Healthy City Maps

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.

BEST Commuter Challenge 2015

This is the third year I have mapped the travel patterns by mode from the BEST Commuter Challenge. This year I also decided to create custom maps showing results for the 104 offices located in the lower mainland, so if you want to see your custom results, send me a quick email to Anth42[at]gmail.com and I'll send you a map like the Golder Associates example at the bottom of this post. Thanks for visiting and keep up the sustainable commuting!

2015 Property Tax in Vancouver

These maps show the total property taxes for each parcel in the City of Vancouver in 2015. The first map shows the dollar value for each property, while the second one shows the value standardized per square meter. The data are from the City's Open Data Portal. Please post any comments or questions you may have below, thanks!

Personal Google Location History

Do you know where you have been? Google does. That is if you have your location history turned on. I personally love this feature, it means if you forget your phone somewhere you can log in to any computer and map the phone location, and even lock or erase the phone contents remotely.

I have been thinking about mapping my own personal history for some time, so I finally took a few minutes to download the past seven months of life, since I moved to Toronto. The files are extracted as monthly KML files from my personalized Location History portal. I then merged these into a single file in ArcMap. Because the track lines are fairly random at times, I transformed the vertices into points representing the exact locations where Google actually called home. This represented about 150,000 points (21,000 points per month or 700 points a day). I think this is a pretty awesome sample size, though it is not truly random since places I play with my phone are over represented, places my phone is turned off or underground are excluded, and places I run are excluded since I don't carry my phone. Here are all the raw data points and path lines for reference:

I also calculated a kernel density surface of the points to better represent the areas with many overlapping points. This map is below:

UPDATE: Here is another set of maps I created with one full year of location history data from Vancouver:

I would be happy to make a map of YOUR location history for a small fee if you are interested - all I need is a copy of your Google Takeout file in KML format that you can download from here. Please let me know if you have any questions in a comment below. I think it would be radical if I could automate this process and build an app so people could create their own custom history maps with the touch of a button - get in touch if you have any ideas about this!

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.

Seven Years of Cartography

This year will mark my 7th year as a professional cartographer. I am full of gratitude for every hour I have spent creating, and still love the meditative, balanced practice that forms the art and science of designing maps. The following two videos encapsulate a selection of my knowledge and practice to date and I hope these learnings may benefit my fellow spatial analysts, cartographers, designers, creators or anyone who wants to make the world a better place for future generations. If you only watch one, I suggest you watch the second video about walkability as I think it captures my current thinking very well while the longer lecture includes more specific design advice for aspiring mapmakers.

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"

Cycling Networks in Vancouver, Toronto and Chicago

The following three maps show the cycle tracks (protected bike lanes), painted bike lanes, shared lanes (sharrows) and other types of routes for cycling. Each map is shown at the same scale and colours, to provide a direct comparison of the network form and character. I hope this helps inspire toronto to learn from the other two leading cities in North America.

PL800 - Planning and Design Fundamentals

Below are my first three design projects from my Masters of Planning in Urban Development at Ryerson University. Each project required specific elements - some of which I did not agree were worth including. These are far from perfect, and I was always impressed by seeing my classmates work. Also big thanks to Kelly for being my partner on Site One. I am sharing these in the spirit of sharing and learning from one another. Please provide any comments you think of at the bottom, thanks!

Site One: Gould Street on Ryerson campus adjacent to the future Student Learning Centre

Site Two: HtO Park on the Toronto Waterfront, along Lakeshore Boulevard

Site Three: Bloor Street between Avenue Road and Yonge Street

This area recently underwent a $10 million dollar 'Transformation'. The two boards below were intended to be viewed sequentially.