Showcasing Relationships between Neighborhood Design and Wellbeing Toronto Indicators

Abstract

Cities are the keystone landscape features for achieving sustainability locally, regionally, and globally. With the increasing impacts of urban expansion eminent, policymakers have encouraged researchers to advance or invent methods for managing coupled human–environmental systems associated with local and regional sustainable development planning. Although progress has been made, there remains no universal instrument for attaining sustainability on neither regional nor local planning scales. Previous sustainable urbanization studies have revealed that landscape configuration metrics can supplement other measures of urban well-being, yet few have been included in public data dashboards or contrasted against local well-being indicators. To advance this sector of sustainable development planning, this study had three main intentions: (1) to produce a foundational suite of landscape ecology metrics from the 2007 land cover dataset for the City of Toronto; (2) to visualize and interpret spatial patterns of neighborhood streetscape patch cohesion index (COHESION), Shannon’s diversity index (SHDI), and four Wellbeing Toronto indicators across the 140 Toronto neighborhoods; (3) to quantitatively assess the global collinearity and local explanatory power of the well-being and landscape measures showcased in this study. One-hundred-and-thirty landscape ecology metrics were computed: 18 class configuration metrics across seven land cover categories and four landscape diversity metrics. Anselin Moran’s I-test was used to illustrate significant spatial patterns of well-being and landscape indicators; Pearson’s correlation and conditional autoregressive (CAR) statistics were used to evaluate relationships between them. Spatial “hot-spots” and/or “cold-spots” were found in all streetscape variables. Among other interesting results, Walk Score® was negatively related to both tree canopy and grass/shrub connectedness, signifying its lack of consideration for the quality of ecosystem services and environmental public health—and subsequently happiness—during its proximity assessment of socioeconomic amenities. In sum, landscape ecology metrics can provide cost-effective ecological integrity addendum to existing and future urban resilience, sustainable development, and well-being monitoring programs.

The Quest for Adaptation through Spatial Planning and Ecosystem-Based Tools in Resilience Strategies

“…Based on this ranking, it was possible to conduct a qualitative evaluation of each of the Resilience Strategies and to compare them to one another in order to identify the contribution of each to adaptation to climate change. Thus, the aforementioned determinants function as essential qualitative indicators of resilience, adaptation, sustainability, and planning initiatives [5,6,35]. They can also be used for the evaluation of other strategies.…”

Toward a Sustainable Future: An Exploratory Approach to the Dynamics of Europe’s Urban Morphology and Sustainability

“…Although this trend is likely not going to slow down, it shows that there is a need to find ways to mitigate the impact our urban centres have on the natural environment. The other metrics that should be addressed inn future research is COHESION, which has been identified and validated through multiple studies already at global and local scales (Shaker et al, 2020;. There is an importance to also take this metrics beyond the urban fabric and look at COHESION throughout the natural environment as well, which has been seen as an important metric at local scales (Meerow & Newell, 2017), but its importance must be explored at a macroscale landscapes along with other landscape metrics as well.…”

A multi-Criteria Wetland Suitability Index for Restoration across Ontario’s Mixedwood Plains

“…With the growing quantity of higher resolution geospatial data, future research can be improved by including more criteria or using more current data at a finer scale. For instance, these could include landscape ecology metrics that capture additional ecosystem goods and services such as habitat physical connectedness, biodiversity, and recreation [84,85]. Progressing this research to the next level using the aforementioned ideas will help to meet the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry goals, which call for a reinstatement of wetland area and function to landscapes where loss has been the greatest.…”