L’accessibilité aux services et aux équipements : un enjeu d’équité pour les personnes âgées résidant en HLM à Montréal

L’accessibilité aux services et aux équipements collectifs est un enjeu important pour les personnes âgées résidant dans le parc HLM. Cela l’est d’autant que, souvent, la précarité économique de ces personnes réduit passablement leur mobilité, déjà faible en raison de leur position dans le cycle de vie. Dans le cadre de cet article, nous évaluons l’accessibilité aux services et aux équipements collectifs de cette clientèle du parc HLM à partir d’une méthodologie reposant sur les systèmes d’information géographique et sur des méthodes de statistique exploratoire multidimensionnelle. L’indicateur d’accessibilité ainsi construit montre qu’il existe huit types de paysages d’équipements autour des immeubles HLM montréalais où réside majoritairement une clientèle âgée. Nos résultats montrent que, globalement, 42 % des aînés qui vivent dans des logements publics montréalais regroupant une majorité de personnes âgées, ont un bon ou très bon accès aux ressources urbaines alors que pour 58 % d’entre eux, l’accès est plus limité.For elderly people living in public housing, whose mobility is often reduced due to their stage in the life cycle and their economic resources, the accessibility to services and facilities is a fundamental concern. In this paper, we evaluate the accessibility to various services and facilities for this clientele by using a methodological approach based on geographical information systems and multivariate analysis. Our results based on the calculation of an accessibility indicator show that there are eight facilities landscapes around public housing buildings where live a majority of elderly residents. Overall, 42% of elderly residents of public housings have a good level of accessibility to urban resources, against 58% who have a more limited accessibilit

Cogentrification sociale et économique : La colocalisation de la main-d’oeuvre et des emplois de services aux entreprises à Montréal, 1996-2001

Plusieurs études se sont penchées sur l’évolution de la localisation des emplois de services aux entreprises. Une hypothèse qui n’a pas encore été pleinement explorée est celle selon laquelle ce secteur chercherait à s’implanter à proximité des quartiers résidentiels où réside sa main-d’oeuvre. Notre étude démontre qu’il semble effectivement y avoir une certaine colocalisation, mais que celle-ci affecte principalement la main-d’oeuvre résidant à proximité du centre-ville. Ici, on trouve que les nouveaux emplois de services aux entreprises tendent à se localiser à proximité des quartiers déjà habités par leurs employés. Ceci nous permet d’avancer l’hypothèse d’une cogentrification : d’abord résidentielle, alors que certains professionnels se sont, depuis une vingtaine d’années, réapproprié des quartiers péricentraux de Montréal. Ensuite économique, tandis que les emplois de bureau en services aux entreprises se sont localisés vers ces mêmes quartiers.Many studies are currently investigating the localization of business services jobs and its development. One hypothesis, which has been insufficiently researched to date, is that this sector tends to locate in the vicinity of residential neighbourhoods where its workforce lives. This study demonstrates that though colocalization does exist to some extent, it mainly affects workers living close to the downtown area. It has been discovered that new business services jobs tend to locate in close proximity to areas already inhabited by employees in the business services sector. We can therefore hypothesize that cogentrification is primarily residential. A number of professional workers have returned to live in Montreal’s pericentral neighbourhoods over the past twenty years. Cogentrification is also economic, insofar as business services office jobs have gravitated toward these same areas during the same period

Access to recreational physical activities by car and bus : an assessment of socio-spatial inequalities in mainland Scotland

Obesity and other chronic conditions linked with low levels of physical activity (PA) are associated with deprivation. One reason for this could be that it is more difficult for low-income groups to access recreational PA facilities such as swimming pools and sports centres than high-income groups. In this paper, we explore the distribution of access to PA facilities by car and bus across mainland Scotland by income deprivation at datazone level. GIS car and bus networks were created to determine the number of PA facilities accessible within travel times of 10, 20 and 30 minutes. Multilevel negative binomial regression models were then used to investigate the distribution of the number of accessible facilities, adjusting for datazone population size and local authority. Access to PA facilities by car was significantly (p<0.01) higher for the most affluent quintile of area-based income deprivation than for most other quintiles in small towns and all other quintiles in rural areas. Accessibility by bus was significantly lower for the most affluent quintile than for other quintiles in urban areas and small towns, but not in rural areas. Overall, we found that the most disadvantaged groups were those without access to a car and living in the most affluent areas or in rural areas

How do supply chain choices affect the life cycle impacts of medical products?

The natural resource based view (NRBV) of organisations suggests that there are two main models used by businesses to achieve short-term sustainability outcomes. They are the product stewardship and pollution prevention models. Here is the case of a New York-based wholesaler of medical supplies. The business aims to develop a more environmentally sustainable supply chain for one of its products - an emesis basin. The emesis basin is currently only offered in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic, which has negative effects on the natural environment. This study aimed to assess how the focus of the business’ new business model might affect the overall life cycle impacts of this product. To achieve this, we compared the environmental impacts of the conventional product (Scenario 1– an HDPE basin) with equivalent products supplied via pollution prevention (Scenario 2 – a bioplastic basin) and product stewardship (Scenario 3 – green supply chain management and improvements) scenarios, as well as a combination scenario (Scenario 4). The results show that, in line with expectations, the pollution prevention option – switching to a bioplastic product – has the lowest environmental impacts. Unexpectedly though, the product stewardship option had a greater impact on the natural environment than the conventional HDPE, business-as-usual option. We suggest there may greater environmental gains to be obtained by focusing on one’s core business, than by extending influence to the entire supply chain

Draco, a flawless dwarf galaxy

The Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph), with its apparent immense mass to light ratio and compact size, holds many clues to the nature of the enigmatic dark matter. Here we present deep photometric studies of this dwarf galaxy, undertaken with the MegaCam Camera at the Canada-France-hawaii Telescope, the Wide Field Camera at the Isaac Newton Telescope and the Wide-Field and Planetary Camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The new photometric data cover the entirety of the galaxy, and reach i=24.5 at 50% completeness, significantly deeper than previous panoramic studies, allowing searches for tidal disturbances of much lower surface brightness than has been possible before. With these improved statistics, we find no evidence for asymmetric disturbances or tidal tails that possess more than 3% of the stars found within the centre of the galaxy. We find that the central stellar density, as probed by the HST data, rises into the central 0.5'. Uncertainties in the position of the centroid of the galaxy do not allow us to determine whether the apparent flattening of the profile interior to 0.5' is reliable or not. Draco is therefore a flawless dwarf galaxy, featureless and apparently unaffected by Galactic tides.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Do residents’ perceptions of being well-placed and objective presence of local amenities match? A case study in West Central Scotland, UK

Background:&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Recently there has been growing interest in how neighbourhood features, such as the provision of local facilities and amenities, influence residents’ health and well-being. Prior research has measured amenity provision through subjective measures (surveying residents’ perceptions) or objective (GIS mapping of distance) methods. The latter may provide a more accurate measure of physical access, but residents may not use local amenities if they do not perceive them as ‘local’. We believe both subjective and objective measures should be explored, and use West Central Scotland data to investigate correspondence between residents’ subjective assessments of how well-placed they are for everyday amenities (food stores, primary and secondary schools, libraries, pharmacies, public recreation), and objective GIS-modelled measures, and examine correspondence by various sub-groups.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Methods:&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; ArcMap was used to map the postal locations of ‘Transport, Health and Well-being 2010 Study’ respondents (n = 1760), and the six amenities, and the presence/absence of each of them within various straight-line and network buffers around respondents’ homes was recorded. SPSS was used to investigate whether objective presence of an amenity within a specified buffer was perceived by a respondent as being well-placed for that amenity. Kappa statistics were used to test agreement between measures for all respondents, and by sex, age, social class, area deprivation, car ownership, dog ownership, walking in the local area, and years lived in current home.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Results:&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; In general, there was poor agreement (Kappa &lt;0.20) between perceptions of being well-placed for each facility and objective presence, within 800 m and 1000 m straight-line and network buffers, with the exception of pharmacies (at 1000 m straight-line) (Kappa: 0.21). Results varied between respondent sub-groups, with some showing better agreement than others. Amongst sub-groups, at 800 m straight-line buffers, the highest correspondence between subjective and objective measures was for pharmacies and primary schools, and at 1000 m, for pharmacies, primary schools and libraries. For road network buffers under 1000 m, agreement was generally poor.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Conclusion:&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Respondents did not necessarily regard themselves as well-placed for specific amenities when these amenities were present within specified boundaries around their homes, with some exceptions; the picture is not clear-cut with varying findings between different amenities, buffers, and sub-groups

Turtle Sport: An Open-Source Software for Communicating with GPS Sport Watches

The aim of this article is to introduce an open-source software—Turtle Sport—that is capable of automatically importing the GPS traces of several types of GPS sport watches (Garmin, Polar, Suunto, Timex, TomTom, etc.) or of importing a number of GPS files. The GPS data are also uploaded locally to the researcher’s computer workstation, and not to Cloud, which may raise important ethical issues. Turtle Sport also allows users to: manage a number of users; visualize the traces and statistics for the races; and export the traces to external files (GPX, KML). Developed in Java, Turtle Sport is a stand-alone, multiplatform (Windows, Mac and Linux) and multi-language (11 languages supported) application. The software is available under GNU LGPL 2.1 Licence on SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/turtlesport/).   Funding statement: The publication of the paper was supported by the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Equity (950-230813)

The case of Montréal's missing food deserts: Evaluation of accessibility to food supermarkets

BACKGROUND: Access to varied, healthy and inexpensive foods is an important public health concern that has been widely documented. Consequently, there is an increasing interest in identifying food deserts, that is, socially deprived areas within cities that have poor access to food retailers. In this paper we propose a methodology based on three measures of accessibility to supermarkets calculated using geographic information systems (GIS), and on exploratory multivariate statistical analysis (hierarchical cluster analysis), which we use to identify food deserts in Montréal. RESULTS: First, the use of three measures of accessibility to supermarkets is very helpful in identifying food deserts according to several dimensions: proximity (distance to the nearest supermarket), diversity (number of supermarkets within a distance of less than 1000 metres) and variety in terms of food and prices (average distance to the three closest different chain-name supermarkets). Next, the cluster analysis applied to the three measures of accessibility to supermarkets and to a social deprivation index demonstrates that there are very few problematic food deserts in Montréal. In fact, census tracts classified as socially deprived and with low accessibility to supermarkets are, on average, 816 metres away from the nearest supermarket and within 1.34 kilometres of three different chain-name supermarkets. CONCLUSION: We conclude that food deserts do not represent a major problem in Montréal. Since geographic accessibility to healthy food is not a major issue in Montréal, prevention efforts should be directed toward the understanding of other mechanisms leading to an unhealthy diet, rather than attempting to promote an even spatial distribution of supermarkets

La qualité de l’environnement urbain autour des immeubles HLM montréalais : une approche basée sur les SIG

La question de l’insertion du logement public dans le milieu urbain environnant n’est pas nouvelle. Elle a été en effet souvent abordée sous l’angle de l’environnement social, mais plus rarement du point de vue de l’environnement physique et de l’accessibilité aux services et aux équipements collectifs. Pour qualifier l’environnement immédiat autour des immeubles HLM montréalais dans toute sa complexité, nous proposons ici une approche méthodologique basée sur l’utilisation de plusieurs bases de données spatiales dans les SIG : 1) les données individuelles du recensement de 2001 pour la RMR de Montréal, 2) une image satellitaire, 3) une carte d’occupation du sol et 4) des données de localisation comprenant toute une série de services et d’équipements collectifs. Le recours à ces données spatiales nous permet de discerner les différentes combinaisons d’avantages et d’inconvénients du cadre de vie urbain dans lequel s’insèrent les immeubles HLM montréalais selon trois dimensions (l’environnement social, l’environnement physique et l’accessibilité aux services et équipements collectifs). Les résultats finaux démontrent que seule une faible proportion des locataires HLM (7 %) résident dans des espaces résiduels, soit les espaces les moins attrayants de la ville cumulant plusieurs handicaps urbains : un environnement physique dégradé, très défavorisés socialement, avec peu ou pas de services et d’équipements collectifs