Project 460738

Smart cities initiatives involve using digital technologies to improve services and collect data about cities to improve things like traffic, public health, and parks. Relying on digital technologies and data collection can benefit some residents, but can also exclude or harm other residents. In this project, we are building a team of community members, government staff, researchers, and community agencies to build a research project focused on how smart city projects might focus better on health equity and community health. Supporting health equity would involve focusing on the health of marginalized communities, which are those communities that have been excluded from opportunities and benefits of services in cities in the past and present. We will partner with 5-7 community members from marginalized communities co-lead our project. Community members will be given smart phones and will take photographs of aspects of their everyday lives that relate to community health, to better understand opportunities and challenges for community health in different neighbourhoods of Toronto. We will then bring a big group together to discuss what community members found, and plan a bigger research project. We will also write a research paper about what we found in this research planning effort.