Even in an increasingly digital world, spatial proximity to services and amenities remains a driver of socioeconomic outcomes for business and people alike. In Canada, a nation-wide measurement framework of proximity was lacking. To address this data gap, Statistics Canada developed the first set of nation-wide proximity measures, the Proximity Measure Database (PMD v1.0), which was released in 2020 in partnership with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

The development of PMD v1.0 was guided by the concept of walkable neighbourhoods; that is, neighborhoods in which most of the frequently used services and amenities are within a short walking distance. Although this conceptualization works well for urban and, to some extent, small town Canada, it does not properly reflect the notion of proximity in more rural localities. Rural residents are typically accessing services at short driving distances. 

In addition, the growth of open georeferenced microdata, as well as the geocoding of Statistics Canada’s microdata holdings, have paved the way for the development of new proximity measures, some of which may be more relevant for the understanding of rural settings.  

In this presentation, we will:

• Focus on the methodological approach and data sources that made PMD v1.0 possible.
• Outline the open data sources and tools used as well as the methods applied.
• Highlight the policy relevance of a PMD v2.0 that better reflects the variation in the lifestyles of Canadians, especially those in more rural and remote areas. Specifically, this includes the identification of different types of amenity intensity areas that reflects different regional contexts.

Resources for this presentation

• Proximity Measures Database
• Proximity Measures Data Viewer
• Working Paper: Measuring proximity to services and amenities
• Linkable Open Data Environment