Abstract

Wellbeing Toronto Promotes Neighbourhood Wellbeing and Government Transparency
Track: Urban and Regional Planning
Authors: Robert Cheetham, Matt Krepicz

Wellbeing Toronto is a web-based mapping and measurement tool that enables community groups, residents, government officials and business leaders to help gauge wellbeing within Toronto's 140 diverse neighbourhoods. The application combines a list of over 140 indicators of wellbeing and the corresponding data for each neighbourhood. The datasets are grouped into 10 categories including Demographics, Health, Safety, Transportation and Environment. Users are able select up to 20 indicators important to them and generate a thematic map showing how strongly the set of indicators is represented in each neighbourhood. For further analysis, a variety of geographic reference points, such as day care centers, police stations and public transit locations can be overlaid on the thematic map.

This presentation will provide a history of the Wellbeing Toronto project and demonstrate how public access to geospatial data and web-based analysis tools can increase community awareness and promote greater civic participation.