Urban Agriculture and the Neighbourhood Context: A Geodemographic Approach to the City of Toronto

This study seeks to create a geodemographic classification of the City of Toronto in Ontario, Canada at the Dissemination Areas level in order to assess the distribution of urban agriculture projects across the city. The study uses an iterative process to assess and select variables for a two-tiered k-means clustering process to create a series of five Supergroups with three associated subgroups each. The dominant characteristics of each group are then used to analyze the populations which are over or under-served in regard to urban agriculture projects. The study advances two primary hypotheses: 1) that lower income neighbourhoods with lower overall densities will have a high proportion of urban agriculture projects and 2) that privately-run urban agriculture sites will exist primarily in both high density and higher-income areas towards the centre of the city.