Concept: Winnipeg Area Definitions

Introduction

There are two levels of areas that have been developed by the Community Data Network with input from the WRHA, Manitoba Health, Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, and others. These are the areas that Manitoba Health and the WRHA will be using for planning and policy purposes.

These Winnipeg areas represent:


• 12 Community Areas (CA) including East and West St. Paul, Assiniboine South (2), Downtown (11), Fort Garry (3), Inkster (9), Point Douglas (10), River East (7), River Heights (12), Seven Oaks (8), St. Vital (4), St. Boniface (5), St. James-Assiniboia (1), Transcona (6)
  
  
  • Community Areas Map
    
  • Map in PDF format for 2004
    
  • Map in JPG format for 2004
    
  • ArcView Shape file as of 2006
  
  For more detailed information, see the Winnipeg Community Areas (CAs) concept.
  
  
• 23 Neighbourhood Clusters (previously called Neighbourhood Resource Networks (NRN))
  
  The 23 areas are those in the Winnipeg City Census Division. An additional two areas (that makes 25!) have been added to represent East and West St. Paul. These areas have been assigned number-letter codes by the Community Data Network. MCHP has applied community names to these areas for reference and publication.
  
  
  • Map
    
  • Map in PDF format for 2004
    
  • Map in JPG format for 2004
    
  • ArcView Shape file as of 2006
  
  For more detailed information, see the Neighbourhood Clusters (NC) concept.

The following is from the Social Planning Council:


• Within the WRHA, there are 230 Neighborhoods.
  
  
• In the late 1970's the City of Winnipeg initiated research on the "Winnipeg Area Characterization" project. This effort to categorize geographical areas sought to assist in a systematic approach to small area planning within the City. Using the notion that neighbourhoods are generally acknowledged as fundamental building blocks of the modern city, and that major thoroughfares, topographical features and existing land use demarcations are "natural" boundaries, the Area Characterization program set about defining a number of distinct neighbourhoods within Winnipeg.
  
  
• The neighbourhoods defined through the Area Characterization initiative have served as the basis for data collection for several decades. In recent years, there has been a convergence of agreement among various agencies that neighbourhoods provide an ideal standardized measure for data collection.
  
  
• Existing definitions for the "inner city" are based upon the aggregation of over thirty individual neighbourhoods. These inner city neighbourhoods are defined by their proximity to the central business.
  
  
• District, age of housing stock, and general socio-economic conditions closely match the boundaries established for the Core Area Initiative during the mid 1980's.

  Maps of these various areas can be found in the Various Areas of Winnipeg concept.

  The areas have been defined by rolling up individual community neighbourhoods (230 of them) into relevant working areas for policy and planning. Documentation that provides information on how each of the areas were defined and on the reasons behind the boundary locations is being developed and will be posted here when available.

Winnipeg Office of Public Trustee

In earlier work done by MCHP with the core area of Winnipeg we noticed high utilization of hospital days, and some measures of ill health (e.g. pre-mature mortality). While exploring this, we noticed that the bias was caused by a single postal code - that of the Winnipeg Public Trustees office. Unfortunately, the location of these individuals can not currently be confirmed - we do have some basic information with regard to distribution (not by individual) around the province. This information shows that these people do not necessarily live in Winnipeg but are spread across Manitoba. Including this postal code when locating individuals in geographical areas (downtown) skewed some data.

Manitoba Health Conversion Table for WRHA areas using Muncode + postal code

If both municipal code and postal code are available then the Manitoba Health conversion table (or formats) should be used if matching Manitoba Health numbers to assign Winnipeg Community areas. An internal MCHP data dictionary is available for the wrha_cvt (aka the Conversion Table). (internal access only) .

The formats, and file information, must only be applied to the Winnipeg RHA ('K' or '10') based on the municipal code definition of the Manitoba RHAs. Records with an A-Code municipal code should be coded using postal code alone.

The following modifications have been made to the conversion table when creating formats:


1. MB-PCCF format for postal code only definitions have been added for first nations (A-coded) records.
   
   
2. CA and NC values changed with a prefix of 'W' to distinguish from other formats used at MCHP.

Formats have been created for each year of data since 1996/97, but you will need to talk to Charles Burchill about access to these formats.

See SAS Code below for format information.

Headingley

In May 1993, Headingley seceded from Winnipeg to become its own independent municipality. The Headingley Chamber of Commerce website explains that Winnipeg 'consistently under-serviced the community despite the substantial amount of tax' collected, prompting their decision to split off.

Prior to 1993 it was part of Winnipeg (in muncode 320), and its residents were grouped into Winnipeg RHA. 1993 and later they are grouped with Central RHA (muncode 321).

For longitudinal studies spanning 92/93 it is probably best to assign Headingley to either Winnipeg or Central for the duration of the study. This avoids changes in the denominator which may alter the results of your analysis. This can be done using the postal code R0H0J0.

* move postal=R0H0J0 rha='K' into Central;
if rha='K' and postal='R0H0J0' then do;
rha='A';
district='A4';
end;