is in the city's feed, we will say so and point you at the right municipal office.
We do not remove a record for being inconvenient — these are public documents — but we will correct any factual inaccuracy against the source.
Frequently asked questions
Who produces this site?
NearbyBuilds is an independent project, unaffiliated with and unfunded by any municipality. It is built and maintained by one person. All data comes from the open-data portals and public documents of the cities it covers.
Are the figures checked by hand?
No. Records are loaded and classified automatically from the official feeds, with no line-by-line human review. That is exactly why every page links to its source: the source is authoritative, our page is an index. Tell us about any discrepancy at hello@nearbybuilds.com.
Can I reuse this data?
The underlying data belongs to the cities and is published under their own licences (listed on The data page). Our aggregated pages and JSON API are free to read; cite “NearbyBuilds” with a link, and cite the source city too if you re-publish its figures.
Why do some cities show far more than others?
Because cities do not publish the same thing. Calgary, Edmonton and Montréal publish issued permits row by row — what is actually being built. Ottawa publishes development applications — what is proposed. Gatineau publishes only its planning committee's minutes, which cover just the projects needing discretionary approval. How complete each city looks here follows how complete its source is.