View from the door: a GIS study of neighborhood environment

The census of Canada contains much information about the layout, age, and tenure of dwellings, but nothing about neighborhood environment. If we want to know just how many Canadians live in homogeneous, modern, low-density suburbs, the best that many scholars can do presently is to classify each Census Tract (CT) by category of neighborhood, and then sum up the households in CTs of each category. That this method presumes that each CT is a homogeneous area raises concern in light of the large size of a typical CT. However, Statistics Canada also provides unpublished census summary data at still-finer geographic scales: Enumeration Areas (EAs) and block faces. However, a neighborhood is generally thought to include more than one blockface, and may well include more than one EA. This paper employs the notion that a neighborhood is the area seen by typical residents stepping out from the front door of their dwelling, approximated here by a circle of 400 meters radius around the EA centroid. This paper uses dwelling attributes to define neighborhood. Each EA is assigned to a neighborhood category on the basis of all housing found within the circle. Categorization of neighborhood is based on principal type of dwelling and period of construction found within the circle, and the homogeneity of the stock. This paper presents circle aggregations of EA and blockface data, and interprets neighborhood environment across Canada in 1991. This research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (41094-0684). The outstanding efforts of my research assistants, R. Basu and C. Ho, are gratefully acknowledged.