Data sources and licences
Reviewed August 10, 2026
Everything in Earlyworks starts as a public record a city chose to publish. This page names every feed, the licence it comes under, and the attribution each licence asks for. Inside the app, every single project also links to its own original record.
City data
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence: City of Vancouver, City of Toronto, City of Calgary, City of Surrey and the other municipalities named below, each under its own licence.
| Source | What Earlyworks reads | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| City of Vancouver | Issued building permits, demolition permits, Shape Your City applications | Open Government Licence – Vancouver |
| City of Toronto | Active building permits, development applications, agenda documents | Open Government Licence – Toronto |
| City of Calgary | Building permits | Open Calgary Terms of Use |
| City of Surrey | Issued building permits, development applications | Open Government Licence – Surrey |
| City of Burnaby | Major development project reports and rezoning files | City publication |
| City of Richmond | Current development applications | City publication |
| City of Coquitlam | Council agendas and development application reports | City publication |
| City of New Westminster | Building permits | Open data portal |
| City of Maple Ridge | Building permits | Open data catalogue |
| Township of Langley | Development applications and attachments | Open data portal |
| City of Mississauga | Issued building permits, site plan applications | Open data portal |
| City of Brampton | Building permits, planning applications | GeoHub open data |
| York Region | Development applications for Markham, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Aurora, Newmarket, King, Whitchurch-Stouffville | Open data portal |
| City of Markham, City of Vaughan | Public development application files and attachments | City publications |
| Halifax Regional Municipality | Permits, planning applications, inspections | Open data portal |
The Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary licences have been read in full: each grants a worldwide, royalty-free licence to use the information, including commercially, with attribution. The remaining municipal licences are the same Open Government Licence family; each is being read in full as its market launches, and any that restricts Earlyworks' use will be honoured, up to and including removing that city.
Drawings and documents
Drawings, booklets and reports open from the city's own servers. Earlyworks does not copy or re-host them, and the copyright in every drawing belongs to its authors. If a city removes a document, it is gone from Earlyworks too.
Maps, geocoding and imagery
Map tiles © CARTO, map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Satellite imagery © Esri and its imagery partners. Addresses without published coordinates are located with the BC Geocoder and Nominatim (OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL), used within their published usage policies and cached so each address is looked up once.
Photography
Landing page formwork photo by STA FORM Engineering, licensed CC BY-SA.