The next task of the mapping project was to see what kind of maps of the city already exist. The core GIS team spent a few days visiting the various cadastral and municipal offices that might have information. It was a bit of a scavenger hunt because we would go to one office and they would suggest we go to another one. Sometimes they would be too busy and so we would have to come back another day or book an appointment. We went to the mayor’s office to see if they had any maps, but also to share and get support for the project. They responded very positively and expressed that it was a real need for the city. In our search for maps we discovered that there are no digital maps of the city that use or were created with GIS. At the office of urbanism we found a few hand drawn maps that had the names of some roads and rivers and the neighbourhood limits. It has been quite a challenge to overlay this information and transfer it to our own map. Originally we were planning to use the divisions of the neighbourhoods as the way to assign areas for upcoming fieldwork, but realized it would take us too long to resolve what the limits are. The quarters also vary too much in size. For the purpose of the fieldwork I divided the city into a series of “assignments” of areas that follow main roads and are manageable to explore on foot in one day.
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