Measuring the Accessibility of Services and Facilities for Residents of Public Housing in Montreal

TLDR

In Montreal, public‑housing residents—often with limited mobility and economic constraints—face varying accessibility to services and facilities across the city’s dispersed housing projects. The study aims to assess accessibility of urban resources for Montreal public‑housing projects via GIS spatial analysis and to create a multivariate indicator of service accessibility. Researchers used GIS spatial data analysis and multivariate techniques to map and quantify accessibility around each public‑housing building. Results revealed eight landscape‑facility sub‑types, with half of residents enjoying good or very good access—primarily in central districts—while 45% face low accessibility and 5% very limited access.

Abstract

For the residents of public housing, whose mobility is often reduced due to their precarious economic situation and their stage in the life cycle, the accessibility of services and facilities is a fundamental concern. Moreover, in Montreal, public housing is dispersed throughout the city. Accessibility thus varies greatly from one building to the next. The aims of this study are first to evaluate the accessibility of various urban resources using spatial data analysis in geographical information systems and then to develop an indicator of the accessibility of services and facilities for each public housing project using multivariate data analysis. The final results show that there are eight sub-types of landscape facilities around public housing buildings. Overall, half of the residents of public housing buildings have very good or good accessibility to services and facilities. Most of these residents live in public housing in some of the central or relatively central districts. On the other hand, for 45 per cent of public housing residents, there is a low level of access and 5 per cent have very limited service accessibility.