Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Open Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Integrated Geospatial Technology (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Advisor 1

Don Lafreniere

Advisor 2

Qingli Dai

Committee Member 1

Sarah Fayen Scarlett

Abstract

The concept of neighborhood has been long studied with little agreement beyond the notion that neighborhoods are somewhat self-contained areas within a wider urban environment. Despite the lack of a finite definition, there is wide agreement of the importance of studying population dynamics at the neighborhood scale. Many attempts have been made to spatially define, measure, and quantify contemporary neighborhoods, but less attention has been given to methods to spatially define historical neighborhoods. In this paper, we utilize a historical spatial data infrastructure for the city of London, Ontario to develop a viewshed methodology that recognizes that ‘neighborhood’ is unique to each individual and devise a way to create a neighborhood for each person in a city. We compare this approach to more common methods such as census tracts, municipal boundaries, and other geographical conceptions of neighborhoods by measuring the relative neighborhood-level socio-economic status across the city

Download

Share

COinS