Geospatial technology for the analysis of human activities and environmental change in Canadian cities and metropolitan regions

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Canada emerged from the twentieth century as one of the most heavily urbanised nations in the world. The pace of urbanisation, coupled with consumer choices regarding housing, employment, and transportation, places mounting pressure on governments to develop sustainable solutions to transportation and land use issues. Current transport challenges facing Canadian cities include: increased automobile use, energy costs and patterns of consumption, traffic congestion, and emissions associated with the movement of people and goods. At present, North American transport and land use planning and policy often reflects assumptions about relationships between urban form and travel behaviour. For example, urban planners and policy-makers increasingly look to Smart Growth principles centred on the organization and density of cities, and the availability of housing and transport options, as an approach to overcoming transport and land use challenges. Despite rising public consensus around the efficacy of Smart Growth, there is little evidence to suggest that broad-based application of Smart Growth principles will yield desirable results for Canadians. This research program involves both geographical information systems (GIS) software development and policy-based studies aimed at enhancing critical discourse on the effectiveness of widely publicized and accepted transportation and land use planning strategies developed to improve quality of life in Canadian cities and regions. Program objectives include: (1) development of map-based software for describing geographical patterns of human activities and transportation decisions and outcomes in cities, and (2) application of the software to study the influence of urban planning and transportation engineering on patterns of household activities and travel in Canadian cities. Policy-based research will focus on the diverse and rapidly growing Greater Golden Horseshoe Area, a vast metropolitan area in the province of Ontario that includes a mix of some of Canada's oldest and newest cities.