Active Living Environments (CanALE User Guide) - 1

The Canadian Active Living Environments (Can-ALE) database is a geographic-based set of measures that represents the active living friendliness of Canadian communities. The primary envisioned use for Can-ALE is research and analysis of the relationship between the way communities are built and the physical activity levels of Canadians. Each of the measures was selected from fourteen potential measures identified by a literature review. Several considerations were weighed in deriving the Canada-wide set of measures, including: (1) the suitability of each measure across different Canadian regions and built areas (e.g., urban, suburban, rural areas); (2) the incorporation of high-quality, open and free-to-use data sources; and (3) the strength of the association between the derived measures with walking rates and active transportation (i.e., walking, cycling, and public transit use). Public transit use is included in the definition of active transportation, as public transit is shown to generate physical activity via walking to and from transit stops.The Can-ALE data were developed by Dr. Nancy Ross, Thomas Herrmann and William Gleckner, with funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada. Can-ALE measures have been developed for 2006 and 2016 census dissemination areas. Users are discouraged from performing longitudinal analyses using data from both the 2006 and 2016 datasets, as the derivation methodologies and census geographies changed between the reference years. ArcGIS was used by CANUE staff to associate the single link DMTI Spatial postal codes to the Statistics Canada dissemination areas boundary files, and then join the Access to Employment data to the postal codes, using dissemination area unique identifiers. There may be many postal codes within a single dissemination area - these will have the same index values and may not be suitable for summation, etc. Please refer to the Supporting Documentation.