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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionate impact on the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs (PWUD) in Canada. However less is known about jurisdictional commonalities and differences in COVID-19 exposure and impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on competing health and social risks among PWUD living in large urban centres. Methods: Between May 2020 and March 2021, leveraging infrastructure from ongoing cohorts of PWUD, we surveyed 1,025 participants from Vancouver (n = 640), Toronto (n = 158), and Montreal (n = 227), Canada to describe the impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on basic, health, and harm reduction needs. Results: Among participants, awareness of COVID-19 protective measures was high; however, between 10 and 24% of participants in each city-specific sample reported being unable to self-isolate. Overall, 3–19% of participants reported experiencing homelessness after the onset of the pandemic, while 20–41% reported that they went hungry more often than usual. Furthermore, 8–33% of participants reported experiencing an overdose during the pandemic, though most indicated no change in overdose frequency compared the pre-pandemic period. Most participants receiving opioid agonist therapy in the past six months reported treatment continuity during the pandemic (87–93%), however, 32% and 22% of participants in Toronto and Montreal reported missing doses due to service disruptions. There were some reports of difficulty accessing supervised consumption sites in all three sites, and drug checking services in Vancouver. Conclusion: Findings suggest PWUD in Canada experienced difficulties meeting essential needs and accessing some harm reduction services during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings can inform preparedness planning for future public health emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location planning for pedestrian zones is a multifaceted problem. The selection of best location from a list of potential stations involves consideration of different technical, economical, environmental, and social factors. For some of these factors, numerical values can be provided, but the others are based on the qualitative data. In this paper, a multicriteria decision analysis approach is presented based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for location planning of pedestrian zones under lack of quantitative data. A decision-making committee comprised of representatives of city transportation officials, public administration, and city residents or users is formed to select the criteria/subcriteria for evaluating pedestrian zones. Five locations for pedestrian zones are considered for evaluation in the city of Montréal: namely, Downtown, Jean Drapeau, Olympic stadium, Old Montréal, and Saint Denis. The results of this study indicate that the downtown area is the best choice for a pedestrian zone. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine the influence of criteria and subcriteria weights on the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the 1996 Canadian census to examine and measure the spatial structure and intensity of urban deprivation in Montreal. Urban deprivation emerged as an important theme in urban studies and urban geography during the 1990s. Since the early 1980s, the Montreal urban area, particularly the Island of Montreal, has experienced an increase in urban social problems, brought on largely by economic restructuring, recessions and the out-migration of residents and businesses to suburban communities. Twenty indicators of urban deprivation are drawn from the census and analysed by way of a principal components analysis first to identify the main types of deprivation in the city and then to measure its intensity. In the process, a general deprivation index (GDI) is devised which can be applied to study the spatial aspects of this phenomenon in other Canadian cities. The study identified six main types of deprivation in the city and found that they were most visible on the Island of Montreal, especially in the central and eastern parts. Additionally, it found that urban deprivation in not confined to the inner city, as several of the most severely deprived neighbourhoods are located outside the central city and even in the off-Island suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the transferability of a composite walkability index, the Pedestrian Index of the Environment (PIE), to the Greater Montréal Area (GMA). The PIE was developed in Portland, Oregon, and is based on proprietary data. It combines six urban form variables into a score ranging from 20 to 100. The measure introduces several methodological refinements which have not been applied concurrently in previous efforts: a wide coverage of the different dimensions of the urban form, together with the use of a distance-based decay function and modelling-based weighing of the variables. This measure is applied to the GMA using local data in order to evaluate the feasibility of its transfer (the possibility of locally replicating the measure). It is then included in a series of mode choice models to assess its transferability (the capacity of the measure to describe walkability and predict mode choice in another urban area). The models, segmented by trip distance or trip purpose, are estimated and validated against observed trip data from the 2013 Origin-Destination survey. Significant positive correlation is found between the PIE and the choice of walking for short trips, for all purposes as well as for four specific trip purposes. The inclusion of the PIE also improves the accuracy of the modelling process as well as the prediction of the choice of walking for short trips. The PIE can therefore be used in the GMA, and potentially in other metropolitan areas, to improve the modelling of travel behavior for short trips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Sex differences exist in children’s obesity rates, dietary patterns and television viewing. Television continues to be a source of unhealthy food advertising exposure to children in Canada. Our objective was to examine sex differences in food advertising exposure in children aged 2 to 17 years across four Canadian Englishlanguage markets. Methods: We licensed 24-hour television advertising data from the company Numerator for January through December 2019, in four cities (Vancouver, Calgary, Montréal and Toronto) across Canada. Child food advertising exposure overall, by food category, television station, Health Canada’s proposed nutrient profiling model, and marketing techniques were examined on the 10 most popular television stations among children and compared by sex. Advertising exposure was estimated using gross rating points, and sex differences were described using relative and absolute differences. Results: Both male and female children were exposed to an elevated level of unhealthy food advertising and a plethora of marketing techniques across all four cities. Differences between sexes were evident between and within cities. Compared to females, males in Vancouver and Montréal viewed respectively 24.7% and 24.0% more unhealthy food ads/person/year and were exposed to 90.2 and 133.4 more calls to action, 93.3 and 97.8 more health appeals, and 88.4 and 81.0 more products that appeal to children. Conclusion: Television is a significant source of children’s exposure to food advertising, with clear sex differences. Policy makers need to consider sex when developing food advertising restrictions and monitoring efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing urbanization, climate change poses an unprecedented threat, and climate-sensitive urban management is highly demanded. Mitigating climate change undoubtedly requires smarter urban design tools and techniques than ever before. With the continuous evolution of geospatial technologies and an added benefit of analyzing and virtually visualizing our world in three dimensions, the focus is now shifting from a traditional 2D to a more complicated 3D spatial design and assessment with increasing potential of supporting climate-responsive urban decisions. This paper focuses on using 3D city models to calculate the mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) as an outdoor thermal comfort indicator in terms of assessing the spatiotemporal distribution of heat stress on the district scale. The analysis is done to evaluate planning scenarios for a district transformation in Montreal/Canada. The research identifies a systematic workflow to assess and upgrade the outdoor thermal comfort using the contribution of ArcGIS CityEngine for 3D city modeling and the open-source model of solar longwave environmental irradiance geometry (SOLWEIG) as the climate assessment model. A statistically downscaled weather profile for the warmest year predicted before 2050 (2047) is used for climate data. The outcome shows the workflow capacity for the structured recognition of area under heat stress alongside supporting the efficient intervention, the tree placement as a passive strategy of heat mitigation. The adaptability of workflow with the various urban scale makes it an effective response to the technical challenges of urban designers for decision-making and action planning. However, the discovered technical issues in data conversion and wall surface albedo processing call for the climate assessment model improvement as future demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In a recent issue of , a number of key players in the 1960s and 1970s school of quantitative urban geography (called Chicago II in this article) set out some of the approach's key methodological premises and assessed its influence in the wider arena of urban studies. At about the same time, the 1920s and 1930s Chicago School of urban sociology (called the Chicago School in this article) was being reassessed in France ( ), and deconstructed in Los Angeles ( ). In this article, we outline a selection of basic models of urban space proposed by the Chicago School and further elaborated by Chicago II. We then consider certain aspects of three important critiques: humanist/aesthetic, Marxist, and postmodern. We argue that none of these invalidates the Chicago II approach to the study of urban areas, and we demonstrate its resilience and usefulness by way of the empirical example of Montreal. Though the results are of interest in their own right, the principal purpose of the analysis is to illustrate the type of insight that a structured quantitative approach provides and the way this approach rests on a theoretical understanding of processes at work in cities. We conclude by arguing that the humanist and Marxist critiques shed important light upon the possibilities and limits of the Chicago II approach, but that the postmodern claim that the spatial development of urban areas is not structured by at least some general processes is inaccurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In a general context of state reforms, there is an emerging consensus on the strategic role of city-regions in the global economy. As it is the case in other city-regions, state-led regional reforms in Montreal are enmeshed in a series of clashes between the Left and the Right, the Provincial government and local municipalities, and the inner city and the suburbs. However, Montreal also presents an intriguing case of territorial struggles centered on cultural identities nested in multiple scales. Beyond the more recurrent arguments for and against consolidation, Montreal is also the theater of a struggle for linguistic rights. The use of territorial claims as a political strategy for influencing city-regional governance reforms and by the same token gaining more local autonomy to protect life in English in Montreal is explored as an indicator of the rescaling of claims for political autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws attention to the cultural construction of the loft and the socio-spatial practices involved in its (re)production in Montréal. After thirty years of construction, the loft concept has come to represent a very particular set of domestic practices and aesthetic dispositions that are part of the North-American inner-city landscape. The emergence of the loft as part of Montréal's inner-city landscape challenges the idea that the loft is simply a local imitation of a universalized revitalization strategy. Montréal is a secondary city in the global economic hierarchy, but it is the metropolis of a relatively distinct and coherent regional space of Canada's French-speaking province of Québec. Once the center of Canadian manufacturing, especially light manufacturing, Montréal's retracted role in the Canadian economy in the post-industrial period has left indelible marks on the inner city because of the weak role of the city as a financial center, there is little pressure to revalorize loft spaces, and due to local factors, revalorization does not always involve "arts related investment" or the provision of cost-effective space for producer service activities