Importing City of Kitchener Ontario open data

Communities Canada
1

Hello OSM experts,

Here’s a summary of the issues I’m facing

  1. I’m currently working on a project that involves retrieving the polygonal boundaries of various neighbourhoods from Kitchener, Ontario Canada . Its headache of project in python that uses osmnx to retrieve OSM data ( like relation id) and converts that data into a 3d render of the neighbourhood boundaries individually into viewable and exportable 3d renders.

  2. The first step of the workflow is speed up with overpass turbo as I use a script to retrieve information about such areas to plug back into the python script for more accurate extraction ( e.g Relation 18481556 , Tags 4 admin_level = 10 boundary = administrative name = Forest Hill type = boundary)*

  3. I was able to produce working render for all neighbourhoods in Kitchener ontario. All except for two neighbourhood boundaries. I was unable to pull any data from OSM/overpass turbo in regards to these boundary as the they appear to unknown/ not created :

    Screenshot 2025-06-09 171227
    Screenshot 2025-06-09 1712271076×848 142 KB

  4. The two missing neighbourhood boundaries are Country Hills East Kitchener Ontario and St. Mary’s Kitchener Ontario ( the boundaries are clearly visible on Google Maps but not in Overpass turbo).

  5. I found the exact missing information of the neighbourhood on a public city database (available in formats such as CSV ,Shapefile, GeoJSON , KML File , Geodatabase , Feature Collection, Excel, GeoPackage, SQLite Geodatabase).
    Source: Planning Communities

  6. I figured it’s possible to use OSM editor to update those areas by tracing or copy-in-place the polygon of interest.

  7. However I’m not that familiar with OSM or how to Digitize and submit the exact missing info from the public data into OSM ( pretty sure there is some ruling for importing or editing OSM ).

  8. I wanted to know how to get data for the missing neighbourhoods into OSM if an import option is available . That way it can be detected with Overpass turbo and thus usable in my script.

I understand there is ruling and regulations with using public data to make changes to OSM.

I’m pretty sure The City of Kitchener releases its open data under the Open Government Licence - The Corporation of the City of Kitchener

Any insights, advice, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

2

That license hasn’t been approved yet.

Before starting you will need to contact the LWG using the email listed on the OSMF wiki.

To me, it just seems like another standard OGL variant that will quickly get approved.

Read on about the process, OGL Canada and local variants - OpenStreetMap Foundation

If you can, simply note the differences between an already approved license and this one and include it in your correspondance with the LWG.

The easiest to work with is the GeoJSON format, it’s pretty much universally supported with no need for extra plugins.

Since the rest of the boundaries are there, you can create them manually easily by making new boundary relations using the existing ways.

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