Welcome to TORONTOVERSE, a different way to look at our city

Reacquainting readers with the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area since April 2022.

A view of the Toronto skyline in winter with a silhouetted figure walking in the foreground — A Torontoverse reader — maybe — walks with the city looming in the background. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

Welcome to TORONTOVERSE, a different way to look at our city.

We’re a new kind of news publisher using innovative, cutting-edge technology to tell honest, local stories. We’re using data, code, and even a little AI to do something completely fresh. And we intend to pay for it all by turning our map into a digital main street for local businesses — a vibrant, digital twin of the city as a counterpoint to heartless online markets.

The best way to understand it all is to see it in action. Take a look at our map. Poke around. Or, if you prefer, sit back and watch things happen. Either way, you’re going to see lots of things popping up or moving about, and you’re encouraged to interact and explore. You’ll see local news stories, web links, transit vehicles, live sports, neighbourhood profiles, and even some big data visualizations.

Here are some of our favourite stories from the last six months:

TORONTOVERSE is built around a brand-new database we call “Citygraph.” It’s a real-time graph that attempts to model the countless connections and interactions that bring our city to life. We fill it with data about streets and neighbourhoods, businesses and organizations — anything we can download — in an effort to capture a bit of the magic of the city.

What you see here is the best way we’ve figured (so far) to show all that information to you. But please don’t rush to judgment just yet. We’re just getting started. We hope to be inventing new ways to look at our city for a long time to come.

Thanks, and see you around!

Chris Dinn (@chrisdinn)
Publisher
TORONTOVERSE

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