Healthy City Maps: Census

Showing posts with label Census. Show all posts

Transportation Options for Liberty Village

Liberty Village is a new residential neighbourhood in Toronto that emerged within the past 10 years. The area also has a rich industrial history and has recently evolved into a new hub for creative and technology start-ups and established businesses.

Despite this growth, there have been virtually no new transportation investments. Therefore, congestion on the 504 King streetcar and parking shortages are hot topics at water coolers across the city. To gain an evidence-based understanding of this problem, I conducted a substantial amount of spatial analysis related to transportation options to and from Liberty Village.

Where people who live in Liberty Village work, and

how they get there - see slide 30 for more information.

The presentation included below describes the history of urban development, summarizes relevant transportation planning policies, reviews current transportation behaviour, and a provides a detailed assessment of current and future infrastructure that supports walking, cycling, transit use and driving to and from Liberty Village.

This presentation is an expanded version of an interim presentation delivered to a studio course in the Master of Planning in Urban Development Program at Ryerson University. Findings of this report reflect the opinions of the studio group, and do not represent the opinions of the City of Toronto. All data are presented as drafts for review only, please send questions, corrections or comments to Anthony on twitter @HealthCityMaps. I would also like to thank my group members for the extensive involvement in this project.

Transportation Options for Liberty Village, Toronto from Anthony Smith

This short video clip includes a portion of this presentation focused on the current supply and demand of transportation options.

Building Transit Equity in Toronto

I am pleased to share a new research paper called Toronto Transit Choices: Evaluation of the
Downtown Relief Line + SmartTrack Options (Click to download) that I crafted for Ryerson PL8105 - Planning for Sustainability last semester.

This project is a comparative evaluation of two important options for expanded heavy rail transit service in Toronto. To accomplish this task I developed a GIS database of the current subway network in Toronto, and two custom future scenarios: the 'Downtown Relief Line' (DRL) that has been planned for many years (the DRL has no formal route maps yet, so the route shown is an educated guess based on extensive research), and new Mayor John Tory's 'SmartTrack' line based on electrification of the existing GO network. The current subway network and the proposed routes are shown below:

Additionally, the following three maps highlight the population density, median household incomes and visible minority populations living in close proximity to each current and proposed network.

In the paper I also summarized these variables within 800 metres of the current network and each proposal, in order to compare and contrast who would benefit from expanded transit service. Among other conclusions, I recommended the City of Toronto prioritize the SmartTrack plan in the short term, and also continue ongoing development of the DRL in the longer term.

20 Best Maps of 2014

Happy new year! In this post I have summarized my 20 favourite mapping projects from 2014. This has been an exciting year for me! I was promoted in my role at Golder Associates, working as a GIS Analyst and Cartographer on urban and environmental planning projects; however, I resigned in august and moved to Toronto to begin my Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University. I have continued to produce maps for this blog in my spare time using open data and I was recently hired to create maps for Dr. Richard Florida at the U of T Martin Prosperity Institute. I already have some exciting ideas for 2015, so consider subscribing to this blog to see more cool maps in the future!

Vancouver Property Values

Metro Vancouver Commuter Challenge Trips

Comparative Study of Bicycle Infrastructure

Population Density in Metro Vancouver and Toronto

Average Home Value in Metro Vancouver

Median Income in Toronto

Visible Minority Population in Metro Vancouver and Toronto

Social Determinants of Health Research for Cowichan Valley

City of Vancouver Integrated Stormwater Management Plan Analysis

Skate Park Planning Community Consultation

Assessment of Building Permits in Toronto

Assessment of Park Accessibility in Vancouver

Analysis of Dog Licences in Toronto and Most Popular Dog Names

Community Gardening in Vancouver and the Arbutus Corridor

Street Lamp Density in the City of Vancouver

Neighbourhood Design Evaluation of Cabbagetown

Environmental Assessment for Woodfibre LNG Proposal

Environmental Assessment for BURNCO Mine Proposal

Valentines Map

Walkability Map of Vancouver

Want More? Check out my "Thirteen Best Maps of 2013"

Population Density of Downtown Toronto

I am now pursuing a Masters of Planning degree focused on Urban Development at Ryerson's School of Community and Regional Planning in Toronto. To celebrate this new phase of my life, I have created the following map of Toronto. This will be the first of many new maps exploring socio-economic, environmental, and health data for the greater Toronto Area. Let me know if there are any data you would like me to map!

I am very happy that Vision Vancouver Councillor Reimer tabled a notice of motion yesterday called "Protecting Vancouver’s Public Green Space" which included the following statement:

"The Greenest City Action Plan adopted by Council in 2011 sets a target that every person in Vancouver lives within a five-minute walk (400 metres) of a park, greenway or other public green space by 2020"

My first thought when reading this was simple: how will this indicator be measured? Specifically, I recalled a recent diagram in the Oakridge rezoning application slides (a project I fully support, just for the record) that shows 400 metre buffers from surrounding parks:

The trouble with this diagram is the 400 metre buffers appear to originate from the park centroids. Alternatively, I beleive 'accessibility' has actually been measured based on a buffer from the outer edge of parks. In other words, if I leave my house and walk 400 metres and arrive at the edge of a park, I would consider it to be accessible. I decided to explore these two interpretations; the following map shows the area within a 400 metre buffer of park 'centroids' in medium green, and the area within a 400m buffer from park 'areas' in lighter green:

In addition, I also clipped each 2011 Census Dissemination Block to the 400 metre buffer from the edge of parks, and calculated the fraction of each block that was within the threshhold. The fraction of the area was then used to calculate a proportion of the population per block that has no park accessibility. For example if a block had 100 people and it was 75% within the buffer zone, 25 people were considered to have no access to a park. As a result of this analysis, I determined that 79,407 people or 13.2% of the population of the City of Vancouver live greater than 400 metres from the edge of a public park. These people are shown using the yellow proportional symbols in the map below:

I also reviewed the Greenest City progress report and noted the indicator the City has selected is significantly simpler.Their indicator is "Percent of city's land base within a five-minute walk to a green space". In other words their target is based on area instead of population. Which is fully valid, but I still wonder how if they are measuring their covered area based on buffers from the park centroids (as shown on the Oarkridge map) or from outer edge of the parks (which would yield a larger total covered area and I am fairly confident this has been done). At the end of the day, I do not mean to criticize the outstanding work the City is doing, I am simply trying to highlight how an oversimplified diagram can lead to ambiguous results.

I am excited to learn more about this motion as it is developed because I have been working on many projects related to this theme at Golder Associates Sustainable Communities Group over the past few months. For example, I have conducted extensive GIS analysis and visualization to support the City of Vancouver's ongoing Integrated Stormwater Management Plan (ISMP)and the John Hendry (Trout Lake) Park Master Plan.

I understand this Notice of Motion is referencing much more area than just parks, and exactly what should be considered 'greenspace' will likely be a topic for a future post. For example, community gardens and greenways are referenced in the Greenest City action plan as features that satisfy the 'greenspace accessibility' target. Alternatively, given my recent focus on stormwater management I would also suggest it may be equally important for the City to implement a 'no net loss of pervious surfaces' target to maximize onsite infiltration of rainwater.

I hope this post shows that GIS tools are not always as objective as they appear and it is important for policy makers to consider how various calculation methods can impact progress towards targets.

Visible Majorities: Mapping Visible Minority Clusters in Metro Vancouver

Did you know that 1,030,335 out of 2,280,695 people living in Metro Vancouver self-identified as being a visible minority in 2011? That is 45% or nearly a majority! This map shows 1 dot for every single visible minority person recorded on the 2011 National Household Survey collected by Statistics Canada:

You can also click or scroll on the interactive version of this map below to explore local clusters:

RELATED POSTS:

This project is an update to my past work using dot-density visualization to display immigration data from the 2006 Census of Population.

Happy New Years!

Ever wonder what one year in the life of a cartographer is like? Here is a selection of thirteen of my projects that have been published online this year - a link to the original, public source is provided below each map if you would like to learn more. These focus on work within British Columbia and represent the diverse cross-section of work. A few of these projects were completed out of curiosity on my own personal time, but most of this work was completed for the Planning and Landscape Architecture Group, in the Environmental Assessment Division of Golder Associates' Downtown Vancouver Office. Please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss how Golder can help you create similar awesome mapping projects! Please share this with your friends and feel free to connect with me on Twitter @AnthonyNSmith.

1. District of West Kelowna Recreational Trails Master Plan (RTMP)

I led the data management and map creation for this comprehensive trail planning project that was adopted by council in December, 2013.

Source: http://www.districtofwestkelowna.ca/index.aspx?page=707

2. Walkability Model for Metro Vancouver

I used open-source data to calculate this new walkability dataset - I will be expanding this work to cover all of British Columbia in 2014 so check back soon for more updates.

Green = More Walkable, Red =Less Walkable, No colour = Not Walkable

Source: http://healthycitymaps.blogspot.ca/2013/10/walkmap-preview.html

3. Transit Commuting Data from Statistics Canada National Household Survey

I have extensive experience downloading, cleaning and mapping data from Statistics Canada, but I was very excited to get new data for my home city about a topic that will be trending in 2014...

Source: http://healthycitymaps.blogspot.ca/2013/11/CommutingData.html

4. BC Commuter Challenge Results

I worked with Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (BEST) to analyze participation data for their annual behaviour change challenge.

Source: http://healthycitymaps.blogspot.ca/2013/11/CommuterChallenge.html

5. Carvolth Neighbourhood Concept Plan District Energy Feasibility Model

This model integrated conceptual land use designations and development parcels to quantify projected build out by building type. The energy requirements of these buildings were then combined to evaluate the feasibility of installing a district energy system.

Source: http://sei.info.yorku.ca/files/2013/04/YorkAlexBostonBCPerspective.pdf

6. Surrey Community Energy and Emissions Plan (CEEP): Building Energy Intensity and Vehicle Kilometres Traveled (VKT) Modelling

This CEEP provides a guide to reduce community energy spending and greenhouse gas emissions in the City of Surrey. Specifically these maps show energy intensity (measured in gigajoules per square metre of floor area) can drops by 1/3 due to higher standards in senior government building codes, capacity building, local building retrofit programs, and incentives and driving distance per household can drop by 7% due to more transit use and more walking and cycling. Overall, the lowest GHG emissions are in higher density areas well served by high quality transit and located close to employment and local services.

Source: http://www.surrey.ca/energyshift/files/CEEP_-_Part_2_Taking_Action_-_Buildings_District_Energy_and_Waste.pdf (Pages 61 and 85)

7. 2011 Census Population Density in the City of Vancouver

My goal with this project was to create a beautiful map template that could be used to map any city in Canada to assist with diverse planning projects undertaken by the Golder Sustainable Communities Group.

Source: http://healthycitymaps.blogspot.ca/2013/11/2011-census-population-density-at-three.html

8. Industrial Land Supply and Demand Study for the Regional District of Nanaimo (RDN)

The figures below show consolidated actual land use and identified industrial areas within the RDN.

Source: http://rdn.bc.ca/cms/wpattachments/wpID2851atID5413.pdf

9. Woodfibre Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Environmental Assessment Project Description

Woodfibre Natural Gas Limited is proposing to construct and operate a liquefied natural gas facility (LNG) located seven kilometres southwest of Squamish, British Columbia, on the northwestern shoreline of Howe Sound. The proposed project includes the development of a natural gas liquefaction facility and an LNG transfer facility to enable the export of the LNG product to global markets via marine vessels. It is expected to operate for approximately 25 years and to produce between 1.5 and 2.1 million tonnes of LNG per year. More Information here: http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/document-eng.cfm?document=97109

Source: http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents/p80060/97119E.pdf

10. BURNCO Aggregate Project Environmental Assessment Draft Application Information Requirements

Source: http://a100.gov.bc.ca/appsdata/epic/html/deploy/epic_document_355_36057.html

11. Future Land Use Maps for District of Mackenzie Official Community Plan (OCP)

I created these high precision legal GIS data layers and stylized these maps to be included in the new OCP.

Source: http://www.district.mackenzie.bc.ca/Files/Docs/MIM/DRAFT_OCP_District_of_Mackenzie.pdf (Pages 51 and 52)

12. Vancouver Community Gardens and Food Trees

I used open data from the City of Vancouver to created this map - it generated more online buzz than any other map I have ever created!

Source: http://healthycitymaps.blogspot.ca/2013/11/vancouver-community-gardens-food-trees.html

13. Climate Change Impact Mapping for Greeley Creek Watershed Source Protection Plan

A key positive result of the study is the creation of more accurate maps of the watershed area. The new maps provide much more detailed information about exactly what’s located in the watershed, including the creeks that feed into Greeley Creek, and the past and present human activity in the area. The report also looks forward at climate change scenarios. Map 1 shows the study area and map 8 shows the modelled impacts of climate change - I am very proud do have developed this innovative visualization technique to show temperature and precipitation changes and look forward to evaluating climate change impacts for other projects in the near future.

Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/172893346/City-of-Revelstoke-Greeley-Creek-Watershed-Source-Protection-Plan-2013

Thanks for looking! Please post a comment below if you have any questions or thoughts and subscribe to my blog for future updates in 2014.

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