This Quarter's MapGeo Community Spotlight The Town of Belmont, Massachusetts!
Built in 1881, Belmont Town Hall is an 18,800-square-foot, four-story brick building at Concord Avenue and Pleasant Street with High Victorian and Queen Anne architectural influences.
A Clearer View of Belmont
With Cambridge on its border and downtown Boston just a few miles away, the Town of Belmont, MA is much closer to the city than its quiet reputation suggests. The community features many homes from the 18th and early 19th century, including the grand country estate of John Perkins Cushing. John Cushing’s wish was that Belmont would carry on the name of his 200‑acre “Bellmont” estate when the community incorporated on March 18, 1859. These vintage homes now coexist with thoughtful construction, reflecting Belmont’s blend of heritage and progress.
Belmont’s commitment to thoughtful planning and public transparency is reflected through the recent addition of Sanborn’s MapGeo platform, which now serves as the town’s central gateway for parcel and land-use information. Residents, property owners, developers, and municipal staff can explore boundaries, zoning districts, ownership records, assessment data, and neighborhood context through a single interactive map rather than navigating multiple offices or static documents.
Important contextual maps such as proposed zoning changes are also featured on MapGeo. For example, the ease of which to layer existing zoning maps over 2026 proposed zoning allows for everything from independent homeowner research to real estate due diligence, permitting preparation, infrastructure coordination, and greater overall transparency.
Belmont's 2026 Proposed Zoning theme turned on with a link to the Zoning Bylaws.
Historic Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps
For over a hundred and thirty years, The Sanborn Map Company was creating and maintaining fire insurance maps that were initially used for fire insurance underwriting. The Sanborn Maps provided the user with specific information such as address, building use, height, number of floors, and construction material for individual properties shown on the map. During its long and proud history, Sanborn created maps of approximately 12,000 communities throughout the US. Altogether, Sanborn has created over 1.5 million maps documenting the growth and development of US cities and towns.
Sanborn maps are currently widely used by various municipal departments such as planning, zoning, public works, building inspection, and fire departments for various reasons such as verifying and assisting in addressing, zoning review, areas for historic revitalization, old street alignments and Right-of-Ways, building permitting, etc. Historical Sanborn maps are also used extensively by professionals involved in environmental risk assessment, to help assess potential environmental risk based on prior property uses. These historic maps can be integrated into GIS systems and MapGeo to enhance the capabilities of workflows that have a historic review need.
If you are interested in adding the historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to your site, please reach out to the MapGeo support team for more information.
Sanborn's fire Insurance Maps integrated into MapGeo as a theme
How MapGeo Seamlessly Integrates with 3rd Party Systems
MapGeo is designed to connect your GIS with the other business systems your organization relies on every day. Through both in‑app integrations and flexible link‑based integrations, MapGeo can tie directly into permitting platforms, document management systems, and other operational tools your staff uses.
Municipalities across the country already leverage MapGeo to link parcel and location data to permitting systems such as CityView, Accela, PermitView, OpenGov, and ViewPoint Cloud enabling users to jump from a property on the map directly to the associated permits in a single click. This improves workflow efficiency and gives staff and residents a clearer understanding of property‑level activity.
The Town of Acton, MA integrated OpenGov within MapGeo for internal staff. This integration allows staff to select a property in MapGeo and open a new tab to OpenGov with all the permits related to that property.
For document management, MapGeo offers two powerful approaches: link‑outs to third‑party platforms such as Laserfiche or hosted documents linked to data attributes. Communities use these integrations to make thousands of documents; plans, as‑builts, permits, sketches, and more accessible directly through the mapping interface with just a click. There is no need to go into the Town Hall basement and waste valuable time trying to find the information you are looking for.
SIQ Webinar - The Importance of GIS Data for Emergency Services
In emergency management, location intelligence saves time and time saves lives. GIS provides the spatial context needed to plan, respond, and recover effectively during crises. From being able to accurately locate an emergency to improving emergency response times, GIS data empowers agencies to make fast, informed, and data-driven decisions when it matters most.
Join us for an engaging webinar where we’ll break down why high-quality GIS data is essential for emergency operations, featuring real examples drawn from common municipal datasets. And learn how the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) standards are changing and what you’ll need to know.
During this session, we’ll highlight how key GIS datasets support emergency preparedness and response, including:
Rebecca Davis
MapGeo | Quarterly Newsletter
March 2026This Quarter's MapGeo Community Spotlight
The Town of Belmont, Massachusetts!
Built in 1881, Belmont Town Hall is an 18,800-square-foot, four-story brick building at Concord Avenue and Pleasant Street with High Victorian and Queen Anne architectural influences.
A Clearer View of Belmont
Belmont’s commitment to thoughtful planning and public transparency is reflected through the recent addition of Sanborn’s MapGeo platform, which now serves as the town’s central gateway for parcel and land-use information. Residents, property owners, developers, and municipal staff can explore boundaries, zoning districts, ownership records, assessment data, and neighborhood context through a single interactive map rather than navigating multiple offices or static documents.
Important contextual maps such as proposed zoning changes are also featured on MapGeo. For example, the ease of which to layer existing zoning maps over 2026 proposed zoning allows for everything from independent homeowner research to real estate due diligence, permitting preparation, infrastructure coordination, and greater overall transparency.
Historic Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps
For over a hundred and thirty years, The Sanborn Map Company was creating and maintaining fire insurance maps that were initially used for fire insurance underwriting. The Sanborn Maps provided the user with specific information such as address, building use, height, number of floors, and construction material for individual properties shown on the map. During its long and proud history, Sanborn created maps of approximately 12,000 communities throughout the US. Altogether, Sanborn has created over 1.5 million maps documenting the growth and development of US cities and towns.
Sanborn maps are currently widely used by various municipal departments such as planning, zoning, public works, building inspection, and fire departments for various reasons such as verifying and assisting in addressing, zoning review, areas for historic revitalization, old street alignments and Right-of-Ways, building permitting, etc. Historical Sanborn maps are also used extensively by professionals involved in environmental risk assessment, to help assess potential environmental risk based on prior property uses. These historic maps can be integrated into GIS systems and MapGeo to enhance the capabilities of workflows that have a historic review need.
If you are interested in adding the historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to your site, please reach out to the MapGeo support team for more information.
How MapGeo Seamlessly Integrates with 3rd Party Systems
MapGeo is designed to connect your GIS with the other business systems your organization relies on every day. Through both in‑app integrations and flexible link‑based integrations, MapGeo can tie directly into permitting platforms, document management systems, and other operational tools your staff uses.
Municipalities across the country already leverage MapGeo to link parcel and location data to permitting systems such as CityView, Accela, PermitView, OpenGov, and ViewPoint Cloud enabling users to jump from a property on the map directly to the associated permits in a single click. This improves workflow efficiency and gives staff and residents a clearer understanding of property‑level activity.
SIQ Webinar - The Importance of GIS Data for Emergency Services
In emergency management, location intelligence saves time and time saves lives. GIS provides the spatial context needed to plan, respond, and recover effectively during crises. From being able to accurately locate an emergency to improving emergency response times, GIS data empowers agencies to make fast, informed, and data-driven decisions when it matters most.
Join us for an engaging webinar where we’ll break down why high-quality GIS data is essential for emergency operations, featuring real examples drawn from common municipal datasets. And learn how the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) standards are changing and what you’ll need to know.
During this session, we’ll highlight how key GIS datasets support emergency preparedness and response, including:
-
View your EagleView Pictometry Oblique Imagery in MapGeo
-
April 2019 MapGeo Newsletter
-
March 2019 MapGeo Newsletter
-
February 2019 MapGeo Newsletter
-
January 2019 MapGeo Newsletter
-
June 2019 MapGeo Newsletter
-
August 2019 MapGeo Newsletter
-
October 2019 MapGeo Newsletter
-
MapGeo 2021 Winter Newsletter
-
Support for Internet Explorer Ending June 30, 2021
See all 22 topics