Did you ever wonder if there was an easy way to find out when new places open up in your ‘hood? Wonder no more, for 5 Blocks Out can tell you about it with the “Just Opened” feature.

Here you can see an excerpt from my latest email newsletter, showing places that recently opened in some of the neighbourhoods I’m following:

And below is a partial view of the 5 Blocks Out web page for the West Queen West neighbourhood, showing places that recently opened nearby. Every neighbourhood displays a list like this, provided there’s something new to show.

So how does this work? It’s community-powered (read: we need your help to make this work well). When adding a new place to the site you simply select “recently opened” to let people know it’s a brand new destination that just opened. In the example below, I’m adding a shop called “Knife“:

I click “yes” to indicate the place recently opened, and then “Save Changes”. Done. Now 5 Blocks Out can start telling people about it.

You can also select “recently opened” for places that other people have added to the site, provided it hasn’t been too long since they did so. Do this by clicking the edit button next to the place address.

We’ve currently set this up to show “just opened” places for about 90 days. Sound about right? Let us know what you think.