Seminar Series
Coming up...
Speaker: Dr. Mikiko Terashima
Date and Time: Wednesday, December 6th from 12 – 1 pm
Location: Online via MS Teams Click here to join the meeting
Title: Measuring walkability/rollability in Halifax: a practical approach for social epidemiological research
Bio: Mikiko Terashima (Ph.D., MCIP, LPP) is an associate professor at the School of Planning, the Faculty of Architecture and Planning. Mikiko is urban planner and a socio-spatial epidemiologist, with an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. from Dalhousie University. She leads a research lab called the Planning for Equity, Accessibility, and Community Health (PEACH) Research Unit (peachresearch.ca). Her recent research focuses on spatial measures of accessibility in multiscale built environments, encompassing homes to neighbourhoods and translation of lived expertise (of disabilities) into practices in urban design and planning.
Brief Description: One in ten Canadians of 15 years of age and older have some mobility disability, and one in a hundred use a wheelchair. Conventional walkability measures are, however, generalized to the ‘average’ population, and often overlook qualities of pathways that may hinder mobility of persons with differential abilities. This talk presents a research project that took a pragmatic approach to measure design qualities of sidewalks in Halifax to assess as community-level walkability/rollability using Google Street View. It outlines our strategies to quantify and rate the curb cut quality and greenness across communities and discusses trade-offs in operationalizing more nuanced measures of walkability in spatial-epidemiological studies.