Use of collaborative cartography for mapping the living spaces for students at a public university

Currently, a large part of the population has access to location applications, consequently, any individual can become a producer of Voluntary Geographic Information (VGI). In view of this, the objective of this work is to carry out a collaborative mapping of the living spaces of Geography students at Federal University of Santa Maria, in order to understand the social, economic and leisure relationships that they experience in Santa Maria (RS) and region. The project was developed in the Canvis application and the points were entered in QGIS 3.4. Students can be divided into two groups: one of those who live with their families, live in peripheral neighborhoods and use businesses such as large hypermarket chains; and another of those who use real estate services, since they lived in municipalities in the country side, moving to the Centro and Camobi neighborhoods, with access to medium to small businesses. The VGI data demonstrated the importance of the University as a local and regional development factor.