Jane's Walk

Walkability Studies

St. James Town
Kingston-Galloway-Orton Park
Steeles-L’Amoreaux
Chalkfarm-Black Creek
Scarborough Village
Thorncliffe Park
North Kipling
Peanut

Overview


The overall goal of this research project is to help better understand the ways people get around Toronto’s high-rise apartment neighbourhoods, especially by walking. Building on the arguments Jane Jacobs espoused more than 40 years ago, the importance of creating good places for people to walk is now increasingly being recognized by transportation experts and public officials. Planners and architects have pushed the idea of “New Urbanism,” arguing that new neighbourhoods should be built more like the Annex or Cabbagetown neighbourhoods of downtown Toronto, with connected streets and houses that directly front sidewalks. Public health researchers and officials even suggest that the ways we are designing our cities has contributed to the recent rise in physical inactivity and obesity because people no longer walk as part of their regular, daily activities, and there is an increasing move toward the idea of “complete streets” that consider all modes of travel in street design.

These discussions, however, are usually focused on downtown areas or new developments in the outer suburbs. This study is intended to put more focus on the many people living in Toronto’s inner suburbs.  As people interested in making better walking environments, we believe that Toronto’s high-rise neighbourhoods are enormously important.

These types of places were planned and developed in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, it was assumed that most of the people living in the new apartments would not have children, would move to houses as soon as they could, and would be able to drive to the places they needed to go. The single-family subdivisions in these areas were, at least, designed so that children could walk to school, but the apartments on big arterial streets were not places designed for walking.

Today, however, a different population is living in them, often people with limited incomes, people with children and complicated travel needs, and people who do not own a car or who only have access to a car part of the time. In other words, neighbourhoods that were designed for cars now house people that must rely on walking and transit to carry out their lives. This study is intended to better understand how these residents get around their neighbourhoods, especially by walking. Our goal is to share this information with the people who live in them so they can better advocate for improvements.

This is a good time for residents to make clear what they want and need because of policies and programs being developed by the City of Toronto. The City is working with local community organizations and developing policies and programs for 13 Priority Neighbourhoods that include many of the high-rise apartment areas. It is adopting a “Walking Strategy” to “make Toronto a great walking city” that explicitly includes these areas.  It is currently developing a “Tower Renewal” program that also promises to bring improvements to apartment areas. Finally, the City has an ambitious transit plan, “Transit City,” that could bring light-rail and other transportation improvements to some of these neighbourhoods. All these initiatives offer some potential for changing apartment neighbourhoods into better places to live.

The authors do not represent the city and we do not know what will become of these various initiatives, but we strongly believe that better information about how residents use their neighbourhoods is crucially important to making positive change. For these efforts to be successful and make Toronto a better place for its residents, we believe that the residents themselves must have a strong voice and play a central role in decision-making. We are doing this work to provide both residents and the City with information to help foster this objective.

We use three basic methods:


a facilitated walk with groups of residents to allow them to talk about their neighbourhoods and the types of places and facilities they use and how they work; a short individual survey that asks about where and how often people walk to carry out daily activities like shopping and going to the bus stop; and a facilitated social mapping exercise where residents talk about the walking environments in the neighbourhood as a whole as their ideas are recorded on a shared community map.

A preliminary report for each neighbourhood studied can be used by residents and community groups to work with the city to make changes or modifications to their walking environment. A general report will be created to help better highlight these types of inner suburban communities. This report will be available to the general public and submitted to the Toronto Pedestrian Committee and other community stakeholders. Academic articles will also be written by Professor Paul Hess to add to the growing literature on walking and neighbourhoods.

An overview report summarizing findings written by Professor Paul Hess will be available in early 2011. In the meantime, please read our preliminary Walkability Reports from the high rise neighbourhoods of Toronto, the first such studies done in North America’s inner suburbs.

Walkability Studies

St. James Town
Kingston-Galloway-Orton Park
Steeles-L’Amoreaux
Chalkfarm-Black Creek
Scarborough Village
Thorncliffe Park
North Kipling
Peanut

Walkability Study Credits and Acknowlegements

Study Funding

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Toronto Community Foundation

Leadership

Paul Hess, Principal Investigator

Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Programme in Planning

University of Toronto

Ph. 416-978-4955

Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Website: faculty.geog.utoronto.ca/Hess/hess_home.html

Jane Farrow, Community Engagement & Logistics

Executive Director, Jane’s Walk

Ph. 416-642-5779

Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Website: http://www.janeswalk.net

Report Writing

Paul Hess - Principal

Jane Farrow

Eranthie Mendis

Ian Malczewski

Photography Editor

Katherine Childs

Photography

Katherine Childs

Paul Hess

Jane Farrow

Mapping

Martin Danyluk

Walkability Workshop Staff

Scott Barnett

Ed Birnbaum

Martin Danyluk

Abigail Friendly

Heather McLean

Zita Nyarady

Bridgette Kelly

Jed Kilbourn

Ian Malczewski

Katie Mazer

Eranthie Mendis

Abigail Moriah

Emmy Pantin

Vanessa Parlette

Rani Sanderson

Amy Siciliano

Saara Siddiqi

Vrinda Vaidyanathan

Community Partners

Action for Neighbourhood Change – Steeles L’Amoreaux

Action for Neighbourhood Change – Scarborough Village

Action for Neighbourhood Change – North Kipling

Bengali Social Club – East Scarborough

Bleecker/Wellesley Activity Network

Doorsteps Neighbourhood Services – Chalk Farm

East Scarborough Storefront

Mayor’s Tower Renewal Office, City of Toronto

Scarborough Village Neighbourhood Association

St James Town Youth Council

Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Centre

Westhill Community Services

Youthlink