The Power of Queryable Bylaw Data

At Siteability, we talk a lot about our system for creating “queryable bylaw data”… but what does that even mean? And how does it streamline how we consume land use information?

My First Run-in with a Zoning Bylaw

I’ll never forget my first run-in with a zoning bylaw.

It was during my first year of planning school at the University of Waterloo. Our class was asked to evaluate a series of development proposals through the lens of municipal and provincial planning legislation. I dove in headfirst — Planning Act, Official Plans, Urban Design Guidelines — you name it. But that momentum screeched to a halt the moment I opened the zoning bylaw.

No hyperlinks. No searchability. No structure that made sense. Just hours of double-checking PDFs, scanning dense legalese, and flipping back and forth between sections trying to understand how the rules applied to each property. It was frustrating, to say the least.

After venting to a friend about how absurdly inefficient the process was, we asked the obvious question:

“Why hasn’t anyone built a tool that lets you automatically check the zoning rules for any property in a municipality?”

At Siteability, we’ve created exactly that.

The Problem with Bylaw Data Today

Before we dive in too deep, let's take a step back and look at how bylaws are typically organized today, and why they are so difficult to understand.

Zoning bylaws are typically 300-page documents with thousands of rules. They are written in human language to communicate how each rule (rear yard setback, density on a property) behaves when certain conditions are met, like being in a specific zone or being in a restricted environmental area.

However, within your typical PDF zoning bylaw, this data is fragmented, making it difficult to quickly get a complete picture. Think of it like a scavenger hunt; to find out what you can build on a property you need to locate the correct regulations from six different sections of the bylaw, look at multiple different GIS maps, and triple check all of this just to find which rules are relevant to your site.

These pain points are what every planner, homeowner, and builder encounters when completing a zoning analysis. But what if there’s a better way?

The many, many tabs required to do a complete site analysis

What is Queryable Bylaw Data?

So how do we turn a PDF bylaw into “queryable data”?

As mentioned previously, zoning bylaws technically ARE data. They are a set of rules, with conditions to these rules based on a variety of factors (like zone, built form, geographic location, historic designation etc.). To capture this, we translate every single rule in a zoning bylaw into a “Siteability Rule” within our database, using our own proprietary software. These “Siteability Rules” follow the exact same logic as a zoning bylaw. Let’s take this minimum lot area rule in Mississippi Mills’ zoning bylaw, for example.

This rule, highlighted in red, is tied to various conditions — in this case, that the property is connected to municipal water and sewer, and is located within the R1 zone. When these conditions are met, the rule applies to the property in question. If the property wasn't connected to both municipal water and sewer and was located in the R1 zone, one of the other two rules would apply.

However, these rules only become meaningful when linked to the unique characteristics of a specific property. To determine whether rules apply, we need access to contextual property information — such as zoning, environmental constraints, and more. That’s why Siteability connects directly with a municipality's GIS data, allowing Siteability Rules to reflect real-world conditions.

This is what we mean by “queryable” bylaw data! With the right data inputs, Siteability instantly and accurately identifies which rules are relevant to any given site — making complex bylaws accessible and actionable.

This process is what allows us to show exactly what you can build on a property in just one click! By tying in all of the necessary elements for a complete property analysis (GIS, aerial photos, zoning etc.), Siteability turns siloed and fractured data into one, complete picture, saving planners and homeowners countless hours of parsing through zoning bylaws.

All the relevant data is queried and tied together in just one search, saving countless hours of work

What Can Siteability Do For You?

Along with giving residents and planners instant and accurate access to zoning information for any property across their municipality, queryable zoning bylaw data allows for our team to build a variety of powerful tools using this data.

At Siteability, we’ve created an Additional Dwelling Unit (ADU) / Additional Residential Unit (ARU) / Secondary Suite visualization tool, which combines aerial photos, property data, and our “Siteability Rules”. This allows residents to create napkin sketches of their ADU / ARU design, receiving instant feedback on whether or not it conforms to the relevant zoning regulations.

In addition, we’re exploring ways to manipulate our queryable “Siteability Rules” to simulate policy changes and understand the impact at scale in a city. By changing one "Siteability Rule", like a rear yard setback from 10m to 5m in all residential zones, we can understand the impact on things like buildable area and potential population density, giving data-driven insights into how policy tweaks could help deliver the density cities need to alleviate the housing crisis.

"Siteability Rules" unlock the potential to create a suite of tools tailored to your needs, no matter how different, outdated, fragmented, or complex your bylaw is.

Want to bring Siteability to your municipality? Connect with us and let us know where to go next!