If you've been looking into moving to another city but haven't been able to get away from your language school in Canada to do a reconnaissance trip, you know that it's next to impossible to find accurate information about the neighborhoods within a city on the internet. The city of Glendale, Arizona has noted this fact and gone out of their way to help out-of-towners and residents alike find accurate information about their neighborhoods online. The system they developed to do this is called the Neighborhood Information System. You can read all about it here.
The idea behind the Neighborhood Information System is to combine the mapping, ownership, and boundaries information stored in the city's GIS (or Geographic Information System) database together with other sources of information, such as tourist brochures, local websites, and encyclopedias. The result is that while you're at your cooking lesson in Toronto your partner can find out which neighborhoods would be potential good fits for you in Glendale. While the system isn't meant to completely replace in-person viewings, it can help you compile a short list of neighborhoods to give to your realtor.
The Neighborhood Information System's interface is a map of the city generated by the GIS. It shows the entire city of Glendale with each neighborhood delineated from the others by a different color. From there you can delve into the neighborhood and see the locations of parks, fire stations, schools, cultural sites, and other public places. You'll be able to view aerial photographs of the neighborhood as well, so you can see if vacuum trucks regularly frequent the area or not.
Most of the information described in the above paragraph you can get from Google Maps, so why is the Neighborhood Information System so useful? It's useful because it goes far beyond what you would see on a normal map done on paper by a Toronto printing company or online by Google. The NIS can also tell you what days the neighborhood has its garbage picked up, where the bus stops are, and how many code compliance complaints have been filed in that area recently. The system is always being updated, so you know you have the most accurate information.
The only problem is that the Neighborhood Information System's interface is not exactly intuitive. Unless you have experience with GIS from when you worked at Red Hook Real Estate you'll probably have a lot of difficulty finding what you want. For new and inexperienced users, the city of Glendale has put out a user's manual in PDF form to help you learn the ropes of the system. You can connect to both the user's manual and the Neighborhood Information System by visiting the official City of Glendale homepage at www.glendaleaz.com
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