Introduction As laid out in the previous post, achieving the 15-minute city will not be a trivial task. Ensuring greater accessibility to amenities by active or public transport will namely be difficult for the many cities that have increased their dependence on the automobile as they have expanded. However, many neighbourhoods are proving that it is possible to reverse this tendency. Even in car-centric North-American cities like Quebec City, it is possible to find liveable areas with good access to proximity services like groceries.

Introduction Having been able to walk or bike to theatres, jobs, restaurants and a wealth of other amenities for the last 10 years, the 15-minute city resonates strongly with me. However, it seems important to challenge the concept with some hard numbers - lest it become just another buzzword. The main tenant of the 15-minute city is to create liveable neighbourhoods where work, socialization and leisure are all a few minutes away.

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Introduction Although Canada has maintained an official and legal English-French bilingual status since 1969, only a few cities showcase significant proportion of both native English and French speakers. This post tries to determine if there exists regions where both English and French coexist. It specifically focuses on Montreal and Ottawa, which are the only large metropolitan areas with a significant share of both official languages. Empirical evidence shows that English, French and non-official languages can indeed live side-by-side.

Introduction Language has a profound impact on our politics, history, culture, social relationships, art and the way we build our cities. The topic is particularly important in Quebec where language is at heart of the region’s cultural identity and the status of French continues to generate tensions. However, the influence of language on city character is also apparent throughout Canada where it reveals important differences in history and migratory patterns .

Introduction The need to estimate values from a source polygon to a target polygon arises constantly in various geospatial analysis. For instance, it is often useful to determine the population of neighbourhoods or postal codes by considering census datasets. Another important application is the estimation of the change in a given variable over time with evolving geometries. This is namely the case when one wants to study population growth by considering different censuses.

Introduction In addition to shaping its hydrography and history, the particular topography of Quebec City has had an important impact on its vegetation. This post explores how the cliffs delineating the upper and lower parts of the city represent hard to build terrain that serve as sanctuary for fauna and flora in an urban environement. A quick glance at the canopy As the following maps reveals1, there seems to be a qualitative relationship between the presence of trees (top) in green and the slope of the region (bottom) 2.

Introduction Amidst the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there have been talks of reevaluating urban planning and density. To help urban citizens cope with the lockdown and the impossibility to travel to the countryside, many have pushed for more parks and vegetation. Some even argue that parks are the only remaining havens in densely populated cities where not all dwellings have porches and balconies. This post explores the green spaces in Montreal and Quebec City.

Introduction In a past post, I presented a quick overview of the Wasserstein distance1 and how it can be used to compare distributions. I namely discussed some of its main interesting properties such as shape preservation and its ability to capture local correlation, both of which can be extremelly useful for image retrieval and texture mixing. In this article, I discuss how optimal transport can be used to study age distributions across neighbourhoods and cities.

Introduction The Wasserstein distance and optimal transport theory were first studied by the French mathematician Gaspard Monge in the 18th entury. Since that time, the field has been revisited by many illustrious mathematicians like Leonid Kantorovich in the 20th century and more recently by the Fields medalist Cédric Villani. In addition to these considerable theoretical advances, the method has also benefited from important advances in numerical computations and algorithms which have made it amenable to real large scale problems.