Discussion and Implications
West Point Grey is predominantly zoned for One-Family Dwelling Districts and Two-Family Dwelling Districts, and is home to some of the most expensive houses in Vancouver. The few areas zoned for Commercial Districts are restricted to main roads, especially West Tenth Avenue, which leaves the northernmost dissemination areas with low walkable access to general amenities and services.
Given the characteristics of this neighbourhood, large-scale development would likely be deemed as unacceptable to the residents as major businesses could draw unwanted traffic into this quiet neighbourhood. Taking this into account, we were inspired by the design of Arbutus Coffee, a coffee shop found in the nearby neighbourhood of Kitsilano (Figure 7). Specifically we recommend the rezoning of our target area for the addition of a small grocery store or fruit and vegetable market, a restaurant or cafe, and a community garden to the northernmost area of West Point Grey Neighbourhood.
If modelled after the design of Arbutus Coffee, we believe these additional food services would not negatively alter the overall feel of the neighbourhood, but would perhaps increase community spirit, as these new locations could act as a meeting place for neighbours and foster social interaction. This is especially relevant to the vulnerable population of interest - older adults, as previous research in Vancouver has found that the most frequently visited destination for this population is grocery stores and restaurants (Winters et al., 2015). This implies that the addition of these amenities could increase Walk Score within West Point Grey, and in turn, increase walking and physical activity levels among the older residents in this area. Nathan et al. (2012) assessed access to commercial destinations among older adults in Australia. While they did not find an association between access to food retail services (eg. grocery stores), they found that older adults who lived within 800 meters of social infrastructure walked more than those who did not (OR = 1.19, 95% CI =1.01-1.40). Nathan et al. (2012) concluded that destinations, such as coffee shops, that encourage social interaction can contribute to increased walking among older adults.
Figure 7: Arbutus Coffee: An Example of A Neighbourhood Coffee Shop in Kitsilano
This study successfully quantified access to food services for residents residing in the northernmost areas of West Point Grey by measuring the distance to the nearest food services (from the average residential location) before and after the addition of a cafe and a fruit and vegetable market to the neighbourhood. While two dissemination areas saw no change, two dissemination areas saw a large decrease in distance to the closest food service. This analysis supports the recommendation for rezoning to allow for small-scale commercial development in the interest of increasing walkability and Walk Score.
However, our study is not without limitations. Firstly, the use of secondary data (ie. sourcing the locations of cafes, restaurants, liquor stores and grocery stores from Google Maps) may contribute to reduced reliability of our results. We are unable to tell how often Google Maps is updated to account for businesses that have recently opened or closed, or the rate of misclassification of locations (eg. if a certain store is coded as a restaurant in error). Due to time constraints, we were unable to go to the neighbourhood to perform our own survey of food service locations. It may have been beneficial to cross-reference the locations in Google Maps with a competing service such as Yelp. Secondly, our buffers indicate a 400 meter ring around each target dissemination area (or approximately a five minute walk) measured as the crow flies, while our network analysis indicates the actual road network distance to each food service. This could be misleading to readers as geocoded locations may appear closer than their true distance, yet the buffer acts as a visual aid to approximate distance. Thirdly, for ease of analysis, we grouped food services into two categories based on the type of service provided (cafes/restaurants and food/liquor stores). This is based on the assumption that individuals access all of the services within these two categories at equal rates; however, this does not take into account individual preferences. For example, a vegetarian would not go to a butcher shop. This type of personal information could lead to a different analysis (eg. the removal of specific geocoded locations from each category). However, the focus of our study was at the population, rather than individual level.
Alternative approaches to increasing Walk Score in this neighbourhood may include mapping other types of business (eg. general shops or medical services) or performing a more indepth analysis on the preferences and patterns of use of services for a representative sample of the population. This could take the form of focus group discussions or private interviews with residents. Furthermore, GPS data on daily activity patterns of residents from West Point Grey could inform researchers and city planners on where to increase services to best meet the needs of this neighbourhood.
