(Updates – July 1, 2011: The NWI is has been re-branded and launched as Wellbeing Toronto. July 29, 2010: This should now be referred to as the Neighbourhood Well-being Indices. Revised by the City researchers.)
Statistics and geography is about to get a whole lot more fun in the City of Toronto. City staff are working to create interactive, flash maps which allow users to explore neighbourhood-level indicators.
This fresh concept of a way to measure the vitality of a neighbourhood has now evolved into a first draft of the Neighbourhood Well-being Index (NWI). The NWI will collect neighbourhood-level information from a broad range of sources, including Statistics Canada demographic data and the City’s own administrative databases.
The NWI is a new and separate initiative from City of Toronto staff, but it dovetails neatly with Council’s newly adopted Community Partnership Strategy, providing the broad evidence base for the strategy. The NWI also complements the move towards open data initiative, OpenTO, acting as an open data warehouse.
Some of the data to be mapped data is already available, in less friendly formats, through the City’s neighbourhood profiles, the Community Social Data Strategy and TO iMapit. The NWI will enable users to identify key populations groups or services of interest and then produce a user-friendly map of the data.
Several good examples from the U.S.A. give a preview of what the NWI might look like:
- The New York City website Envisioning Development Toolkit is a friendly tool which compares neighbourhood rent and incomes.
- California’s Healthy City is a more data-rich site which allows users to map local services and demographics.
- The Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Map compares a range of data across numerous American cities.
In a sophisticated web-based interface, Toronto residents will be able to select the indicators and identify their own “priority neighbourhoods,” a shift from the current Priority Neighbourhood Areas that were selected using more universal indicators which don’t always match specific local priorities. Service-providers for youth or newcomers or seniors will able to identify the highest need neighbourhoods for each of their own populations.
Two overarching data clusters will be used as measures of a neighbourhood’s wellbeing, allowing a more granular examination of Toronto neighbourhoods. These are
- Population Characteristics, such as Age, Gender, Language, Ethnicity, Family structure, Income.
- Human Service Infrastructures, from and about Community Centres, Libraries, Parks, Police Stations, Schools, etc.
The NWI’s ten domains and particular indicators will likely expand as additional neighbourhood-level data becomes available. The first draft is exploring the following areas:
- Arts, Culture and Heritage: Agency Funding & Grants; Community programs; Neighbourhood-permitted events
- Civic Engagement and Social Inclusion: Agency Funding & Grants; City Beautification Initiatives; Community Meeting Spaces; Donations; Volunteerism; Voter Participation
- Economic Security: 211 Calls for Service; Child Care; Community-based Services; Debt Load (excluding mortgages); Local Neighbourhood Employment; Long-term Employment; Social Assistance; Unemployment; Variety of Local Businesses; Wages & Benefits.
- Education: Community-based Services; Early Development Instrument (EDI); High School Students applications to college/university; High School Drop-out Rates; High School Students passing Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT); Library Circulations
- Environment: Open Space; Pollution/Toxic sites; Soil conditions
- Housing: social housing waiting lists; property taxes; affordability (sales); adequacy (standards); rooming houses; Streets-to-Homes placements; Long-term Home Care Services survey; Toronto Community Housing tenant profiles; Homelessness & Hidden Homeless; 211 calls for information; and community based services.
- Recreation and Leisure: Participants and drop-ins users of parks and recreation programs; waiting lists; facilities capacities
- Safety: By-law inspections/Standards complaints [although these tend to rise with the income of a neighbourhood]; Calls for EMS; Community-based Services; Crime by major categories; Domestic Violence; Fire Code inspections; Firearms shootings and victims; Fires & Arsons; Grow Ops; Pedestrian & Cyclist Collisions & Injuries; Toronto Community Housing Safety and Incidents;
- Transportation: Commuting; Public Transit Access; Wheel Trans Use; Traffic volumes. [One potential but unnoted measures is walkability]
- Personal and Community Health: Birth Outcomes; Communicable Diseases; Community-based Services; Vulnerable Children (with data from Children’s Aids Societies)
Reviewers, both academic and from the community sector, are being asked to review the indicators, help identify priorities for the roll-out, and advise in the creation of an index for each domain.
The hope is that the NWI will be ready to launch in the next 16 – 18 months.
In comparison, in 2005, the 13 Priority Neighbourhood Areas were selected using two sets of measures:
- need (including crime), and
- services available.
Communities which were high in need and low in service (defined as being further than one kilometre from the population requiring that service) were identified as priority neighbourhoods.
The key service areas evaluated were
- Recreation and community centres
- Libraries
- Schools (every city neighbourhood was identified as having one – the only category with full coverage)
- Community health centres and hospitals
- Community-based children’s services
- Community-based services for youth
- Community based services for seniors
- Settlement services
- Community-based employment services
- Food banks, and
- Community kitchens, gardens and markets.
An aggregate measure of neighbourhood service levels was then created for each neighbourhood. See the City reports on the Strong Neighbourhood Task Force for more detail.
Belonging Community 