Highlighting cultural, social and everyday health experiences to help us better understand how to create healthy and sustainable cities

Imagine what it would be like to come to Canada as a refugee from Syria; you have no knowledge of English, you’re learning to cope with winter, you have no driver’s license or vehicle and must rely on public transit. Now imagine adding in additional challenges: you can’t find a job. You don’t know how to access services such as the food bank. Your spouse and children are ill.

For the past few years, Suzanne Goopy has been exploring barriers to walking and mobility for people who are new to Canada. “Knowing that active transportation can have significant positive effects in reducing the incidence of the ‘big four’ chronic diseases, it is important that we look for ways to give people more real choices,” says Goopy, adding that she wasn’t surprised to hear participants say they felt “you aren’t a Calgarian until you own a car.”

Empathic Cultural Mapping is an online interactive tool Goopy’s team developed which visually presents big data from sources like Statistics Canada, the Calgary Police Service and other published research findings alongside personal vignettes and stories of six individuals who’ve settled into Calgary. It allows users to navigate geographical maps on the interactive pages and discover data ranging from walkability scores in Calgary neighbourhoods to immigration rates across the globe. It also presents audio interviews, scanned journal entries and stories about the new immigrants to Calgary and their personal anecdotes. The juxtaposition encourages users to see links across data which might not always be traditionally evident. The goal? Users can make connections and see key facilitators, blockers or constraints relevant to health.

What's next: The ECM platform can evolve as new data sets are added, helping to inform actual or future city planning as well as offering other researchers across disciplines access to an educational tool.