Overview
The Montreal Census Metropolitan
Area encompasses 113 municipalities and jurisdictions a geographical area
of 4,074 square kilometres. The total population is 3,326,510 persons
living in 1,350,677 private dwellings running from single family detached
units to multi-storey apartment towers.
Visualization of Montreal
for this project occurs at the Census Tract level using data from 769
individual CTs. Some holes exist in the census data where information
was not available. These are visualized as blank spaces.
A Census Tract (CT) is a small,
geographically restricted area with a population of between 2,500 and
8,000 people. Census Tracts are found within Census Agglomeration areas
with populations greater than 50,000 people. A CT is not restricted in
size, and can encompass quite a large geographic extent.
A Census Metropolitan Area
(CMA) is generally formed by one or more adjacent municipalities forming
a central urban area, or an urban core. The urban coremust have a population
greater than 100,000 and a population density of at least 400 persons
per square kilometre.
The extent of the CMA is determined
by the level of integration between adjacent municipalities and and the
urban core. In the Montreal example, the urban core consists of the former
City (now arrondissement) of Montreal, Westmount, Outremont and the rest
of the cities on the Island of Montreal. Laval and Longueil can be classified
as urban fringe, not directly connected to the urban core by heavily integrated.
Outlying areas such as Oka or Mirabel are classified as rural fringe but
are still heavily integrated with the Montreal region.
The level of integration is determined by Statistics Canada based on
journey-to-work information collected within the census questionnaire.
As this information is collected at an individual level and could potentially
be traced back to the source, it unfortunately cannot be used at anything
less than an aggregate level as it is kept strictly confidential.
Fortunately, municipal planning agencies frequently conduct their own
transportation surveys to determine commuting and mobility patterns of
the residents within their service area. This data can be used to more
precisely determine the individual travel characteristics and demands
of an urban population. This will be explored in Phase 2 of this project. |