These profiles were developed to help government and community service agencies with their local planning, by providing socio-economic data at a meaningful geographic area. Not all people define "neighbourhoods" the same way. For the purposes of statistical monitoring however, these neighbourhoods were defined based on Statistics Canada census tracts. Census tracts include several city blocks and have on average about 4,000 people. Most service agencies have service areas that are defined by main streets, former municipal boundaries, or natural boundaries such as rivers. These service areas include several census tracts. It is not uncommon for service areas of community agencies to overlap. Choices about neighbourhood boundaries were made to make the data in the profiles useful to as many users as possible, and are not intended to be statements or judgements about where a neighbourhood starts or ends. The boundaries for these neighbourhoods were developed using the following criteria:
1) originally based on a Urban Development Services Residential Communities map, based on planning areas in former municipalities, and existing Public Health neighbourhood planning areas;
2) no neighbourhood be comprised of a single census tract;
3) minimum neighbourhood population of at least 7,000-10,000;
4) where census tracts were combined to meet criteria 2 or 3 above, they were joined with the most similar adjacent area according to % of the population living in low income households;
5) respecting existing boundaries such as service boundaries of community agencies, natural boundaries (rivers), and man-made boundaries (streets, highways, railway tracks);
6) maintaining neighbourhood areas small enough for service organizations to combine them to fit within their service area; and
7) the final number of neighbourhood areas be "manageable" for the purposes of data presentation and reporting.