Urban Planning 2025
URBP 001: Measuring the impacts of the R茅seau express m茅tropolitain (REM) on travel behaviour and health聽(El-Geneidy)
Professor Ahmed聽El-Geneidy
ahmed.elgeneidy [at] mcgill.ca |
Research Area
Transport and land use, Travel behaviour, and Transport and Health |
Description
In 2016, the Caisse de d茅p么t et placement du Qu茅bec (CDPQ) announced plans to build the R茅seau express m茅tropolitain (REM), a state-of-the-art, fully automated 67-kilometer light-rail network that will fundamentally reshape transport in areas on and off the island of Montreal. When complete, the $6.3 billion project will link numerous suburbs and Montr茅al-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport to downtown with frequent, high-speed rail service, that is universally accessible, altering travel and land-use patterns throughout the region for various groups of population. These changes are likely to have impacts on the health, social, economic, physical, and psychological well-being of all Montreal residents for the coming decades. The first branch, connecting Montreal's South Shore, is expected to open in 2022, with additional segments coming online in 2023 and a final opening in 2024 for the full system. As one of the most ambitious and costly public transport projects in Canada in decades, the REM provides a unique opportunity to gauge the impacts of the types of major public endeavours that will become increasingly common and necessary as governments seek to decarbonize the transport sector. The REM's rapid advancement will allow us to pursue a comprehensive "before, during, and after intervention research design to rapidly distill key lessons for future projects in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada. As part of research, we are collecting multiple waves of built environment data at the street level in a 1000-meter area around all future REM stations to understand the current level of accessibility and walkability around the network. Data will be used to monitor changes in the built environment over time around the stations as well as to provide policy recommendations for the REM and other transportation projects of various scale across Canada on beneficial practices in the implementation of accessible and walkable public transit stations. These insights will prove immediately valuable for cities where small and large transport infrastructures are currently being studied or proposed. Interested students should send a cover letter, a resume, and unofficial transcript. Tasks per student
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Deliverables per student Help in generating an academic report Generate Policy Briefs Help in generating academic papers Generate educational videos |
Number of positions
3 Academic Level
Year 1 Location of project
In-person |
URBP 002: A high-performance spatial data pipeline for the Canadian Housing Observatory (Wachsmuth)
Professor David聽Wachsmuth david.wachsmuth [at] mcgill.ca 514-398-4078 |
Research Area
Spatial data, software engineering |
Description
The Curbcut team at 9I制作厂免费 is currently developing the Canadian Housing Observatory (CHO) under contract with the federal government. The CHO is a platform for deep, dynamic and intuitive exploration of housing issues in Canada, and represents a new approach to understanding housing dynamics. By combining detailed spatial data, modeling, and interactive visualizations, the platform will support researchers, policymakers, and the public in making informed decisions about urban development and housing policy. As it scales to accommodate large national datasets and complex user interactions, achieving high performance and reliability is key to its success. This project invites a software engineering student to contribute to the CHO's development as part of a growing multidisciplinary team. Students with interests in spatial data science or sustainable urban development are particularly encouraged to apply. Tasks per student
The student will collaborate on building a new spatial data infrastructure pipeline that allows users to flexibly and performantly navigate and analyze extensive datasets across arbitrary geographic areas. This pipeline will need to operate at very large volumes of data (e.g. billions of data points) across multiple spatial scales, and allow on-the-fly spatial operations. Through this work, the student will gain valuable experience in developing large-scale, data-intensive research tools and experimenting with geospatial technologies and high-performance solutions. The CHO's development will serve as a model for future data platforms, demonstrating best practices in building inclusive, data-driven research tools with meaningful public impact. |
Deliverables per student
An open-source software package implementing the spatial data pipeline, and an article suitable for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. |
Number of positions
2 Academic Level
No preference Location of project
In-person |