Monitoring Housing Diversity Project – Sustainability Scholar

The Edmonton City Plan was approved by Council in 2020 and sets ambitious diversified housing and land use targets to avoid premature fragmentation of agricultural lands while accommodating another one million residents. The Monitoring & Analysis Team, within the Urban Growth Unit lead the annual Growth Monitoring Program, the Geodemographic Projection Program, and Urban Growth Interactive Visualizations (including the Building Permit Dashboard). These programs support implementing the City Plan’s robust monitoring and analysis of housing and land use changes in Edmonton to track progress towards the land use targets.

There are three main issues that limit M&A Team’s ability to report on housing and land use:
1. The Team’s existing geospatial data layers only provide information on housing on residentially-zoned lands. This means all the dwelling units on land zoned for other uses (e.g. mixed use zones and institutional uses such as congregate living) are not counted.
2. Whether in residential or non-residential zones, many congregate living facilities (i.e. long-term care homes, university dormitories, seniors’ living facilities) have a single address for many people making it difficult to count those facilities relative to housing types such as apartments with similar population counts.
3. The accuracy of data on row housing units is not at an acceptable level for reporting at or more detailed than the neighbourhood geography.

The M&A team is requesting support from a Sustainability Scholar to complete the Monitoring Housing Diversity Project that will aim to fix the three issues above. Not only will this project fill a data gap, but will also allow the City to better calculate the supply and locations of all types of housing while understanding housing patterns for some of our vulnerable populations. The monitoring and analysis produced by the team is relied on by Edmontonians, City Council, various City branches, utilities, and the development industry.

Faculty Supervisor:

Robert Summers

Student:

Partner:

City of Edmonton

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services; Public administration

University:

University of Alberta

Program: