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App: Urban Reach

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Mission Statement

As urban expansion continues to boom in Canada, concerns are being raised at all levels of government regarding the issue of transportation and accessibility. If the increase of urban spread precedes the implementation of proper transit infrastructure, not only are the accessibility needs of many citizens neglected, but environmental concerns, such as a car-dependent culture, begin to rise. In response to this, on July 23, 2023, the Government of Canada committed to investing $14.9 billion over the following eight years into transit options that are reliable, fast, affordable and clean to match the growing needs of an expanding urban landscape. This funding is still primarily dedicated to catching up. To combat persistent accessibility inequities in high-growth regions, transit and bike access must be built alongside new developments. Rather than an afterthought, they must be treated like road access or sewer connectivity as a compulsory part of the planning process

The mission of DCS is to evaluate accessibility to public transit and safe biking trails within areas of rapid urban expansion. Our app, Urban Reach, focuses on three regional districts identified by the province of BC as “high-growth regions”, as listed below:

Alongside the data, the transportation growth plan for each region is considered to evaluate the strategies being implemented to meet the accessibility needs of urban growth.

Although the focus of this app is on high-growth regions in BC, the same results are replicable nationwide and could be adapted to highlight other measures of transportation accessibility like footpaths or differentiate between bus and rail access in suburban centers.

Video Presentation

Documentation

Team Members

Eli Schwanitz: (left) Is originally from Colorado’s Western Slope. Following an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, he spent two years working in local elections in the Denver area. He's presently enrolled in BCIT’s GIS diploma program, and concurrently working with a local housing nonprofit to create mapping and data visualization apps. In the future, he's interested in applying GIS knowledge to the fields of local government, city planning, or elections.

Samuel McAllister: (middle) Is enrolled in the GIS BTech program at BCIT. He also completed a diploma in mechanical engineering at BCIT and worked for a year drafting drawings for industrial assemblies and plant layouts. He was inspired to pursue a GIS education through a preexisting love for maps and graphic design. This year, he has been working on a project under Esri Canada to create a digital campus and navigation network of BCIT utilizing the ArcGIS Indoors extension. He is excited by the potential of new technologies in the GIS space and hopes to continue exploring cutting edge tech in his future GIS endeavors.

Carl Wittmann: (right) Believes his journey started in the dusty aisles of a middle school library in Riyadh. Christopher Robin’s Hundred Acre Woods, Tolkein’s Middle Earth – these maps captivated him over countless afternoons of imagining what was and filling in the blanks of what might be. That fascination with exploring the blank spaces never left him, and he began to wonder why our landscape looks the way it does. After completing an undergraduate degree in Geography at UBC in 2023, BCIT’s Advanced Diploma in GIS was the logical next step. He's eager to spend some time applying his skills before returning to his research interests in natural resource extraction, crime, and conflicts.