In order to examine demographic characteristics, census data will be looked at. Surrounding the mall, a total of 11 census tracts are selected.
The 11 Vancouver (933) census tracts are:
1.01, 1.02
2.01, 2.02
14
15.01, 15.02
16.01
17.01
18.01, and
34.01
For a better picture of where these census tracts are,
please look at Figure 1, The Map of Vancouver,
and Figure 2, The 11 Census Tracts.
One of the reasons why choosing these census tracts to look at is that they coincide with the service area of the mall consisting the three neighbourhood areas of Champlain Height, Killarney, and Fraserview. Surrounding these 11 census tracts are Boundary Road in the east, Kingsway in the north, and Argyle Street and Victoria Drive in the west. The Fraser River in the south forms a natural barrier to the extent of the service area of the mall. These census tracts are considered as the service area of the mall because of the fact that both Kingsway and Victoria Drive have a good mix of commercial setting along these two roads. People living close to these two roads tend to do their daily purchase there. Therefore these two roads form the northern and western boundaries of the study area. Crossing Boundary Road is the Municipality of Burnaby. This forms the eastern boundary as a political barrier and assumed that people living in Burnaby are not going to shop at the mall. This assumption is valid with the fact that the mall was supposed to serve ONLY Vancouver residents living in the neighbourhood areas of the mall. Also with the size and scale of Metrotown being much larger than Champlain Mall, people living in Burnaby are assumed to shop at Metrotown.
In this project, census tracts are being used as oppose to using enumeration areas. If enumeration areas are used for the study area, a total of 70 enumeration areas are resulted for the 11 census tracts! Although enumeration areas are the smallest division of the land, the amount of data resulted is quite unmanageable. Also, this detail in the division of land is not required for this project. Rather a general trend of demographic characteristics is more appropriate. Besides, this project is looking at demographic characteristic changes over time (discuss next), the finest division of land is not needed. A combined trend is easier to look at and for analysis. Too much detail of the data will rather obscure the result.
In order to look at demographic changes, more than one year of data is needed to see trend. The latest census was carried in 1996 and the previous one was conducted in 1991. Therefore census data of both years are used. The percentage change from 1991 to 1996 data will be looked at and are described in more details in the next two sections. The reason of choosing these two years only is because the mall redevelopment application was submitted in 1997, therefore, there should be some important changes in population composition and characteristics in the neighbourhoods so that the developer considered a redevelopment of the mall is needed. The objective is to see why people are not going to the mall anymore.
After the data is collected (refer to next section), they are put into ArcView to display the changes. Spatial analysis is then performed (refer to spatial analysis). The process involves the use of software of Beyond 20/20, Microsoft Excel, ESRI ArcView, and Netscape Composer to present this project.
The data are imported into the attribute table of V-centract1.shp file (census tract shape file) using ArcView (A sample of the attribute table is shown in Figure 3). When editing of the table has started, each new field is added to the table and the data of the corresponding census tracts are put in. After the editing process has stopped, each new field is presented graphically. Each graphical display is copied using screen dump. Each graph is then converted from bmp file format to jpeg file format to be presented in this project.
To determine demographic changes that affect the mall, the following measures are used:
- Population change
- Immigration and place of birth
- Individual and household income
- Education
- Types of dwelling
All of these demographic properties will be discussed in the Spatial Analysis section after Data Collection.
Questions arising from this project are expected to be answered by the results from spatial analysis. These questions include:
- Do population composition changes
lead to changes in shopping pattern of the residents in the neighbourhood?
- What is the composition of ethnicity
of the people living in the area?
- How income, employment, and education
changes of the population affect their lifestyle?
- What are the developments in the
area around the mall leading to its decline?
Therefore it is hoped that the collected and derived data
can provide answers to these questions. After detail analysis, a
decision of whether the mall should redevelop or to remain the existing
structure or to be demolished will be made.