Transforming Canadian Cities Through Data

For decades, city planners, urban designers, architects, city managers, developers and their financiers have relied on “big data” to inform key decisions: interest rates, housing starts, commercial vacancy rates, and immigration projections. However, the planning has overlooked crucial information, such as data to describe the on-the-ground conditions that are affecting the backbone of Canada’s economy and its 5,000 communities, large and small, such as Canada’s main streets. In response, the Canadian Urban Institute developed a first-of-its-kind tool to map civic infrastructure at the scale of the main street. With the capacity to profile 50,000 main streets nationwide, the Measuring Main Street platform empowers city-builders with the data necessary to create resilient, vibrant and livable communities.

Why Do Main Streets Matter?

In Canada, 85% of us reside within one kilometre of a main street. These streets host 280,000 businesses, provide 1.9 million jobs, and generate $300 billion in annual revenue. They also house over 98,000 community and civic infrastructure assets, from libraries to curling clubs to community parks. Despite their importance, current data models and analysis methods do not always reflect these social and economic powerhouses. Mapping business density, foot traffic, spending habits, demographics, and other characteristics like greenspace provides a much clearer understanding of how local economies function and the conditions that allow them to grow. 

Without this additional data, planning models have mostly relied on decision-making taken from “the top,” removed from actual local conditions, a process that is less democratic and doesn’t factor in the uniqueness of local communities. Decisions taken without the benefit of local data also limit the effectiveness of investments aimed at creating “complete communities,” such as neighbourhoods where residents could meet their daily needs using active transportation. Many main streets do host most of the essential elements required for a community to be “complete.” But decision-makers need to know all that’s there and the general state of those assets, plus what’s missing.

Engaging at the main street level is effective because main streets/neighbourhoods are relatable—people know what their main street is and what it provides for them. Neighbourhood scale is also the scale of community—how we create and maintain relationships—often around civic infrastructure such as schools, parks and recreation centres. Achieving complete communities helps achieve wide-ranging policy goals.

In response to extensive research funded by the Research Knowledge Initiative program from Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, the Canadian Urban Institute released Measuring Main Street mapping data at the main street scale. Available to all involved in city planning decisions, this valuable public resource offers an important tool to inform planning and investment decisions by the public and private sectors.

So Why Have Main Streets Been Historically Overlooked?

Previously, evaluating the role of main streets was hampered by technical limitations and limited data possibilities to publicly available sources, like census data. Now, emerging data sources generated from the private sector are revolutionizing access to data that has the potential to transform traditional approaches to economic development. Cell phone data, payment card tap data, user review sentiment or opinion analysis, AI, and API integrations are enabling the main street scale to be used as a unit of analysis for the first time. These advancements allow for more precise and dynamic insights into local economic activity and community needs.

Observing economies at the main street scale emphasizes the importance of local money circulation, known as the “local multiplier effect.” This process involves money spent at local businesses staying within the community, generating further economic activity. Main street economies excel in this, as local businesses reinvest their earnings at the community level, supporting other independent businesses and hiring local employees, including newcomers.

Main streets support local businesses, provide opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses to start up, promote compact communities that are more sustainable, foster community cohesion and put “eyes on the street” to boost community safety.

Importance of Data in City Planning

Access to more granular data at the main street scale will enable investment to be used preventatively to avoid systemic issues from taking root and becoming much more difficult and expensive to resolve. Foot traffic data, for example, can be leveraged for downtowns that typically service non-residents or people travelling from other areas. Fewer people on these main streets can directly correlate with less spending, putting small businesses at risk. Store closures can then have an accelerating effect, where negative sentiments rise toward that main street, leading to even fewer visitors and creating a vicious cycle. With data at the main street level, these fast-acting patterns of deterioration can be identified early and prevented.

For the first time, the platform will enable policymakers to assess the impact that investments in placemaking, cultural infrastructure, and community initiatives have on the social and economic outcomes in a community. Not only can we watch the obvious bumps in foot traffic driven by individual events, festivals, and new businesses, but Measuring Main Streets helps us see the trend line of how foot traffic, spending, business success, and more are impacted year over year due to the cumulative effect of events. What’s more, we can see who is coming, from where, and if they are coming back again from a single source, creating a full picture of any main street and the people on it.

Technologies come and go, and data is constantly used in new ways for new findings. But the main street isn’t a fad, a pilot, or one of many options. A centuries-old pattern of human settlement has Canadians living near their main street. We know this intuitively—main streets have always anchored our lives—even as neighbourhoods and housing styles and choices have changed. Yet, in the formal sectors of government, planning, and finance, we haven’t had the necessary tools to help analyze and visualize why main streets matter until now.

The main street unit of analysis offers not only a fundamentally new way to understand place and a better way to make investments but also a way to make abstract decision-making at the only scale that matters—the human one—that allows for diversity and pace-specific applications and sustainable outcomes. 

The Future of Canada is Its Main Streets

Vibrant main streets create thriving neighbourhoods, thriving neighbourhoods produce healthy cities, and healthy cities underpin a prosperous country. If we want people to live, work, and invest in Canada, we need to leverage data to give decision-makers better ways to make decisions and make better places. 

By prioritizing investment in our main streets and leveraging innovative data models, we will create more livable, resilient communities and ensure a prosperous future for all Canadians.