There Goes the Neighbourhood

My undergraduate thesis, "There Goes the Neighbourhood", compared the social equity impacts of two new light rail lines—the Réseau express métropolitain in Montreal and the Purple Line in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

The process included fieldwork, spatial and statistical analysis in R, map production in GIS, and community interviews.

My research asked and answered two questions:

1. Which communities do the REM and Purple Line serve?

Quantitative analysis of census data show that the REM serves communities that are decidedly higher in socio-economic status than the population served by current rail transit infrastructure in the Montreal region, whereas the Purple Line serves communities that are predominantly less affluent than those served by existing rail transit infrastructure in the Maryland capital region.

2. Which communities do stakeholders perceive the REM and Purple Line to serve?

Based on qualitative interviews, the REM is generally perceived by community stakeholders to serve the city's affluent western suburbs instead of more transit-dependent areas to the east. Its semi-privatized nature has created perceptions that the role of the REM is to benefit larger economic and political interests in the province, which are not amenable to expert or citizen input.

Conversely, the Purple Line is perceived to more fairly integrate poorer eastern suburbs with wealthier pockets to the west. To the extent that the equity impact of the project is in doubt, it is due to concerns that the state is seeking to build the line for economic purposes, and has not done enough to engage marginalized communities along the route, or to implement measures to protect them from potential gentrification.