Tag: Geospatial Data

City of London staff are awesome

So, this time for 2026’s municipal elections, I sent an email to the City of London in late February, asking:

Hi there, I’m looking to create more varieties of accessible data for residents of London for this upcoming municipal election.

Can I get an export of a KML file (and if possible, a shapefile, too) of the 2026 Electoral Wards ArcGIS map from staff, please?

Thanks so much!

Ben Durham

And, as city staff do (because they’re all quite awesome human beings and are responsive to requests), they got back to me with:

Hi Ben,

Thanks for reaching out about our Electoral Ward 2026 data.

I am working with the appropriate teams to make this data available on our Open Data site by the end of next week.

I will reach out to let you know when the data has been published to our site. Please let me know if you need the data sooner.

Thanks,

Geospatial Infrastructure Systems Group (GISG)
Construction & Infrastructure Services
City of London

And a few business days later, I got another email, stating that:

The 2026 Electoral Ward data is now available on our Open Data site: 2026 Electoral Wards | City of London Open Data

Please reach out with any spatial data or map requests.

So, I thanked them and went to download the KML file, which I knew would play well with Google My Maps. Then I went through the import process and relabeled the Wards, according to the data that is available on the City of London’s Maps webpage.

Done and done! Now you have a simple link to click when you need to peruse London’s 2026 Electoral Ward Boundary Map! Which you can share via this link: bendurham.ca/2026map, which is a simple way to get there via a redirect that I set up.

The Main Problem with London’s Mapping Software

So why did I even bother to do this custom Google Map? Well, ArcGIS is a very detailed and helpful tool for mappers and has more than just the Electoral Maps within its webapp… but that’s the problem: there’s too much for most people’s needs and for most people’s hardware (ie. phones, computers).

Most people just want to click a link and have the map show up on whatever device they’re using (their phone, tablet, computer, etc). They don’t want to think – they want it to be as simple as “tap, done.”

For those of you who aren’t aware, this is called “Frictionless UX” or “Frictionless Design,” which is a UX (user experience) term that’s used to describe a design philosophy that focuses on the absolute minimization of friction, clicks, taps, etc. Minimal effort is key in this sort of design, so that’s where this all comes in. Because most people have Google Maps either on their phone or their web browsers load it quickly, without all the ArcGIS bloat (for its other functions).

Ben Durham’s thinking of running for city council in Ward 3

There we go. That’s why I did that: for the benefit of Londoners. But this time, there’s more to it.

2026 is a municipal election year and I’m thinking of running for city council in Ward 3, here in London, Ontario, Canada.

So, sure, you could say that I’m doing all of this for “selfish reasons,” to promote that I’m thinking of running… but hey, none of this guarantees anything come Monday, October 26th, 2026 (Municipal Election Voting Day). And the worst case for me personally is that doing this simply improves election accessibility and voter turnout!

That’d be a massive win in my books, because ooooof, was it hard to see such a low voter turnout in 2022. Absolutely horridly low percentages… but more on that in future posts.