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Statistics Canada (StatCan) and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) have collaborated on the implementation of a set of proximity measures to services and amenities. The database contains 10 measures of proximity and a composite indicator that combines some of the proximity measures.

All measures are at the dissemination block level (a block in urban areas or an area bounded by roads in rural areas), which provides the highest level of geographic resolution currently possible. Proximity measures are based on a simple gravity model that accounts for the distance between a reference dissemination block (DB) and all the DBs in which the service is located (within a given distance) and the size of the services. The measure accounts also for the presence of services within the DB of reference.

In this dataset, the Proximity Measures Database has been joined to the 2016 dissemination-block polygons from Statistics Canada. A subset of the data was made for eight major cities, and the data were aggregated to the dissemination-area level to allow for the use of the ArcGIS Online enrichment tool. For all blocks in each dissemination area, the presence/absence (1 or 0) fields were aggregated using the maximum value. The proximity-index fields and "amenity dense" field were aggregated using a weighted average, using the area of each block as the weight.

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Adapted from Statistics Canada, Proximity Measures Database, 2020, and Boundary Files, 2016 Census, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 92-160-X. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.