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Today, the City of Toronto announced that it has revised the boundaries for Toronto's social planning neighbourhoods, resulting in an increase in the number of neighbourhoods from 140 to 158. The City and its community partners use the neighbourhoods to better understand the needs of their exclusive communities, and to help City staff collect data, plan, analyze, and forecast City services. The number of neighbourhoods is increasing in an effort to better track and accommodate the growth that has been experienced in 16 of the social planning neighbourhoods over the last 26 years, since the original neighbourhoods were designated in the late 1990s.
“The City is the government closest to residents, so it is our responsibility to put the right tools in place to ensure the safety, well-being and quality of life in their communities," said Deputy Mayor Michael Thompson, Chair of the Economic and Community Development Committee. "Our updated and expanded social planning neighbourhood network allows us, and service planners, to identify more accurately the local needs and determine how to meet them equitably, and more effectively.”
Because some areas of the city saw lots of growth, while others saw nearly none, population discrepancies appeared, making it harder to support effective planning. According to the City, statistical analysis is more accurate when units of geography and population are more equal or comparable in size and number, so it has been decided that the boundaries for 16 of the 140 original social planning neighbourhoods will be replaced with 34 new ones. The boundaries of the remaining neighbourhoods have not been altered.
Boundaries are always built using Statistics Canada's Census Tract geographies to ensure maximum compatibility with existing datasets.
“The City is committed to making sure that our work to support our growing neighbourhoods and communities is driven by sound data and evidence," said Mayor John Tory. "The changes to the social planning neighbourhoods will help the City and our partners enhance equity, reduce poverty, and ensure that services and supports are delivered where they're needed most.”
When neighbourhoods do not have roughly equal populations, phenomena being studied – such as poverty – can be 'hidden' within the larger population of a neighbourhood. The previous 140 neighbourhoods revealed some neighbourhoods with up to nine times the population of others. This ultimately made it difficult to detect occurrences that were of interest to the City, and to compare these neighbourhoods across multiple indicators. Having neighbourhoods with more balanced and similar populations will allow for a more equitable analysis by the City.
As a result, now the social planning neighbourhoods will better support service planning and research in these new neighbourhoods. Having an updated set of neighbourhoods allows service planners to be able to detect phenomena more accurately, and to make more effective decisions about service provision.
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