About This Tool
Want to share this tool with others? View or download the printable flyer.
"Making Space for Arrival" is an ongoing PhD research project exploring the relationship between migrant newcomers and urban space.
At the center of this work is the idea of arrival infrastructure: the places, services, and networks that shape newcomers' first months and years in a new city. Some of these are highly visible resources such as free English learning programs, food support, public libraries, and organizations that help people navigate benefits and social services. Others are ordinary, everyday spaces that become meaningful through repeated use.
This website is an attempt to document, visualize, and share parts of that arrival infrastructure in a way that can be practically useful. While newly arrived immigrants are a key audience, the map is not only for one group. People who have been here for years may still need to find resources, and community members and service providers may also use it to understand what exists and what's missing.
Current Data Snapshot
This chart reflects the current category mix in the live dataset used by the website.
This map is selective rather than exhaustive. It includes publicly visible and relatively stable places that can play an important role in helping people settle into everyday life.
It began with organizations and civic spaces that explicitly support newcomers, such as public libraries, ESOL programs, immigrant-serving organizations, legal services, and employment support. Over time, it has expanded to include other community resources that are often identified as important in practice, including some health centers, community centers, certain religious institutions, and government offices such as the DTA and SSA. Many of these places serve both newcomers and long-term residents, which is part of their value as shared community infrastructure.
This project does not aim to map every relevant place. Some resources are already better represented by dedicated directories created by others, so they are linked in the Additional Resources section rather than duplicated here. Other important spaces—such as ethnic shops, informal gathering places, and some locally significant religious or social spaces—are harder to include responsibly because they require more local knowledge and careful judgment around privacy, safety, and public visibility.
This map should be understood as a curated starting point: a public-facing layer of community resources shaped by both publicly available information and conversations with people who know the landscape on the ground.
- Expanding the map by adding more places and improving coverage over time, especially through deeper local knowledge and careful curation.
- Improving usability and design so people can find what they need faster and with less friction.
- Adding natural-language support, such as a chatbot that can answer questions and offer more tailored recommendations.
- Exploring multilingual access so people can search and navigate in languages beyond English.