Urban
Resilience
Governance

Cre­at­ing sus­tain­able and equi­table cities through munic­i­pal policies

Description

Munic­i­pal invest­ments in the built envi­ron­ment have long-term con­se­quences for cities and local com­mu­ni­ties that extend beyond their orig­i­nal objec­tives. For exam­ple, trans­porta­tion poli­cies aimed at reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions can have con­se­quences for both the health of cit­i­zens and social equi­ty. The con­struc­tion of new bike paths to pro­mote phys­i­cal activ­i­ty can con­tribute to increas­ing or reduc­ing equi­ty between dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions. New bike paths pro­mote equi­ty if they are built in neigh­bor­hoods that are poor­ly served by bike paths, encour­ag­ing new pop­u­la­tions to adopt an active, safe mode of transportation.

To under­stand the impact of these invest­ments on health and social equi­ty, the INTER­ACT team is study­ing trans­porta­tion poli­cies adopt­ed by four Cana­di­an cities: Mon­tréal, Saska­toon, Van­cou­ver and Vic­to­ria. INTER­ACT uses qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive method­olo­gies to under­stand how munic­i­pal trans­porta­tion poli­cies affect the phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, social net­works, and gen­er­al well-being of citizens.

Cité-ID is par­tic­i­pat­ing in the research project by study­ing trans­porta­tion poli­cies of the four cities in order to ana­lyze the lan­guage used to dis­cuss issues relat­ed to health and equity.

For more infor­ma­tion on the INTER­ACT team and its research projects, please click here.

This project is fund­ed by the Cana­di­an Insti­tutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Col­lab­o­ra­tors:

Meghans Win­ters, Simon Fras­er University

Yan Kestens, Uni­ver­si­ty of Montréal

Kevin Man­augh, McGill University

Daniel Fuller, Memo­r­i­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Newfoundland

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