Canadian Metropolitan Areas Research Articles

Impact of Reduced Anthropogenic Emissions Associated With COVID-19 Lockdown on PM2.5 Concentration and Canopy Urban Heat Island in Canada.

Extensive lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic caused a remarkable decline in human activities that have influenced urban climate, especially air quality and urban heat islands. However, the impact of such changes on local climate based on long term ground-level observations has hitherto not been investigated. Using air pollution measurements for the four major Canadian metropolitan areas (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary), we find that PM2.5 markedly decreased during and after lockdowns with peak reduction ranging between 42% and 53% relative to the 2000-2019 reference period. Moreover, we show a substantial decline in canopy urban heat island intensity during lockdown and in the post lockdowns periods with peak reduction ranging between 0.7°C and 1.6°C in comparison with the 20-year preceding period. The results of this study may provide insights for local policymakers to define the regulation strategies to facilitate air quality improvement in urban areas.

Mental health is positively associated with biodiversity in Canadian cities

Cities concentrate problems that affect human well-being and biodiversity. Exploring the link between mental health and biodiversity can inform more holistic public health and urban planning. Here we examined associations between bird and tree species diversity estimates from eBird community science datasets and national forest inventories with self-rated mental health metrics from the Canadian Community Health Survey. We linked data across 36 Canadian Metropolitan Areas from 2007-2022 at a postal code level. After controlling for covariates, we found that bird and tree species diversity were significantly positively related to good self-reported mental health. Living in a postal code with bird diversity one standard deviation higher than the mean increased reporting of good mental health by 6.64%. Postal codes with tree species richness one standard deviation more than the mean increased reporting of good mental health by 5.36%. Our results suggest that supporting healthy urban ecosystems may also benefit human well-being.

Acceptability of built environment interventions to support active travel in 17 Canadian metropolitan areas: findings from the THEPA study

Acceptability of built environment interventions to support active travel in 17 Canadian metropolitan areas: findings from the THEPA study

Shared versus pooled automated vehicles: Understanding behavioral intentions towards adopting on-demand automated vehicles

Shared versus pooled automated vehicles: Understanding behavioral intentions towards adopting on-demand automated vehicles

Does Subsidized Housing Facilitate More Sustainable Commute Patterns? Insights From Canadian Metropolitan Areas

Housing has become increasingly unaffordable, particularly in amenity-rich and transit-accessible areas. In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis to investigate the relationship between living in subsidized housing and commuting patterns (mode and distance) in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. We find that compared to otherwise similar individuals, those in subsidized dwellings have shorter and less auto-oriented commutes at statistically significant levels. The paper positions the discussion on subsidized housing in the broader context of the relationship between housing and sustainability, and within specific metropolitan geographies and histories of housing policies. In combination with prior research, the findings provide support for policies that promote investment in subsidized housing near transit as an affordability and sustainability strategy, particularly benefiting low-income renters.

An accessibility-based methodology to prioritize public-transit investments: Application to older adults in three metropolitan regions in Canada

As governments aim to promote a modal transfer away from motorized vehicles and toward transit, important investments in public-transit systems are becoming necessary. Prioritization of projects targeting underserved communities and careful choices between Fixed Route Transit (FRT) and Demand Responsive Transit (DRT) is therefore crucial to maximize benefits from investments. In this study, we develop a methodology to target and identify policy interventions to increase accessibility by public transit where it is low and apply it to serve older adults in three Canadian metropolitan areas. A conceptual framework is presented to inform the type of public transport (FRT or DRT) or land-use interventions most relevant to improve accessibility in each area. The methodology is then applied using existing accessibility to jobs by public transit at the Census Tract level and concentration of older adults. Multiple measures are tested for both criteria to assess the effect of methodological choices on policy recommendations. Findings show the selection process is sensitive to the measure used to quantify the concentration of older adults, but not to different job types as destinations. Socioeconomic and geographical differences are observed between the types of interventions proposed. The methodology developed in this study can be of value for practitioners as they aim to orient relevant policy changes to promote increased accessibility by public transit for underserved communities such as older adults. The framework and methodology developed can be easily adapted to different sociodemographic groups and different regions where jobs, census, GTFS and road network data are available.

Regionalization and Recent Immigrants’ Access to Jobs: An Analysis of Commuting in Canadian Metropolitan Areas

Regionalization and Recent Immigrants’ Access to Jobs: An Analysis of Commuting in Canadian Metropolitan Areas

Impact of bilingual face, arm, speech, time (FAST) public awareness campaigns on emergency medical services (EMS) activation in a large Canadian metropolitan area.

Face, arm, speech, time (FAST) public awareness campaigns improve stroke recognition in the general population. Whether this translates into improved emergency medical services (EMS) activation remains unclear. We assessed the association of five consecutive FAST campaigns with EMS calls for suspected strokes in a large urban area of Quebec, Canada. We conducted an observational study to assess data collected between June 2015 and December 2019 by the public EMS agency covering the cities of Laval and Montreal (Quebec, Canada). Five FAST campaigns were held over this period (mean duration: 9weeks). We compared daily EMS calls before and after all FAST campaigns (2015 vs 2019) with t tests and Mann-Whitney U tests. We used single-group, univariate interrupted time series to measure changes in daily EMS calls for suspected strokes following each FAST campaign (stroke categories: any, symptom onset < 5h, Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale [CPSS] 3/3). Calls for headache served as negative control. After five FAST campaigns, mean daily EMS calls increased by 28% (p < 0.001) for any suspected stroke and by 61% (p < 0.001) for stroke with symptom onset < 5h, compared to 10.1% for headache (p = 0.012). Significant increases in daily EMS calls were observed after three campaigns (highest OR = 1.26; 95%CI 1.11, 1.43; p < 0.001). There were no significant changes in calls after individual campaigns for suspected stroke with symptom onset < 5h, or suspected stroke with CPSS 3/3. We observed an inconsistent impact of individual FAST campaigns on EMS calls for any suspected stroke, and did not observe significant EMS call changes after individual campaigns for acute (< 5h) and severe (CPSS 3/3) strokes. These results may help stakeholders identify potential benefits and limitations of public awareness campaigns using the FAST acronym.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING IN OLDER ADULTS WITH TREATMENT-RESISTANT DEPRESSION

Abstract Geriatric psychiatry research has documented the importance of psychological well-being to older adults diagnosed with depression (Lenze et al., 2016). This presentation utilizes pre-treatment data from the Optimum Study of treatment-resistant depression in older adults recruited from five USA and Canadian metropolitan areas (N = 529). Social participation was measured with the PROMIS scale: Ability to Participate in Social Roles and Activities (Hahn et al., 2014). Positive affect and life satisfaction were assessed using scales from the Psychological Well-Being subdomain (Salsman et al., 2013) of the NIH Toolbox for Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function - Emotion Battery (NIHTB-EB). Along with associations between social participation and positive affect (r = .38, p &amp;lt; .01) and between social participation and life satisfaction (r = .26, p &amp;lt; .01), path analyses explored social participation as a mediator of the relationship between cognitive functioning (NIHTB-CB; Weintraub et al., 2013) and psychological well-being.

Residential proximity to greenness and adverse birth outcomes in urban areas: Findings from a national Canadian population-based study

Residential proximity to greenness and adverse birth outcomes in urban areas: Findings from a national Canadian population-based study

Purpose-built rental housing and household formation among young adults in Canadian cities, 1991–2016

In recent decades, several Canadian cities have experienced a significant restructuring of their housing demand as young adult aspirations and expectations of maintaining independent households have been confronted by soaring housing costs, falling vacancy rates, and a rental supply system that is characterized by an overreliance on rental condominiums and other provisional forms of ‘secondary’ rental housing. The study presented in this paper focuses on intra-metropolitan variation in household formation among young adults and attempts to explain it from a macro perspective, emphasizing the importance of a community’s ‘primary’ or purpose-built rental sector. Following a review of the international literature on the impacts of housing supply and availability on household formation, panel regression models are estimated to examine the effects of changes in the relative supply and real cost of purpose-built rental housing on changes in young people’s household formation in Canadian metropolitan areas between 1991 and 2016. The results indicate that a 1% increase in the relative supply of purpose-built rental housing leads to 0.24% and 0.14% increases in the rates of family and non-family household formation of young adults. These estimates are generated using instrumental variables, controlling for potential simultaneity between household formation and purpose-built rental supply.

Walk/Wheelability: An Inclusive Instrument Pair for Participatory Age-Friendly Research and Practice.

Recent critical evaluations of age-friendly efforts have highlighted the need to prioritize the disenfranchised, including people with mobility limitations. This article examines the validity of a 13-item Stakeholders Walkability/Wheelability Audit in Neighborhoods (SWAN13) scale to measure the "walk/wheelability" of street segments from the perspectives of people with mobility limitations. Data were drawn from preliminary studies of the SWANaudit which was conducted in 2 Canadian metropolitan areas. Sixty-one participants who use mobility devices (e.g., walkers, power wheelchairs) and older adults from community organizations audited 195 street segments. We factor analyzed the data from their audits. SWAN13 has a 1-factor structure. 13 items were retained from 85 SWANaudit items. SWAN13 encompassed both physical and social aspects of walk/wheelability. The alpha for the scale was .79. Convergent validity was found with the University of Alabama Life-Space Assessment (ρ = .22, p = .003), especially at the neighborhood level (ρ = .23, p = .002). Significant correlation was also found with subjective assessments of a priori walk/wheelability domains (ρ = .63, p < .001). Walk/wheelability affects the life space of older adults and people with mobility limitations. It is an important latent variable that should be addressed to promote well-being and social participation. SWAN13 may be used in city-wide surveys to identify neighborhoods that may require age-friendly interventions from mobility perspectives. Detailed audits and interventions may be carried out in tandem using the paired SWANaudit instrument. Walk/wheelability is an inclusive and measurable concept that accounts for the needs of people with various mobility needs.

The Relationship Between Unexpected Outcomes and Lottery Gambling Rates in a Large Canadian Metropolitan Area

The purchase of lottery tickets is widespread in Canada, yet little research has directly examined when and why individuals engage in lottery gambling. By leveraging a large urban dataset of lottery sales in Toronto, Canada, and using a simple computational framework popular in psychology, we examined whether city residents gamble more when local outcomes are better than expected; for example, wins by local sports teams or amounts of sunshine based on recent weather history. We found that unexpectedly sunny days predict increased rates of fixed-prize lottery gambling. The number of local sports team wins also predicted increased purchase rates of fixed-prize lottery, but unexpected positive outcomes in sports did not. Our results extend previous findings examining the linkage between sunshine and gambling in metropolitan areas beyond the US, but do not fully replicate the previously observed relationships between unexpected sports outcomes and gambling in US cities. These results suggest that the observed malleability of lottery gambling in response to incidental events in the gambler’s environment may vary considerably across geographies.

Gentrification, Urban Interventions and Equity (GENUINE): A map-based gentrification tool for Canadian metropolitan areas.

Researchers, policy makers, and urban planners require tools to better understand the complex relationship between gentrification and health. The Gentrification, Urban Interventions and Equity (GENUINE) tool is an open-access, map-based tool that allows users to explore measures of gentrification for Canadian cities and incorporate them into their work. The phenomenon of gentrification has manifested differently across cities. The GENUINE tool was developed to include four distinct gentrification measures that have been used in the United States and Canada and that rely on different combinations of change in census indicators related to income, housing, occupation, education and age. The measures were computed for all census tracts within the 36 Canadian census metropolitan areas to identify gentrifiable areas in 2006 and those that gentrified between 2006 and 2016. Depending on the measure, by 2016, 2% to 20% of census tracts had experienced gentrification, corresponding to between 2% (418,065 people) and 17% (4,266,434) of the Canadian population living in gentrified areas. Generally, metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million people had a greater proportion of their population living in gentrified areas (2% to 18%) compared with metropolitan areas with fewer than 250,000 residents (1% to 14%). With attention on healthy cities only expanding, GENUINE provides pan-Canadian indicators of gentrification, which can be an integral part of solution-oriented research and advancing cities toward designing healthy and equitable communities.

Subcentres as Destinations: Job Decentralization, Polycentricity, and the Sustainability of Commuting Patterns in Canadian Metropolitan Areas, 1996–2016

Adopting more sustainable modes of transportation and shorter daily commutes remains a fundamental challenge in the struggle for the sustainable transition of cities. While past studies on the sustainability of commuting behaviours partly focused on the place of residence and how the characteristics of commuters or residential neighbourhoods impact sustainable travel, other studies looked at the place of employment to analyze these dynamics. In this study, we investigate the extent to which the recent phase of the rise of peripheral employment has promoted more sustainable travel behaviour, based on the hypothesis that polycentricity has recently favoured a better job–housing balance and co-location. We develop a general typology of employment centres, using Census microdata at fine spatial scale over the 1996–2016 period to observe commuting modes and distances by subcentre types for six major Canadian cities. Our results show that despite recent developments in planning practices—transit-oriented development, transport infrastructure, and changing travel behaviour, the emergence of peripheral subcentres promoted less sustainable commuting patterns in most Canadian metropolitan areas over the period. However, we find sustainable commuting emerging in subcentres where large public transport infrastructure investments have been made, such as in the case of Vancouver’s Millennium and Canada lines. Our study also shows that central business districts (CBDs) and downtown subcentres are becoming relatively more sustainable over the period, which confirms the positive effect of the back-to-the-city movement and changing behaviour toward active transportation in these locations.

Living in the South, Caring in the North: Exploring Inuit Women’s Care Responsibilities

The increased Inuit population in Canadian Metropolitan Areas (CMA) has recently gained attention among the scientific community as well as within Inuit organizations. However, existing literature has overlooked the distinct experience of Inuit women and, more significantly, the importance of care responsibilities in understanding women’s mobility. This study examines the relocation experiences of 46 Inuit women across five CMAs, and the role care sites play in initiating women’s relocation to cities. Results show the key role caregiving responsibilities play in Inuit women’s decisions to move to southern urban areas, as dysfunctional care spaces in the North push them away from their communities, and the potential for safer care sites in the South act as a pulling factor.

106 Neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation and assault injuries in urban youth

Abstract Introduction/Background Youth violence is a major global public health concern. Assault injuries are a major cause of trauma among youth, yet the causes for and medical consequences of assault victimization in this group remain uncertain. Objectives Using data from the third-largest urban area in Canada, we sought to describe the demographic, temporal and geographic influences on the incidence of youth assault injuries. Design/Methods We performed a population-based cross sectional study of Canadian youth aged 10 to 24 years seeking emergency medical care between April 2012 and March 2018 at any of the 16 hospitals in a major Canadian metropolitan area. Injury characteristics were described using graphical and statistical techniques. Neighbourhood material and social deprivation indices were examined as independent predictors of the population incidence of youth assault injury using negative binomial regression and geospatial methods. Results A total of 2,784 assaulted youth sought emergency medical care during the 6-year study interval, corresponding to an incidence rate of 101 youth assault injuries per 100,000 person-years. Assaulted youth were most commonly males between 20 and 24 years of age. Prior diagnoses of substance use and mental health disorders were common. Examination of temporal variation in the incidence of assault injury revealed a 103-fold difference between the riskiest and safest hours of the week (incident rate ratio, 103). The risk of youth assault injury in the most materially deprived quintile of neighbourhoods was more than four-fold greater than that in the wealthiest quintile (incident rate ratio per quintile increase, 1.42; 95%CI [1.27, 1.59]; p &amp;lt;0.001), and the risk of youth assault injury in the most socially deprived quintile of neighbourhoods was more than twelve-fold greater than that in the least deprived quintile (incident rate ratio per quintile increase, 1.88; 95%CI [1.69, 2.11]; p &amp;lt;0.001). Conclusion Assault injuries among youth vary substantially across time and space. Targeted violence prevention interventions might focus on weekend evenings and on socioeconomically deprived neighbourhoods.

Measuring accessibility to hospitals by public transport: An assessment of eight Canadian metropolitan regions

Measuring accessibility to hospitals by public transport: An assessment of eight Canadian metropolitan regions

Implications of Canadian youth views for measuring youth mental health from a socio-economic perspective.

Developing meaningful indicators to track youth mental health (MH) is important to support the development and evaluation of responsive mental health promotion (MHP) initiatives that address the socio-economic determinants of youth MH. Development of relevant indicators is challenged, however, by the lack of knowledge regarding the relations among socio-economic factors and youth MH. Thirty diverse young people from a Canadian metropolitan area were engaged within a process of social praxis to explore their experiences of the inter-relationship between their socio-economic environments and their MH and their processes of seeking to realize their MH. Participants emphasized 'needs' as foundational to MH, whereas 'wants', driven by materialistic and wealth-oriented values and social norms, constrained their MH. Their reflections on the inter-relations among their MH and socio-economic processes highlight eight inter-related MH needs within the Canadian socio-economic context. In this paper, we present these needs and show how these needs, young people's affective states, and their access to resources within co-evolving socio-economic processes (to enable their needs) illustrate the fundamental inter-relation between young people's MH and socio-economic processes. We identify implications for measuring youth MH within MHP practice, including the importance of iterative indicator frameworks that include measures of young people's access to resources to enable their MH needs and their degree of distress.

Human rights in countries of origin and the mental health of migrants to Canada.

Human rights in countries of origin and the mental health of migrants to Canada.