CFC Food Mapping Project Geos 459 – Applied GIS Capstone Project

Jacqui Anhorn #000626524

Nancy Pham #000641236

Mary Pickering #000306405

City of Calgary: Are We Living in a Food Desert?

SAIT Polytechnic 2014

Client Background Project Overview Stakeholders

What is a food desert? Methodology Geospatial Technology Notes Network Analysis

Four main modes of transportation Output

Data Driven Pages Python Scripting

Findings Sectors ‘Complete’ Communities Lowest Access Communities

Summary

Questions 1-4 Conclusion Lessons Learned Future Improvements

References

2

AGENDA

The Calgary Food Committee was established to undertake a Food

System Assessment and Action Plan for Calgary (Yycfood.com 2014)

Under the direction of City of Calgary Council

Having completed the Food System Assessment and Action Plan, the

CFC is now focused on moving towards fulfilling the Calgary Food Vision

Calgary Food Vision: “To create a sustainable and resilient food system

for the Calgary region so that every Calgarian has access to local,

healthy and environmentally friendly food.”

3

Healthy

Accessible

Community

development

Sustainable Food System Principles:

Local

Secure supply

Environmentally

sustainable

CLIENT BACKGROUND

Help the CFC identify food deserts throughout the City of Calgary

This project will be part of the Calgary EATS! progress report to City

Council in the fall of 2014

Food Mapping

To see how communities are connected to food retailers in terms

of physical access

Walking

Cycling

Driving

Transit

Guiding Question:

Is Calgary comprised of ‘complete communities’ in terms of

physical access to food?

4

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Calgary Food Committee

Contributes to the Calgary Eats! Calgary Food System Assessment

and Action Plan

Helps achieve the food vision and principles

Develops a complete community model in terms of physical

access to food

Assists in identifying food deserts throughout the City of Calgary

City of Calgary

Promotes healthier lifestyles and green initiatives, community

building, and strengthens the economy

Allow planners and developers to use the data/analysis for the

future growth of the city

Residents of Calgary

Increase community awareness of a sustainable food system

Show available modes of transportation to access food

5

STAKEHOLDERS

A district (rural or urban) with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet but often served primarily by fast food restaurants and/or convenience stores (Calgary Food and Assessment & Action Plan 2012)

There is no clear agreement on what measures are relevant in identifying food deserts

City of Edmonton study used 750 meters in terms of walkability (2008)

City of Montreal study used 650 meters for walkability (2010)

Case study in Seattle-King County, Washington used a time of 10 minutes to measure the four main modes of transportation (2012)

For the purposes of our project and based on our guiding question, we are analyzing the four main modes of transportation to help determine food deserts in Calgary

Walking

Cycling

Driving

Transit

6

WHAT IS A FOOD DESERT?

Microsoft Excel and Access

City of Calgary Census Data

Geocoding

Grocery store locations

Network Analysis

Used the city's circulation system (roads and trails) and public transit

stops (LRT and bus) to create service areas around grocery stores and

transit stops

Tabulate Intersection

Found percentage of service area coverage within each community

Quantitative method to compare communities

Data Driven Pages and Python Scripting

Created a series of MXD layouts

Produced a hardcopy map book

7

METHODOLOGY

Data Capture

City of Calgary Open Data Catalogue

City of Calgary Civic Census Results (2013)

Alberta Health Services (food retail data)

Google to find additional addresses to geocode

Data Management

Keeping raw data and manipulated data separate

Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access

ArcCatalog (Geodatabase, datasets, etc)

Data Analysis

Network Analysis

Tabulate Intersection

Data Output

Hard copy map book 8

GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY

Used food retailers provided by the Alberta Health Services

“Major food retail facilities have been defined as those indicated as

a grocery store within the AHS data” (Calgary Food and Assessment

Plan 2012)

Year-round farmers markets were used

Calgary Farmers Market

Crossroads Flea Market

Kingsland Farmers Market

Parkdale Farmers Market

For our network analysis, we presumed sidewalks existed on at least

one side of each road

Analyzed residential communities with population greater than 0

9

*NOTES

NETWORK ANALYSIS

“A measure of the effectiveness of community design in promoting

walking …to reach shopping, schools, and other common destinations”

(Esri 2012)

For our project, we used the distance of 1 kilometer for our analysis

Why?

Was used in a previous project as referenced in the Calgary Food

System Assessment & Action Plan (2012)

Other Canadian cities used this distance as a measure of walkability:

Study on Vancouver to compared to bikeability (Walkability and

Bikeability: What is the link? 2011)

11

WALKABILITY

12

Walkability Service Areas

6

10 10

16 16

21

24

31

Number of Residential Communities

*134 communities in Calgary have less than 50%

walking service area coverage

Service Area Coverage

Less than 50% Walkability

13

For our project, we used the distance of 2 kilometers for our analysis

Why?

“While no widely-held standard exists for cycling, the analysis

reveals a median distance of around two kilometers with a high

degree of variation in distances.” (Beyond the Quarter Mile:

Examining Travel Distances by Walking and Cycling 2010)

CYCLING

14

Cycling Service Areas

0

2

3

4

6 6 6 6

Number of Residential Communities

*33 communities in Calgary have less than

50% cycling service area coverage

Service Area Coverage

Less than 50% Cycling

15

Includes all bus stops and LRT stations within the City of Calgary

For our project, we used the distance of 400 meters for our analysis

Why?

“A distance of 400m is used as an accessibility indicator between

population and jobs and primary transit within the Municipal

Development Plan (MDP) and Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP)”.

(Calgary Food and Assessment & Action Plan 2012)

TRANSIT

16

Transit Service Areas

0 1 1

3 3

6

7

9

Number of Residential Communities

* 30 communities in Calgary have transit service

area coverage less than 50% of total

community area

Service Area Coverage

Less than 50% Transit

17

For our project, we used travel times of 3, 5, and 10 minutes for our

analysis

Why?

Based on the generalization that people tend to measure driving

distance with travel time as opposed to an exact number of

measurement

DRIVING

18

Driving Service Areas

OUTPUT

We needed to make 3 maps for each community (total of 252

communities)

Data Driven Pages is a feature in ArcMap which allows you to create

a series of layout pages from a single map document

A single layout is composed for each data-driven page

Dynamic parts of the layout change with each page

Static elements stay the same

Saved us time because it created layouts based on the community

name attribute column!

3 x 252 = 756 layouts we would’ve had to make on our own!

20

DATA DRIVEN PAGES DATA DRIVEN PAGES

21

DATA DRIVEN PAGES

Used Python scripting, we were able to generate a 785 page

document

a series of maps at the city, ward, and community level to show

access in terms of the four main modes of transportation

22

No time wasted converting each map into PDFs and then combining them all into one PDF…THIS SCRIPT DOES IT ALL FOR YOU!

PYTHON SCRIPTING

FINDINGS

24

SECTORS

The pie charts display the combined service area percentage of

communities above and below 50 percent.

Total of 134 communities

25

‘Complete’ Communities

´

Sectors

Complete Communities

Water Bodies

Major Parks

Communities

98.15 97.02

96.15

93.58 92.77

92.31 92.10 91.53 91.48

90.55

Residential Communities with Highest

Combined Service Area Coverage

Combined Service Area Percentage

26

Lowest Access Communities

Sectors

Complete Communities

Water Bodies

Major Parks

Communities

2.62 3.96

9.68

13.06 13.40 14.01

18.95 18.96 19.08

22.42

Residential Communites with Lowest

Combined Service Area Coverage

Combined Service Area Percentage

´

SUMMARY

28

Which communities require an automobile for access to food?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Pe

rce

nt

Residential Communites with Lowest Combined Service

Area Coverage - By Mode of Transportation

Walking Cycling Transit

QUESTION 1

29

Which communities are bike-friendly in terms of accessing food?

QUESTION 2

30

QUESTION 3

Which communities can use public transit to access food?

31

QUESTION 4

Which communities are walkable in terms of accessing food?

32

CONCLUSION

There are some ‘complete communities’ in terms of physical access

to food

Communities that do not have complete access are on the outer

edges of the city

Some identified as communities in development by the City of

Calgary

So, are we living in a food desert? We believe that Calgary is an auto-oriented city so based on accessibility by

driving, we are not living in a food desert.

In terms of the other three modes of transportation, we believe that there are some communities that are food deserts. The majority of these communities are located near the outer edges of the city and currently have less accessibility to grocery stores.

However, we can only partly answer this question as we did not take into account variables other than physical accessibility.

Even if data is coming from a reliable source, we cannot assume it

will be accurate and should always should always get things "triple

checked“

Always have backup ideas because there will be times when data is

unavailable or you can't get it in time to use

33

LESSONS LEARNED

If there was potential for further work on this project

use more variables such as income, unemployment rates, food

prices, population diversity (families, seniors, visible minorities), etc.

use data from multiple sources

In this case we used AHS data with validation through online

research but we could combine it with City of Calgary

Business License Data

Additional data would help provide more accuracy with the road

network data

where sidewalks are located

accurate speed limits of each road

34

FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS

35

QUESTIONS?

36

REFERENCES

Calgary Food Committee. (2014). Calgary Food Committee. Retrieved from http://www.yycfood.com/

Canadian Environmental Health Atlas. (2008). Food Deserts in Edmonton. Retrieved from

http://www.ehatlas.ca/food-deserts/case-study/food-deserts-edmonton

El-Genedity, A., Larsen, J., & Yasmin, F. (2010). Beyond the Quarter Mile: Examining Travel Distances by

Walking and Cycling. Retrieved from http://tram.mcgill.ca/Research/Publications/Travel%20distance.pdf

Esri. (2012). Modeling Walkability. Retrieved from http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0112/modeling-

walkability.html

NCBI. (2012). How to Identify Food Deserts: Measuring Physical and Economic Access to Supermarkets in King

County, Washington. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22897554

The City of Calgary (2012). Calgary Food System Assessment & Action Plan. Retrieved from

http://www.calgary.ca/CA/cmo/Pages/Calgary-Food-System-Assessment-and-Action-Plan.aspx

The City of Calgary (2013). Municipal Development Plan/Calgary Transportation Plan 2013 Monitoring

Progress Report. Retrieved from http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/LUPP/Pages/Municipal-Development-

Plan/Municipal-Development-Plan-MDP.aspx

The City of Calgary (2013). Suburban Growth Info Graphic 2013. Retrieved from

http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/LUPP/Pages/Geodemographics/Geodemographics.aspx

The City of Calgary (2014). Suburban Residential Growth 2014-2018. Retrieved from

http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/LUPP/Pages/Geodemographics/Geodemographics.aspx

Winters, M., Frank, L., & van Loon, J. (2011). Walkability and Bikeability: What is the Link? Retrieved from

http://www.walk21.com/papers/608_Winters.pdf