Andrew Chung-Da Lee
Visualizing Spatiotemporal Data with Self-Organizing Maps: Changes in Socio-Economic Status of Toronto Neighbourhoods, 1996-2006 © 2011
Neighbourhoods in the City of Toronto are continuously changing. The objective of this study was to visualize socioeconomic status based on 1996, 2001, and 2006 census data, and toidentify characteristic changes at the census tract level. Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) were applied to perform spatiotemporal analysis in order to organize selected census variables and visualize socioeconomic change in the city. Based on demographic similarities, the results suggest that the city was divided into three areas in 2006: (1) northern Etobicoke; (2) southern Etobicoke and Scarborough; (3) North York and Toronto’s downtown core. Greater socioeconomic changes occurred in the eastern area of Toronto between 1996 and 2001 and in the western area between 2001 and 2006. The paper also discusses technical issues with the census data and the SOM approach.