Healthy City Maps: Food

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Healthy Built Environment Indicators of Community Wellbeing

I am currently working with DIALOG Design in Vancouver to create a new tool to measure how community wellbeing may be increased through evidence-based urban design, land use and transportation decisions. This decision support tool uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to evaluate ten themes of healthy built environment indicators. Each indicator includes several sub-components such access to a grocery store or community center, access to a protected cycletrack or frequent transit network, and the total area of public parks and natural forest area per capita.

Each indicator is also linked through peer-reviewed literature to physical, social, mental and spiritual, financial, and ecological health outcomes. Results from this tool will be presented along with specific thresholds for each indicator to ensure results can be easily translated into real world impacts that can inform healthy planning decisions.

I am sharing this early draft to collect feedback on the content and wording. What do you like, what would you change? what do you think is missing? Please share your observations in the comment section below. I look forward to sharing much more of this work over the next six months as I develop this work into my masters research project.

City of Vancouver Greenest City Action Plan Review

This is a class presentation I delivered in the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning program at Ryerson University. This course is called "Planning for Sustainability" and we were instructed to provide a critical review of a municipal sustainability plan. I selected the City of Vancouver Greenest City Action Plan because I think it is an outstanding case study that uses specific goals and measurable indicators. This plan is also highly relevant to the current municipal election featuring Gregor Robertson and the Vision Vancouver Party. Thanks for your feedback!

I made this map to present at the Cypress Community 2014 Garden Annual General Meeting. My goal was to create a high quality base map that can be used for new member orientation, garden planning, and community outreach. If you are a member of another garden in Vancouver, contact me and I would be happy to create a similar map for your garden.

I also created the second map above more recently to address the controversy over the land area that CP Rail is claiming may need to be cleared. It was our members' understanding that the right of way was 20 feet from the centre of the tracks, shown in yellow. However, CPR is now claiming they will clear the full area up to the white property line. This would be a tragic loss as you can see the different between the yellow and white lines is approximately have of the community garden area, and all of the beautiful flower gardens along the north walking area.

Garden Deserts: Community Garden Plots per Person in Vancouver

Do you want to sign up for a community garden plot in Vancouver? If so, you are not alone - demand for garden space has surged in recent years as the local food movement has become mainstream. According to data published on the City's Open Data Site, there are approximately 3,965 garden plots of various types in the City and there are about 600,000 people in Vancouver. Therefore, there is approximately 1 garden plot per 150 people living in the city today.

After I created an interactive map showing all Community Gardens and Food Trees last year, I was asked by the Evergreen BC 'Seeding Healthy Communities' program coordinator if I could explore the distribution of garden plots within the city, with an eye towards understanding the spatial accessibility of existing gardens to citizens. I volunteered to conduct this analysis because I wanted to know if there were 'garden deserts' within the City where population-based demand for plots was much greater than supply?

I began by visualizing the number of plots per garden location as shown on the map below:

I also mapped the total population per census block based on the Statistics Canada's 2011 Census of Population.

To evaluate the relative supply and demand for garden plots within Vancouver, I transformed the point data from the two maps above into kernel density surfaces, based on the number of garden plots and people within 1 km from every point in the City. This process yeilded two surfaces, the number of plots per square kilometer and the number of people per square kilometer - I then divided these to derive a measure of 'Garden Plots per 1,000 People' as shown in on the map below. The dark green areas are relatively well served while lighter yellow and grey areas have very few or no plots per person:

I am a big fan of the City of Vancouver's Greenest City initiative that among other goals has supported creation of many new community gardens in the past few years, but I believe more gardens are still needed. What is the right number? That I cannot say. But I would suggest this map could be used to help plan where additional gardens may be needed from a spatial equity perspective. Although policy makers and advocates should also weigh other variables such as income level of communities. Additionally, there may be relatively less need for gardens in currently 'underserved' areas of the city where single family homes may have back yard gardens that may seem to negate the demand for community gardens.

That said, as a proud member of the Cypress Community Garden in Kitsilano, community gardens have a much greater impact beyond increasing local food security. In my experience gardens have an important role in increasing community social connectedness, which has in turn been linked in a recent Vancouver Coastal Health survey to improved sense of health and well-being. So with each new garden that is planted, we may in fact be growing a healthier community for generations to come.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY THE INTERACTIVE MAP OF ALL COMMUNITY GARDENS

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.

This interactive map shows the locations and attributes of community gardens and food trees in the City of Vancouver. While these community food assets are located within city boundaries, and some on City of Vancouver and Park Board lands, the vast majority of these locations are not administered by the CoV. This dataset was downloaded from the City of Vancouver's Open Data Portal on July 15, 2012. Please remember that lots of love and hard work goes into growing food so please do not remove food from a community garden plot without permission from the owner! I am a member of Cypress Community Garden and we were very sad to loose some rhubarb last month. If you would like to learn more about locally grown food, just ask...in my experience most gardeners are happy to talk about their crop and might even be willing to offer you a taste!

CLICK HERE FOR FULLSCREEN MAP

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