Meetup #565

Measuring Main Streets: Data Tools for Transit-Oriented Communities

with Greg Spencer and Luca Carnegie

Understanding what communities need from housing and transit, and deploying evidence-based responses to those needs is hard. Who’s living in housing around transit infrastructure? What amenities are in their neighbourhood, and what’s missing? What housing stock exists? How can it be developed further to serve the local community effectively? And of course, how does walkability fit into this whole picture?

To equip community leaders with tools to answer these questions and more, the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) developed Measuring Main Streets. It’s a digital platform bringing together unique neighbourhood-level data on demographics, housing development potential, and community amenities in and around transit station areas.

We’ll demo the platform’s tools and show how they go beyond traditional transit-oriented development, which tends to focus on density, to make the case for what we call transit-oriented complete communities: places where transit investment also delivers the amenities and housing mix people actually need.

Speakers

Greg Spencer

Greg has over 20 years of experience in urban and economic development policy making and research. He has worked in consulting and academia roles across Canada, the UK, and Ireland helping local communities reach their full potential. He has co-authored high profile reports with leading urban think tanks such as Brookings Metro, The Martin Prosperity Institute, and NESTA. He has also co-authored op-eds in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and The Guardian. He holds a Ph.D. in Economic Geography and a M.Sc. in Planning from the University of Toronto and a B.A. in Geography from Bishops University.

Luca Carnegie

Luca is a Data Analyst on the Data Analytics Team at the Canadian Urban Institute. After graduating, he dove into urban data science at the CUI to drive evidenced-based, multidisciplinary solutions to urban challenges. He holds a Bachelor of Information in Information Systems from the University of Toronto. In his free time, he loves to watch and act in musical theatre, play music, and test new recipes in his kitchen. This is his second time presenting at Civic Tech and is SO excited to be back!!