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The Physical Activity Neighborhood Environment Scale (PANES) has been used internationally; however, PANES properties have not been assessed in all geographical contexts. Our objectives were to assess the reliability and validity of an online and paper version of the PANES in Canadian adults. Reliability was estimated using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), percent of overall agreement (p[subscript 0]) and Cohen's Kappa coefficient. Lower 95% confidence interval (CI) ICC ranged from 0.10 to 0.70. Lower 95%CI for kappa statistics ranged from -0.20 to 0.64 and p[subscript 0] ranged from 80.1% to 95.7%. Cronbach's alpha coefficients estimated internal consistency of the PANES (alpha = 0.58 for the paper version and alpha = 0.55 for the online version). Mean scores for the PANES Built Environment Index (BEI) significantly differed by neighborhood street pattern (p < 0.05). The PANES administrated via paper or online provides reliable overall agreement and valid estimates of the self-reported neighborhood built environment supportiveness of physical activity.

In this paper we utilize interview data to explore the workings of a college-community partnership program that delivers tuition-free, for-credit courses to low-income adult students in neighbourhood-based settings. Addressing the interplay of individual and structural barriers on the educational readiness of students, our findings explore how the program builds participants' confidence and self-belief, and how the neighbourhood-based delivery model encourages their engagement with post-secondary education (PSE). We find that the value of embedding PSE capacity and resources in low-income communities lies not only in its potential to engage adult learners, but also in how it nurtures a greater sense of community integration and social inclusion. We conclude by suggesting that our study provides a useful foundation for institutions elsewhere aiming to recalibrate and extend their community outreach strategies when seeking to promote post-secondary access and engagement for low-income populations.

This paper documents the linguistic landscape of Saint Catherine Street, a major thoroughfare in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The street is taken as a microcosm of the sociolinguistic variation observable at the various levels of analysis, ranging from the neighbourhood, the city, the province, Canada as a whole, and the globally similar environment of the downtown shopping street. By way of a systematic sampling of signs in the street's linguistic landscape, the interactions between federal policies of bilingualism, provincial laws strengthening the visibility of French, and local linguistic realities is considered, as is the impact of the global connectedness of both the 'grassroots' and the commercial world on the linguistic landscape in this street. While the presence of French and English is largely instrumental in function, many instances of other languages are found to be motivated by more symbolic functions, driven, in no small part, by the globally encoded indexical meanings of the languages in question.

The concept of sense of place has received considerable attention by social scientists in recent years. Research has indicated that a person's sense of place is influenced by a number of factors including the built environment, socio-economic status (SES), well-being and health. Relatively few studies have examined sense of place at the neighbourhood level, particularly among communities exhibiting different levels of SES. This article investigates sense of place among three neighbourhood groups in Hamilton, Ontario representing areas of low, mixed and high SES. It analyses data from a 16-point sense of place scale derived from the Hamilton Household Quality of Life Survey carried out in 2010-2011 among 1,002 respondents. The paper found that sense of place was highest among residents of the high SES neighbourhood group as well as among home owners, people residing in single-detached homes, retired residents and those living in their neighbourhood for more than 10 years. From a health perspective, the paper found that a strong association existed between sense of place and self-perceived mental health across the three neighbourhood groups. Furthermore, by way of regression modeling, the paper examined the factors influencing health-related sense of place. Among the sample of respondents, a strong connection was found between housing, particularly home ownership, and high levels of health-related sense of place. (Contains 5 tables and 1 footnote.)

Social capital has been studied by academics for more than 20 years and within the past decade there has been an explosion of growth in research linking social capital to health. This paper investigates social capital in Hamilton, Ontario by way of a telephone survey of 1,002 households in three neighbourhood groups representing high, mixed and low socio-economic status (SES). A Social Capital Measurement Tool is proposed as a straightforward way to account for differences in social capital perceptions and actions among residents. Consistent with the literature, the paper found that there was a strong association between social capital perceptions and health, particularly mental health and life stress. Social capital was greater in the high and mixed SES neighbourhoods and much weaker in the low SES neighbourhoods. With respect to social capital actions, both volunteering and voting was associated with positive overall health and mental health. Finally, the paper identified the social capital "elite"--respondents with high or above average perceptions and who participated in the two social capital actions--voting and volunteering. Prominent among the social capital elite in Hamilton is the "health wealthy" senior, a positive development for the continued social well-being of the city.

The author loves Toronto, where she has lived for more than three decades. Two of those she has resided in an apartment on the west side of town--close to the University of Toronto and the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), to the parks and pathways that connect her living and working sites with those institutions and her other haunts. What thrills her most about this city? Its diverse peoples, half of whom were born outside Canada. Its neighbourhoods. Its walkability. Its ravines. When a person loves something as much as she does Toronto, then he or she makes artwork about it. In her practice, art making requires a devoted and voracious accumulation of ideas and options, followed by ruthlessly selective editing, a kind of delicate dissection--this paradoxical form of engagement somehow both bonds a person to his or her subject and holds it at arm's length. And so motivated by love, curiosity and a kind of anticipatory nostalgia the author explains in this article, she created "Finding Home," a body of interwoven visual art and text about her home neighbourhood around Bathurst and St. Clair. This article reflects on the making of "Finding Home" and includes portions of it. (Contains 22 notes.)

This paper considers school factors that contribute to a successful transition from high school to first-year university Physics courses at the University of British Columbia by employing a two-level hierarchical model. It is assumed that there is a relationship between student performance and the high school they graduated from. It is shown that school location and type affect student performance: students from public schools in the Metro Vancouver area perform better in first year compared to students from independent schools and schools in distant communities. The study also considers rankings of schools based on student performance in first-year university Physics and Calculus courses. These university-based rankings differ significantly (essentially in reverse order) from the well-known Fraser Institute rankings based on measures internal to high schools.

This paper examines perceptions of quality of life in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada from the perspective of residents and key community stakeholders. A series of eight focus groups were conducted. Six sessions were held with residents of neighbourhood "hubs", areas characterized by high levels of poverty. The following themes were highlighted as significant to neighbourhood quality of life: (1) housing quality and affordability; (2) diversity and cultural integration; (3) crime and safety; (4) community engagement and recreation; (5) green space and the physical environment; and (6) transportation. Two focus groups were then conducted with key informants who provided recommendations for improving quality of life and discussed relevant policy issues such as employment and income security. The findings of the focus groups resonate with local research and policy action in Hamilton, including a new Neighbourhood Development Strategy for the City. This research advocates for decision-makers to support and work alongside context-based, resident-led community development efforts. The hub model, as well as Hamilton's broader neighbourhood-based research and community development approach may assist social researchers, civic leaders and various levels of government across Canada as they work to improve quality of life in their communities.

This article investigates the relationship between crime and quality of life in Saskatoon, Canada. The city has one of the highest crime rates in the country and has been referred to as the "Crime Capital of Canada", a label that comes as a surprise to many residents and causes considerable concern among others. The aim of this research is to penetrate beyond sensational news headlines and bald crime statistics. The paper evaluates how perceptions of crime and safety affect the quality of life of residents living in neighbourhoods of different socio-economic status and geographic location. Both quantitative and qualitative time series data is analyzed in a sample of neighbourhoods over the period 2001-2004-2007. The findings of the data analysis are interpreted with respect to issues relating to the fear of crime, avoidance behaviour, risk minimization, social cohesion and community building.

This paper uses assemblage theory to consider the work that community does in a residential neighborhood in Toronto, Canada. It utilizes assemblage theory and connections between assemblage, affect, and emotion to advance an understanding of how community shapes capacity and action. The analysis shows how community has been enacted on the Islands, what actions and tendencies this assemblage makes possible or likely, and what it constrains. It also contributes to understanding what assemblage analysis can do. The mechanisms by which desire is channeled toward certain kinds of actions in the assemblage include the performance of community for self-preservation, the use of history and memory in the making of the community assemblage, and the role of territoriality, identity, and belonging in community-preserving actions. The analysis also reveals processes of stasis through reification of the assemblage and its interdependence with other processes like racial capitalism. Finally, I propose possibilities for shifting the assemblage, including telling different histories, and greeting emotional intensity experimentally. Seeing community through the lens of assemblage enables us to ask different questions, which may help us build the communities we need for a more just future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disaster researchers have long analysed disruption to affected residents' ontological security, often represented by routines and familiar landmarks. Surprisingly little of this work, though, assesses who is most likely to experience feelings of disruption. Using a representative set of survey data, complemented by follow‐up interview data from 40 residents affected by the Southern Alberta Flood of June 2013, this paper explores how demographic characteristics, such as gender and place attachment, impact on residents' sense of disruption and loss. The findings indicate that women and people with stronger emotional and social ties to their neighbourhoods are most likely to experience disrupted ontological security; home flooding and evacuation orders are also significant predictors. The qualitative interview data reveal that many participants felt unsettled and disrupted by myriad factors, such as ongoing construction, which prevented them from establishing a 'new normal'. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policymakers and service providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell 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.)

Higher-income neighbourhoods in Canada’s eight largest cities flourished economically during the past quarter-century, while lower-income communities stagnated. This paper identifies some of the underlying processes that led to this outcome. Increasing family income inequality drove much of the rise in neighbourhood inequality. Increased spatial economic segregation, the increasing tendency of ‘like to live nearby like’, also played a role. It is shown that these changes originated in the labour market. Changes in investment, pension income and government transfers played a very minor role. Yet it was not unemployment that differentiated the richer from poorer neighbourhoods. Rather, it was the type of job found, particularly the annual earnings generated. The end result has been little improvement in economic resources in poor neighbourhoods during a period of substantial economic growth, and a rise in neighbourhood income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores police stop and search practices in Toronto using the 2003-2012 data from Toronto Police Service. The findings demonstrate that for black youth, the number of stops and the stops/arrests ratios increased significantly by 42.7% and 44.9% respectively between 2003 and 2012, while for white youth, both indices decreased steadily during the same period. Moreover, they show that police stops of black youth occur most excessively in neighbourhoods where more white people reside and/or have higher crime rates. This article argues for the importance of a contextualized examination of police stops within the spatial context of neighbourhoods and calls for open and free access to police stop data, regular internal review by police, and community policing in Toronto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productive aging research has thoroughly documented that civic participation is associated with health and psychological well-being among older adults living in the community. Promoting late-life civic participation is beneficial for older adults and communities. Empirical studies on correlates of civic participation have mostly focused on psychosocial factors. Few studies have investigated the relationship of home and neighborhood environmental factors with civic participation among older adults from diverse backgrounds. Based on the 2018 Canadian Housing Survey, this study examined the associations between home and neighborhood environmental factors and civic participation in terms of civic engagement in organizations and volunteering among older Canadians and whether the associations differed by dwelling types (house vs. apartment) and gender. Regression results illuminated important factors of civic participation associated with home and neighborhood contexts. Uninhabitable home conditions were associated with increased odds of civic engagement among older men and women residing in houses and older men residing in apartments. For older women living in apartments, home maintenance needs were related to a higher likelihood of civic engagement. In terms of neighborhood context, community safety was associated with greater likelihood of volunteerism among all groups. In addition, neighborhood problems (noise, garbage, pollution, racism) and sense of belonging to the community were common correlates of civic engagement and volunteerism for all. This study indicates the importance of considering home and neighborhood environmental factors in civic participation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces neighbourhood change in central Halifax, Canada, from 1951 to 2011 to consider how urban renewal policies and other factors may have influenced who lives downtown. In the 1950s planners advocated slum clearance and modernization to permit commercial expansion in the city centre. Subsequent decades saw central neighbourhoods decline. By the 1980s population began to rebound as planning policy increasingly promoted residential uses downtown. Over the 60 years central Halifax transitioned in character: three of the central tracts became increasingly affluent, while the fourth went from close to the city average to a low-income tract. The trajectories that neighbourhoods follow depend on several factors including societal changes, economic conditions, public policy interventions, and decisions made by other significant institutions (such as universities). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Regent Park was built with great optimism in the 1950s as a public housing neighbourhood in Toronto. Over the years, however, it has come to be seen as a failure of this ideal and stigmatized as a poor, crime-ridden, violent neighbourhood with large numbers of visible minorities and immigrants. Recent urban revitalization efforts have aimed to transform the physical space as well as to re-brand the neighbourhood in more positive ways as part of a diverse, multicultural city. This paper critically considers the construction of meaning of Regent Park as a place, between the external representations of the city's urban developers and the internal, 'lived experiences' of its Muslim residents. It analyses the construction of meaning of Regent Park as a Muslim place within the representation of Toronto as a Canadian, multicultural city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Journal of International Migration & Integration is the property of Springer Nature 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.)

Copyright of Community, Work & Family is the property of Routledge 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.)

Although there is a large body of research dedicated to exploring public attributions for poverty, considerably less attention has been directed to public understandings about the effects of poverty. In this paper, we describe lay understandings of the effects of poverty and the factors that potentially influence these perceptions, using data from a telephone survey conducted in 2002 on a random sample ( n = 1671) of adults from eight neighbourhoods in two large Canadian cities (Edmonton and Toronto). These data were supplemented with interview data obtained from 153 people living in these same neighbourhoods. Multivariate linear and logistic regressions were used to determine the effects of basic demographic variables, exposure to poverty and attribution for poverty on three dependent variables relating to the effects of poverty: participation in community life, the relationship between poverty and health and challenges facing low-income people. Ninety-one per cent of survey respondents agreed that poverty is linked to health, while 68% agreed that low-income people are less likely to participate in community life. Affordable housing was deemed especially difficult to obtain by 96%, but other resources (obtaining healthy food, giving children a good start in life, and engaging in healthy behaviours) were also viewed as challenging by at least 70% of respondents. The regression models revealed that when controlling for demographics, exposure to poverty explained some of the variance in recognising the effects of poverty. Media exposure positively influenced recognition of the poverty–health link, and attending formal talks was strongly related to understanding challenges of poverty. Attributions for poverty accounted for slightly more of the variance in the dependent variables. Specifically, structural and sociocultural attributions predicted greater recognition of the effects of poverty, in particular the challenges of poverty, while individualistic attributions predicted less recognition. Older and female respondents were more likely to acknowledge the effects of poverty. Income was positively associated with recognition of the poverty–health link, negatively associated with understanding the challenges of low-income people, and unrelated to perceptions of the negative effect of poverty on participation in community life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which dogs and their owners interact in the Glebe, a small upscale neighborhood in the centre of Ottawa. Using participant observation and autoethnography, the paper documents my arrival with my dog in this new neighborhood, and our adventures good and bad. Issues such as contested use of territory, along with an examination of stratified layers of legislation and local, more personal views on dogs, are combined to provide a picture of a society in transition and partition, particularly with regards to public land and park use. Competing interest groups include cyclists, young families, seniors and those who believe dogs should be neither seen nor heard. The paper shows that dogs are 'lightning rods' for different levels of public opinion, which are manifestly concerned with animals but latently more involved with human socialization, with governance of the neighborhood, and with allocation of natural resources in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses a new electric vehicle routing problem with time windows and recharging strategies (EVRPTW-RS), where two recharging policies (i.e., full or partial recharging) and three recharging technologies (i.e., normal, rapid, and ultra-rapid) are considered. For this problem, we first develop a mixed-integer linear programming model defined in a series of vertices including a depot, a series of recharging stations, and a set of customers. Due to the strong NP-hardness of EVRPTW-RS, a tailored adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic (ALNS) which contains a number of advanced efficient procedures tailored to handle the proposed problem is developed. Numerical experiments for benchmark instances generated based on the Greater Toronto Area and Ontario in Canada are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed model and ALNS. Computational results demonstrate that the ALNS is highly effective in solving EVRPTW-RS and outperforms commercial solver CPLEX. Moreover, the advantages of the proposed recharging strategies are illustrated and some recommendations are provided for stakeholders when using electric vehicles for delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design and quality of the neighbourhood built environment can encourage health-supportive behaviours and support cardiometabolic health. However, despite the relationships between demographic and behavioural risk factors of metabolic syndrome being investigated by many studies, only some studies have directly estimated the associations between the built environment and metabolic syndrome. Using data from Canada, we examined the associations between the neighbourhood built environment and metabolic syndrome. Data from Alberta's Tomorrow Project participants, conducted in Alberta, Canada, was used (n = 6718). Metabolic syndrome was defined as the presence of at least three clinical risk factors among lipid levels, blood pressure, and waist circumference. The normalised difference vegetation index was used to quantify the greenness of each participant's neighbourhood. Built attributes of participants' neighbourhoods associated with supporting physical activity, including dwelling density, intersection density, and the number of points of interest, were obtained via the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium. Increases in the number of points of interest and total active living environment-friendliness of the neighbourhood were associated with having fewer metabolic syndrome risk factors (b = −0.11, 95% CI −0.16, −0.07 and b = −0.03, 95% CI −0.05, −0.01, respectively) and lower odds of metabolic syndrome (OR = 0.89, 95% CI 0.84, 0.094 and OR = 0.97, 95% CI 0.95, 0.99, respectively). Furthermore, higher dwelling density was associated with having fewer metabolic syndrome risk factors (b = −0.05, 95% CI −0.09, −0.01). Our findings highlight the importance of urban design to prevent and potentially manage metabolic syndrome and improve population health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial configurations of changes in the distribution of incomes within Canada's eight largest metropolitan areas are examined using a new approach based on dynamic local indicators of spatial association. These changes are characterized by increasing spatial polarization (or divergence) between higher- and lower-income neighbourhoods in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary and Vancouver. Though patterns of spatial polarization are less pronounced in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Quebec City, several lower-income neighbourhoods in these cities nevertheless appear to be losing ground relative to other neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods are typically characterized by higher levels of precarious employment and higher shares of visible minority and recent immigrant populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction With increasing interest in income-related differences in cancer outcomes, accurate measurement of income is imperative. Misclassification of income can result in wrong conclusions as to the presence of income inequalities. We determined misclassification between individual- and neighborhood-level income and their association with overall survival among colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Methods The Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohorts were used to identify CRC patients diagnosed from 1992 to 2017. We used neighborhood income quintiles from Statistics Canada and created individual income quintiles from the same data sources to be as similar as possible. Agreement between individual and neighborhood income quintiles was measured using cross-tabulations and weighted kappa statistics. Cox proportional hazards and Lin semiparametric hazards models were used to determine the effects of individual and neighborhood income independently and jointly on survival. Analyses were also stratified by rural residence. Results A total of 103 530 CRC patients were included in the cohort. There was poor agreement between individual and neighborhood income with only 17% of respondents assigned to the same quintile (weighted kappa = 0.18). Individual income had a greater effect on relative and additive survival than neighborhood income when modeled separately. The interaction between individual and neighborhood income demonstrated that the most at risk for poor survival were those in the lowest individual and neighborhood income quintiles. Misclassification was more likely to occur for patients residing in rural areas. Conclusion Cancer researchers should avoid using neighborhood income as a proxy for individual income, especially among patients with cancers with demonstrated inequalities by income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Evidence from systematic reviews suggests that adult immigrants living in areas of higher immigrant density (areas with a higher proportion of foreign-born residents) tend to experience fewer mental health problems—likely through less discrimination, greater access to culturally/linguistically appropriate services, and greater social support. Less is known about how such contexts are associated with mental health during childhood—a key period in the onset and development of many mental health challenges. This study examined associations between neighbourhood immigrant density and youth mental health conditions in British Columbia (BC; Canada). Methods: Census-derived neighbourhood characteristics were linked to medical records for youth present in ten of BC's largest school districts from age 5 through 19 over the study period (1995–2016; n = 138,090). Occurrence of physician assessed diagnoses of mood and/or anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and conduct disorder was inferred through International Classification of Diseases (ICD) diagnostic codes in universal public health insurance records. Multi-level logistic regression was used to model associations between neighbourhood characteristics and odds of diagnoses for each condition; models were stratified by generation status (first-generation: foreign-born; second-generation: Canadian-born to a foreign-born parent; non-immigrant). Results: Higher neighbourhood immigrant density was associated with lower odds of disorders among first-generation immigrant youth (e.g., adjusted odds of mood-anxiety disorders for those in neighbourhoods with the highest immigrant density were 0.67 times lower (95% CI: 0.49, 0.92) than those in neighbourhoods with the lowest immigrant density). Such protective associations generally extended to second-generation and non-immigrant youth, but were—for some disorders—stronger for first-generation than second-generation or non-immigrant youth. Conclusions: Findings suggest there may be protective mechanisms associated with higher neighbourhood immigrant density for mental health conditions in immigrant and non-immigrant youth. It is important that future work examines potential pathways by which contextual factors impact immigrant and non-immigrant youth mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The lack of consistent measures of the cycling environment across communities hampers cycling research and policy action. Our goal was to develop the first national dataset in Canada for metrics of the cycling environment at the dissemination area (DA) level--the Canadian Bikeway Comfort and Safety (Can-BICS) metrics. Data and methods The Can-BICS metrics are area-level metrics based on the quantity of cycling infrastructure within a 1 km buffer of the population-weighted centroid of DAs. The base data are a national cycling network dataset derived from OpenStreetMap (OSM) (extracted January 25, 2022) and classified by high-, medium- and low-comfort facilities. A Can-BICS continuous metric (sum of cycling infrastructure per square kilometre weighted by comfort class) and Can-BICS categorical metric were derived and mapped for all 56,589 DAs in Canada. The Can-BICS metrics were correlated with other national datasets (2016 Canadian Active Living Environments [Can-ALE] and 2016 Census journey-to-work data) to test for associations between Can-BICS and related measures. Additionally, city staff were engaged to provide feedback on metrics during the development phase. Results One-third (34%) of neighbourhoods in Canada have no cycling infrastructure. According to the categorical measure, 5% of all DAs were assigned as the highest category of Can-BICS (corresponding to 6% of the population) and were nearly all within metro areas. The Can-BICS continuous metric had low correlation with bike-to-work rates (R = 0.29) and was more strongly correlated with sustainable-transportation-to-work rates (R = 0.56) and the Can-ALE metrics (R=0.62). These correlations were variable across cities. Interpretation The Can-BICS metrics provide national research- and practice-ready measures of cycling infrastructure. The metrics complement existing measures of walking and transit environments (Can-ALE), collectively providing a cohesive set of active living measures. The datasets and code are publicly available, facilitating updates as new infrastructure is built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada exhibits no correlation between income and victimization, rich neighborhoods are less exposed to property crime, rich households are more victimized than their neighbors, and rich households and neighborhoods invest more in protection. We provide a theory consistent with these facts. Criminals within city choose a neighborhood and pay a search cost to compare potential victims, whereas households invest in self‐protection. As criminals' return to search increases with neighborhood income, households in rich neighborhoods are likelier to enter a race to greater protection driving criminals toward poorer areas. A calibration reproduces the Canadian victimization and protection pattern by household/neighborhood income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background The objective of this study was to create the Canadian Food Environment Dataset (Can-FED) and to demonstrate its validity. Data and methods Food outlet data were extracted from Statistics Canada's Business Register (BR) in 2018. Retail food environment access measures (both absolute and relative measures) were calculated using network buffers around the centroid of 56,589 dissemination areas in Canada. A k-medians clustering approach was used to create categorical food environment variables that were easy to use and amenable to dissemination. Validity of the measures was assessed by comparing the food environment measures from Can-FED with measures created using Enhanced Points of Interest data by DMTI Spatial Inc. and data from a municipal health inspection list. Validity was also assessed by calculating the geographic variability in food environments across census metropolitan areas (CMAs) and assessing associations between CMA-level food environments and CMA-level health indicators. Results Two versions of Can-FED were created: a researcher file that must be accessed within a secure Statistics Canada environment and a general-use file available online. Agreement between Can-FED food environment measures and those derived from a proprietary dataset and a municipal health inspection list ranged from rs=0.28 for convenience store density and rs=0.53 for restaurant density. At the CMA level, there is wide geographic variation in the food environment with evidence of patterning by health indicators. Interpretation Can-FED is a valid and accessible dataset of pan-Canadian food environment measures that was created from the BR, a data source that has not been explored fully for health research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press 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.)

Drawing on qualitative data gathered in the inner city of Winnipeg, this paper seeks to answer the following questions: What do urban Aboriginals think of African refugees? Do Aboriginals feel threatened by the arrival of refugee migrants in their neighbourhoods? If so, why and if not, why not? Findings from this exploratory study reveal a mixed picture of how Native1 inner-city residents perceive newcomer refugees. Some Aboriginals have negative perceptions of refugees, largely caused by feelings of inter-group competition over jobs and subsidized housing. Other Aboriginals appear to have a sympathetic view of refugees, since they can identify with them as racialized minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Neighbourly contacts organised on-line have become a sign of our times, studied in Canada and the US for decades. This paper is devoted to the so-called ‘e-neighbourhood’ in Poland, and the example chosen is a housing estate in Poznań. The issues addressed include the history of the creation of a portal, changes in the spatial impact of the portal on the estate, and subjects discussed on the forum in the context of the formation of a neighbourhood community. At present, estate discussion forums are a curious novelty rather than a widespread development. They certainly cannot be assessed critically yet. They are not a threat to interpersonal contacts. What is more, they can be seen as a potential link initiating such contacts in rather contact-resistant communities of new estates. Naturally, they can also be an interactive board for notices, complaints and proposals, especially when most, if not all, estate residents have acquired access to the network. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores the city-childcare connection. It analyzes licensed childcare spaces in Winnipeg, finding that inequity characterizes the distribution of childcare in all neighbourhoods. Poorer and more Aboriginal neighbourhoods are particularly disadvantaged, having less access and fewer services than more affluent and suburban areas. Overall, the distribution of spaces and services reveals systemic dysfunctions in the current childcare architecture. This failure is multi-scalar: while experienced at the local level, the originating causes are with higher orders of government. Urban justice is denied by childcare policy and delivery that reproduces and compounds neighbourhood dis/advantage. The conclusion problematizes both voluntary sector reliance and local political inaction, each of which carries implications for planners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The privatization of urban space, as represented in the trend towards a wide variety of common interest developments and increasing prevalence of gated communities, is an international phenomenon. Recent research has not systematically explored the ways in which these types of developments are collectively re-shaping the public and private realms of the city at large. This empirical study of community areas in a Canadian city describes a number of historical private neighbourhood development trends and their convergence in space and time. Based on the empirical generalizations, a conceptual model is developed to illustrate how the trends may have combined to produce a new geography or ecology of space privatization within the city, one in which the older public city is being circumscribed and bounded by new territories of multi-tiered privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The purpose of this paper is to establish the reliability and validity of a neighborhood-level measure of active living potential by applying principles of ecometrics. Methods: Following a 3-day training session, observers (n =8) were provided with a map of a predetermined walking route constructed through the joining of ten randomly selected street blocks. Then, using an 18-item observation grid, pairs of observers performed ratings of 112 neighborhoods. Resulting observations produced a hierarchically structured data set including 4032 observations nested within observers, which in turn were nested within neighborhoods. Data from the 2001 Canadian census were linked to the neighborhood data. Results: Application of ecometric multilevel modeling analyses showed that once interitem and interobserver variability were statistically controlled, about one third of the variability in observations were at the between-neighborhood level. Reliability estimates were 0.78 for items measuring activity-friendliness, 0.76 for safety, and 0.83 for density of destinations. Assessment of the convergent validity of the instrument identified that safety of the environment was positively associated with neighborhood affluence. Density of destinations was negatively associated with affluence and positively associated with higher proportions of persons in the neighborhood walking to work. Conclusions: The three dimensions of the neighborhood active-living potential measure have good reliability and convergent validity and are able to capture between neighborhood differences. Measurement characteristics would have been difficult to ascertain without the ecometrics methodology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article explores issues and topics on nonprofit organizations and social enterprises. In this issue of Nonprofit Management and Leadership readers will find mixed topics, several of them with explicit local urban settings in the U.S. and Canada. Starting off, two articles on neighborhood associations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Albuquerque, New Mexico, respectively. Douglas Ihrke and Terri Johnson take a look at the subject of conflict on neighborhood boards in Milwaukee, while Karen King reports on the involvement of a large body of neighborhood associations in Albuquerque in a municipal planning venture. Raymond Dart offers a different to unlocking some of the intricacies of social enterprise by approaching it from the vantage point of striving for legitimacy. Sabine Boerner enters a real thicket and comes up with a number of interesting and provocative insights, some of which have more widespread applicability to the general problem of evaluation of quality in nonprofit operations. In a case study, Kevin Kearns recounts the experience of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based foundation in regional nonprofit capacity building. In the final selection in this issue, Kunle Akingbola scrutinizes the Toronto region of the Canadian Red Cross and the impact of public funding on agency operations.

This paper applied the model of Linear System of Action developed by Coleman (1992) to understand racial composition in neighborhoods from a systemic approach. The model had an advantage to consider how an individual household simultaneously maximizes all desirable neighborhood qualities with limited socioeconomic resources. The model generated relative values of socioeconomic resources and neighborhood qualities of each racial group in the exchange process. In addition, the model estimated a preference hierarchy of neighborhood qualities of each group. Results suggested that blacks and Asians in Canada tend to live in neighborhoods with higher proportions of their own groups because blacks may be steered away from predominantly white neighborhoods and Asians experience low returns on their socioeconomic resources in improving spatial contact with whites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Studies in Population is the property of Springer Nature 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.)

This paper argues that the several models of neighbourhood change developed in the United States are generally not applicable to Canadian cities due to differences in urban form, socioeconomic characteristics, and a host of institutional factors. A simple model is presented which extends the arbitrage model of neighbourhood dynamics. Several hypotheses are advanced and then tested on a data base covering three Vancouver, B.C. neighbourhoods from 1955 to 1981 by estimating several hedonic price equations. The hypotheses receive partial support. Implications for policymakers are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mile-Ex district of Montreal, Canada – an inner-city manufacturing cluster – is experiencing an influx of new knowledge-based firms, which in addition to residential developments threatens to displace current manufacturing firms. This study examines the competition over industrial space and how state strategies, particularly at the scale of the City, are enabling this trend. Drawing on interviews with local stakeholders and planners, a review of policy documents and field observations, we seek to expand on a nascent literature exploring the gentrification of manufacturing spaces and shed light on the different mechanisms by which the state mediates neighbourhood change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the results of a randomized controlled survey experiment involving 1508 Canadians using hypothetical vignettes of homelessness experiences, allowing us to examine the extent to which Canadians who live in large urban centres hold different attitudes towards homeless populations and may differ systematically in terms of supporting expanding homelessness investments. The findings point to differences not only among major urban centres, but also along urban-suburban-rural dimensions, which help us understand the place-based drivers of political will and policy responses across the Canadian urban and regional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess restaurant children's menus for content and nutritional quality; and to investigate the relationship between the restaurant consumer food environment for children and neighbourhood-level socio-economic characteristics within and between one Canadian city and one US city.Design: Cross-sectional observational study.Setting: London, ON, Canada and Rochester, NY, USA.ParticipantsRestaurant children's menus were assessed, scored and compared using the Children's Menu Assessment tool. We quantified neighbourhood accessibility to restaurants by calculating 800 m road-network buffers around the centroid of each city census block and created a new Neighbourhood Restaurant Quality Index for Children (NRQI-C) comprising the sum of restaurant menu scores divided by the total number of restaurants within each area. After weighting by population, we examined associations between NRQI-C and neighbourhood socio-economic characteristics using correlations and multiple regression analyses.Results: Nutritional quality of children's menus was greater, on average, in Rochester compared with London. Only one variable remained significant in the regression analyses for both cities: proportion of visible minorities had a positive effect on neighbourhood NRQI-C scores in London, whereas the reverse was true in Rochester.Conclusions: Results suggest the presence of a socio-economic disparity within Rochester, where children in more disadvantaged areas have poorer access to better nutritional quality restaurant choices. In London, results suggest an inverse relationship across the city where children in more disadvantaged areas have better access to better nutritional quality restaurant choices. Given these disparate results, research on restaurant nutritional quality for children requires additional consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell 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.)

Background Participation in colorectal screening remains low even in countries with universal health coverage. Area-level determinants of low screening participation in Canada remain poorly understood. Methods We assessed the association between area-level income and two indicators of colorectal screening (having never been screened, having not been screened recently) by linking census-derived local area-level income data with self-reported screening data from urban-dwelling respondents to the Canadian Community Health Survey (50-75 years of age, cycles 2005 and 2007, n = 18,362) who reported no known risk factors for colorectal cancer. Generalized estimating equation Poisson models estimated the prevalence ratios and differences for having never been screened and having not been screened recently, adjusting for individual-level income, education, marital status, having a regular physician, age, and sex. Results About 53% of the study population had never been screened. Among individuals who had ever been screened, 35% had been screened recently. Adjusting for covariates, lower area-level income was associated with having never been screened [covariate-adjusted prevalence ratios: 1.24 for quartile 1; 95% confidence limits (cl): 1.16, 1.34; 1.25 for quartile 2; 95% cl: 1.15, 1.33; 1.15 for quartile 3; 95% cl: 1.08, 1.23]. Among individuals who had been screened in their lifetime, area-level income was not associated with having not been screened recently. Conclusions Lower area-level income is associated with having never been screened for colorectal cancer even after adjusting for individual socioeconomic factors. Those findings highlight the potential importance of socioeconomic contexts for colorectal screening initiation and merit attention in both future research and surveillance efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between the density of people’s ethno-racial in-group in their neighbourhoods (co-ethnic concentration) and trust in their neighbours. Previous studies demonstrate that ethno-racial diversity decreases trust in others, however, these studies rely on overly broad definitions of diversity and of trust, and often do not disaggregate the effects for Whites and ethno-racial minorities. Hence, this study examines the relationship between co-ethnic concentration and trust, focusing on how this relationship may change depending upon one’s ethno-racial status. Putnam’s (2007) analysis leads to a paradox in the sense that, according to the same principle that predicts declining trust amongst Whites, increasing diversity should lead to greater levels of trust for ethno-racial minorities whose share of the population increases with diversification. The findings demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between co-ethnic concentration and trust in neighbours and that this relationship holds for Whites as well as ethno-racial minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien is the property of Gesellschaft fuer Kanada Studien e.V. 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.)

This study examined the influence of walkability on walking behaviour and assessed whether associations varied according to life-stage and population center (PC) size. Walkability scores were obtained for the six-digit postal codes of residential neighbourhoods of 11,200 Canadians, who participated in biennial assessments of the National Population Health Survey from 1994 to 2010. Participants were stratified by age-group. Mixed-effects logistic regression models were used to estimate the influence of cumulative exposure to neighborhood walkability on utilitarian and exercise walking by PC size and life-stage. Associations of neighbourhood walkability with utilitarian and exercise walking varied according to age-group and PC size. Exposure to high walkable neighborhoods was associated with utilitarian walking in younger and older adults in all PC sizes, except for older adults living in a medium PC. Living in a highly walkable neighborhood in a large PC was associated with walking for exercise in younger (OR: 1.42; 95%CI: 1.20–1.67) and older adults (OR: 2.09; 95%CI: 1.51–2.89). Living in highly walkable neighbourhood in a medium PC was associated with walking for exercise in older adults (OR: 1.62; 95%CI: 1.15–2.29). These results emphasize the need to consider the size and nature of every community, and the age-group of a population when implementing strategies to promote walking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]