Terms of use

1. About these terms

These terms apply to your use of the website at down.town, published by Down.Town, an independent publisher based in Montréal, Québec, Canada ("Down.Town", "we", "us"). By using the site you agree to them. If you don't agree, please don't use it.

They work alongside our privacy policy, cookie policy, disclaimer and, for contests, the official contest rules. Paid listings and sponsorships are also governed by the order or agreement we make with you.

Down.Town is intended for adults. If you use our forms, you confirm you are old enough to agree to these terms where you live.

2. What Down.Town provides

Down.Town publishes guides to 42 downtowns across four lines (Explore, Live, Find Space and Do Business), the Down.Town Index, ten calculators and tools, a newsletter, contests and a free service that introduces readers to local partners. Reading the site is free. We may add, change or withdraw any part of it at any time.

3. The introduction service

When you send a request through Get matched or another request form and tick the consent box, an editor reviews it and may introduce you to up to three partners, such as commercial brokers, rental agents, realtors, coworking operators, venues or movers.

• It is free for you. You never pay Down.Town. Partners may pay us a fee for introductions or when you choose to work with them.
• Partners are independent. They are not our employees, agents or representatives. Down.Town does not provide real estate brokerage, leasing, legal, financial, moving or event services, and is not a party to any agreement you make with a partner.
• No guarantee of outcomes. We choose partners carefully for fit, but we cannot guarantee that a partner will contact you, have suitable space or availability, offer a particular price or terms, or that you will reach an agreement. Introductions are not endorsements of a particular property, lease or price.
• Check before you commit. Confirm licences, registrations, insurance, references and terms yourself before you hire anyone or sign anything, and get independent professional advice on leases and purchases.
• Accurate requests only. Send requests only for yourself or for an organisation you are authorised to act for, with details that are true. Don't submit someone else's contact details without their permission.
• Your consent, your control. How we handle requests, and how to withdraw consent, is explained in requests for introductions.

We may decline any request, for example if it falls outside the cities and services our partners cover. We will tell you if we can't help.

4. Tools are estimates, not advice

Our calculators, comparisons and quizzes produce estimates from the numbers you enter and from general rules of thumb. They do not know your circumstances, local market conditions or the terms of a particular building or lease. Results are not quotes, valuations or professional advice of any kind, and real costs, sizes and outcomes will differ. Use them to prepare questions, not to make final decisions.

5. Guides, scores and other content

Our guides are general information written in good faith from sources we believe to be reliable. Prices, schedules, laws, transit lines, events and businesses change, so check anything important with the official source before you rely on it. Down.Town Index scores are editorial judgements, not official statistics. Content is not legal, financial, tax, real estate, immigration, medical or travel advice. See the disclaimer.

6. Your submissions

"Submissions" means anything you send us: corrections, event details, business listings, nominations, pitches, messages and similar material. Contest entries are covered by the official rules, which take priority over this section.

• You keep ownership of your submissions.
• You grant Down.Town a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, edit for length and clarity, publish and display your submission in connection with Down.Town and its promotion. Where we publish your creative work, we will credit you if you ask us to.
• You confirm that you have the right to send it, that it is accurate to the best of your knowledge, and that publishing it will not infringe anyone's rights or break any law.
• We are not obliged to publish, keep or return any submission, and we may decline or remove one at any time.

7. Listings, sponsorships and reader support

• Business listings. Basic listings are free. Featured and Spotlight listings are paid. Every listing is reviewed by an editor, and we may decline, edit for accuracy or remove any listing, including one for a business that has closed. A paid listing buys a labelled placement, not editorial coverage, recommendations or an Index score.
• Sponsorships and advertising. Sponsorships are subject to approval and to our sponsorship standards, and are always labelled. Prices, deliverables and payment terms are set in the proposal or agreement for each booking.
• Reader support. Contributions are voluntary support for an independent publication. They are not a purchase of goods or services and are not charitable donations. If you made a mistake with an amount, contact us and we will put it right.

8. Acceptable use

When you use Down.Town, please don't:

• send spam, false or fraudulent requests, or requests in someone else's name;
• use our forms to sell to our editors, harvest contact details or test automated tools;
• scrape, crawl or copy the site in bulk, or use its content to build a competing guide, dataset or directory;
• use our content to train machine-learning or AI models without our written permission;
• interfere with the site's security, features or ads, or try to access anything not intended for you;
• click our ads deliberately, or encourage anyone else to, other than out of genuine interest;
• post or submit anything unlawful, defamatory, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit or that infringes someone's rights;
• suggest that Down.Town endorses you, your business or your products when it doesn't.

We may block access or decline submissions from anyone who breaks these rules.

9. Intellectual property

Original text, editorial scores, design, illustrations (including skyline and route-map graphics), code and compilations on Down.Town are © Down.Town and protected by copyright and other laws. You are welcome to read, print and save pages for your own personal, non-commercial use, to share links, and to quote short extracts with credit and a link to the page.

Anything beyond that, such as republishing guides, copying substantial parts of the site or using our scores commercially, needs our written permission. Third-party material, including embedded videos, map data and the trademarks of others, belongs to its owners. See the trademark and copyright notice, which also explains how to report an infringement.

10. Third-party links, ads and services

We link to official sources and other websites for your convenience, embed videos from YouTube and show ads from Google and its partners. We don't control those sites, ads or services and are not responsible for their content, products, availability or privacy practices. An ad or link on Down.Town is not an endorsement.

11. Disclaimers

To the extent the law allows, Down.Town is provided "as is" and "as available". We work hard to keep it accurate and available, but we do not promise that the site, its content or its tools will be complete, current, error-free or uninterrupted, or that they will meet your particular needs.

12. Limits of liability

To the extent the law allows, Down.Town is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, or for lost profits, revenue, data or opportunities, arising from your use of the site, its tools or content, or from any dealings with a partner, advertiser or other third party. Where we are liable, our total liability to you is limited to the amount you paid us, if any, in the 12 months before the claim.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law, including liability for our own intentional or gross fault, or your rights under consumer protection laws that cannot be waived, such as Québec's Consumer Protection Act.

If you use Down.Town for business purposes, you agree to be responsible for claims by third parties that arise from content you submit or from your breach of these terms.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Québec and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Subject to any mandatory rights you have as a consumer to bring proceedings where you live, the courts of the judicial district of Montréal, Québec, have jurisdiction over any dispute about these terms or the site.

14. General

• Changes. We may update these terms. The date at the top shows the current version, and continued use after a change means you accept it.
• Severability. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• No waiver. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• Transfer. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to a new owner of Down.Town.
• Contact. Questions about these terms? Use the contact form or email us.