Cultural mapping is fast becoming an essential planning and economic development tool in Canadian municipalities.

Until now the potential of cultural mapping has been reduced due to inadequate software tools and methodologies. PlaceVantage responds to the need to put cultural mapping principles into practice.

PlaceVantage aggregates information from multiple sources – Statistics Canada, local Yellow Pages, cultural heritage inventories, local arts databases, and more – producing integrated ‘super databases’ of information on local cultural assets. Once created, data is available to address two broad sets of uses:

1. Planning and policy – better information to inform planning and decision-making across a wide range of municipal planning issues (all data is geo-coded for use in GIS systems);
2. Community access – ‘one-window’ cultural portals promoting awareness and access to local culture to residents and tourists.

Information on cultural assets can be continuously updated by multiple local stakeholders. Each organization or asset in the system – e.g., a local museum, graphic design firm, commercial gallery, music festival, etc. -  are assigned login and passwords information enabling them to create searchable listings including: contact and program information, links to websites and other social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), marketing messages, photographs and images, etc.

Each PlaceVantage system provides tools for use by an overall system administrator to manage content, communicate with all groups in the database, produce reports on cultural resources in that community, among other tools and applications.

Evidence of growing acceptance of cultural mapping as an essential planning and economic development tool in Canadian municipalities can be found in the City Vaughan Official Plan.

Cultural mapping is a systematic approach to identifying and recording cultural resources. It can identify and record tangible cultural resources using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools, but can also use community identity mapping to explore intangible cultural resources, such as unique histories, values, traditions and stories that combine to define a community’s identity and sense of place.

Through multimedia enriched web-based maps, cultural mapping enhances access to information on local cultural resources for residents and visitors, and provides a platform for marketing and promoting these resources. Cultural mapping also establishes a base of information to support planning decisions, and can identify resource distribution to assist in identifying new and emerging cultural industries and employment sectors.

Vaughan Official Plan 2010