About Us

We are USE-IT!

USE-IT is a collaborative European network of local initiatives dedicated to publishing free city maps for young travellers. The information provided is no-nonsense, created by locals, non-commercial, and up-to-date.

Each map highlights around a hundred locations in the city, including museums, bars, affordable restaurants, clubs, and places where visitors can mingle with locals rather than other tourists. The project is entirely non-commercial, with no fees for inclusion. The maps are distributed for free in hostels, tourist information centres, youth information centres, welcome packages for exchange students, and other such venues.

The initiative to start a new USE-IT map always comes from young locals, who independently seek funding and are responsible for their own content and graphic design. Each chapter prints and distributes between 20,000 and 180,000 maps annually. Most also manage social media pages, some have websites, and a few operate their own information desks. Our network is driven by young people and professionals from varied backgrounds, including product development, graphic design, software development, fundraising, and community facilitation – all passionate about digital products, cartography, and sharing unique tips about their cities.

Every local USE-IT initiative is a member of the international not-for-profit organisation USE-IT Europe. The aim of USE-IT Europe is to support new members in the network and to uphold the name as a quality label: local initiatives can only become members if they strictly adhere to the non-commercial principles.

The name USE-IT originated in 1971 in Copenhagen, but the actual network of city maps began in 2005 with the first map of Ghent (Belgium). Since then, the number of cities in the network has grown each year, with the 100th city which printed a map in 2023.

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For an overview of the most recent maps, visit our website

DIG-IT – or how to make USE-IT rocks the Internet and app stores (again) – is an Erasmus+ grant landed for the USE-IT European network for 2023-2025. This 3-year- long project aims at ensuring that the USE-IT network cool vibe and good values are not only paper but also (re)accessible digitally.

The DIG-IT project commits our European youth to create an online environment that suits our users, with cool features and 24/7 from everywhere screen access. DIG-IT result will eventually enable us, serial map makers, to get an internal tool and info space with everything needed to create a map, our own local city website and to help interactions within our network and maintain USE-IT Europe ONLINE with durability.