Paul Villeneuve

Analyzing Changes in Urban Form and Commuting Time

Abstract Urban work trips have changed in important ways during the last decades. In Québec City, a medium-sized Canadian metropolitan area, commuting distances increased for both male and female workers between 1977 and 1996, while durations increased for male workers and decreased for female workers. This article seeks to identify spatial and social factors responsible for these changes. We develop a disaggregate model of trip duration estimated on the basis of large samples derived from travel surveys comparable through time. Using categorical variables to specify change, we are able to separate change effects from level effects attributable to various dimensions of urban form. Our analysis clearly indicates that, once travel mode and key social factors are controlled for, the shift from a monocentric to a dispersed city form is responsible, in the Québec metropolitan area, for increasing commuting time. This is contrary to findings in larger metropolitan areas, where, it has been argued, the suburbanization of jobs maintains stability in commuting duration.

Modelling interactions of location with specific value of housing attributes

This paper presents a procedure for considering interactions of neighbourhood quality and property specifics within hedonic models of housing price. It handles interactions between geographical factors and the marginal contribution of each property attribute for enhancing values assessment. Making use of simulation procedures, it is combining GIS technology and spatial statistics to define principal components of accessibility and socio‐economic census related to transaction prices of single‐family homes. An application to the housing market of the Quebec Urban Community (more than 3,600 bungalows transacted in 1990 and 1991) illustrates its usefulness for building spatial hedonic models, while controlling for multicollinearity, spatial autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity. Distance‐weighted averages of each property attribute in the neighbourhood and interactions of property attributes with each principal component are used to detect any spatial effect on sale price variations. This first‐stage spatial hedonic model approximates market prices, which are then used in order to compare “expected” and actual property tax amounts, which are added to obtain a second‐stage model incorporating fiscal effects on house values. Interactions between geographical factors and property specifics are computed using formulae avoiding multicollinearity problems, while considering several processes responsible for spatial variability. For each property attribute, they define sub‐models which can be used to map variations, across the city, of its marginal value, assessing the cross‐effect of geographical location (in terms of neighbourhood profiles and accessibility to services) and its own valuation parameters. Moreover, this procedure distinguishes property attributes, exerting a stable contribution to value (constant over the entire region) from those whose implicit price significantly varies over space.

A multi-perspective approach for defining neighbourhood units in the context of a study on health inequalities in the Quebec City region

BackgroundIdentification of socioeconomic and health inequalities at the local scale is facilitated by using relevant small geographical sectors. Although these places are routinely defined according to administrative boundaries on the basis of statistical criteria, it is important to carefully consider the way they are circumscribed as they can create spatial analysis problems and produce misleading information. This article introduces a new approach to defining neighbourhood units which is based on the integration of elements stemming from the socioeconomic situation of the area, its history, and how it is perceived by local key actors.ResultsUsing this set of geographical units shows important socioeconomic and health disparities at the local scale. These disparities can be seen, for example, in a 16-year difference in disability-free life expectancy at birth, and a

GENDER AND THE SEPARATION OF EMPLOYMENT FROM HOME IN METROPOLITAN MONTREAL, 1971–1981

10,000-difference in average personal income between close neighbourhoods. The geographical units also facilitate information transfer to local stakeholders.ConclusionThe context of this study has made it possible to explore several relevant methodological issues related to the definition of neighbourhood units. This multi-perspective approach allows the combination of many different elements such as physical structures, historical and administrative boundaries, material and social deprivation of the population, and sense of belonging. Results made sense to local stakeholders and helped them to raise important issues to improve future developments.

ENGENDERING CLASS IN THE METROPOLITAN CITY: OCCUPATIONAL PAIRINGS AND INCOME DISPARITIES AMONG TWO-EARNER COUPLES

Journey-to-work studies have repeatedly found that women have shorter work trips than do men. We argue here that this finding can be interpreted in terms of the evolving relationship between (1) the gender division of labor in household production and (2) the position of women in the labor market. We analyze changes in home-to-employment distances in Montreal between 1971 and 1981 and find that, although gender differences in these distances vary over time across occupational categories and economic sectors, the overall gender differential is remarkably stable. We emplore variations in womens work-trip distances by occupational category and examine whether womens short work trips are more related to their household workload or to their positions in the Montreal labor market. The analysis suggests that maritual status, a surrogate for household responsibilities, may not be as strong a correlate of home-to-employment distances in 1981 as it was in 1971, whereas factors related to the labor market, such as...

Temporal GIS and Statistical Modelling of Personal Lifelines

Little attention has been given to the implications of the dramatic growth of the dual-earner family form for urban social geography. This paper reviews the main themes of existing literature across various disciplines, drawing out their pertinence to urban-geographical questions. Notably, and through the mediation of gender dynamics, the two-earner phenomenon complicates the linkages between occupational class identification and “consumption classes” in the residential sphere. We then present findings of an empirical study of the occupational and income characteristics of dual-earner husband-wife couples in the census metropolitan area of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, using special census tabulations. We highlight the divergent implications of two-earner family growth for social inequalities at the micro-urban scale: (1) how it may have broadened accessibility to middle-class suburbs by increasing the affordability of home-ownership by families of modest occupational status, and (2) how it may have generated...

A Spatio-Temporal Taxonomy for the Representation of Spatial Set Behaviours

Spatio-temporal data models for describing complex lifelines and trajectories of persons, as well as events that affect their evolution, are prerequisites for the statistical analysis of their relationships. Such analyses are useful to develop a better understanding of urban dynamics and social transformations. This paper develops a spatio-temporal database model for handling personal trajectories along a time line (many complementary lifelines) allowing for the statistical analysis of any pre-defined event. It combines survival analysis, Cox regression and temporal GIS. The combination of these aspects support an assessment of the likelihood of any event to occur in the life of persons at risk, after a given time delay and under some specific conditions. Our model was implemented and tested using a geo-relational approach that also supports spatial and temporal reasoning at complementary levels of abstraction. It allows the cross-analysis of several multi-dimensional lifelines to form individual trajectories. The application example is based on an historical survey of personal biographies (spatially located) of 418 professional workers living in the Quebec Metropolitan Area in 1995-96.

Attracting Foreign Students: The Case of Two Universities in Québec

Currently, most models proposed for spatio-temporal databases describe changes that involve independent entities. However, many dynamic applications need new models to relate evolution of spatial entities linked by common properties and constraints or relationships. In transportation GIS, an activity-event matrix describes individual entity behaviours, travel activities and routes on a transportation network. On the other hand, modelling disaggregate travel choices behaviour for several entities implies the identification of new mechanisms to describe the evolution of their joint spatial distribution. This paper introduces and describes the concept of sets of geographical entities needed for the analysis of travel behaviour in metropolitan areas. We propose a taxonomy for the description of the evolution of entity sets in space and the selection of appropriate statistical indexes to analyse their geographical patterns. Such a framework may become a reference for the development of spatio-temporal database representations of spatial patterns evolution.

Contribution to the analysis of urban residential electrical energy demand in developing countries

A number of factors may influence the recruitment of foreign students by universities, especially economic criteria pertaining to profitability. This article examines the cases of two Québec universities. Both feature teaching exclusively in French, a minority language in North America. Based on existing literature, hypotheses concerning the impact of language and international networking on the recruitment of foreign students are tested. Analysis reveals that even if regular use of French is important for recruitment, it is not the only variable involved. The geographical and social context of each university also plays an important role, as does the networking activities of academics who build relationships based on cooperation with foreign institutions.

Becoming Visible: Women and Conflicts in the Quebec Metropolitan Areas, 1965-2000

Access of large segments of the population to electrical energy continues to be limited in the cities of developing countries where the standards pertaining to installed power and consumption are ill suited to the level of appliances owned by households. In this paper, a new evaluation method of residential users’ actual needs in electricity is proposed for Cameroon. The approach is based on the determination of the nature, number and power of the appliances, as well as their operation periods. The method used is a survey administered to a representative sample of households. A detailed questionnaire appraises specific consumption and installed power and is also used to construct the households’ load curve. The need for electrical energy varies according to the size of the city and, inside the city, to household income. The average power used per dwelling accounts for less than half the value prescribed by current norms. If implemented, the method would help optimise network investments and operation. The load curve obtained in the experiment shows that the peak output power is recorded in the evening and that household demand makes up most of this charge. The proposed strategy would reduce electrical energy costs, thus being of great potential interest for poor urban populations.