How Old Ottawa East compares to the rest of Ottawa
New neighbourhood data confirms what OOE residents already suspect – we’re kind of different!
From housing and education to trees, transit and travel habits, new Ottawa Neighbourhood Study data paints a revealing picture of Old Ottawa East and provides evidence that our community is statistically as distinct.
JOHN DANCE
The vague sense that many of us have that Old Ottawa East (OOE) has distinct characteristics compared with other Ottawa communities now has points of surprisingly precise confirmation thanks to the updated data of the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study (ONS) website.
For instance, the OOE proportion of children aged 0-14 is about one-third less than the Ottawa average. Conversely, the proportion of OOE’s youth aged 15-24 is about one-quarter higher than the city average, a difference that may be due to the many university students who live in OOE.
The very wide-ranging data elements that compose the ONS database include such diverse elements as the number of cannabis stores, tree coverage, traffic collisions, and income levels.
A quick browse of the ONS database shows that 25 percent of OOE has tree canopy coverage compared to 35 percent city-wide. And over a six-year period, OOE’s canopy has declined slightly while the city’s has been stable despite government efforts to increase it.
More workers walk or cycle to work
Not surprisingly, OOE scores very high in terms of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. The “pedestrian network density (km/km2)” in OOE is 21 vs 1 for the entire city and the “cycling network density” is also relatively very high (11 vs 1). The overall “mean walk and mean bike scores” for OOE are 48 and 96 compared to the city averages of 33 and 65.
One consequence of OOE’s high scores in active transportation networks and proximity is that about four times as many OOE workers commute by bicycle compared to the average Ottawa worker and twice as many OOE workers walk to work.
In terms of convenient public transit stops within a 600-metre walk, OOE is not exceptional – it has the same number as the city average and it has fewer transit stops per 1000 residents than the city average (4.3 vs 5.7).
As for traffic collisions per kilometer of road, OOE has three times as many as the city average.
The housing data show several distinct variations for OOE. About 50 percent of households are renters vs 36 percent city-wide. But only four percent of renter households are in subsidized houses vs 14 percent city-wide.
A remarkable 42 percent of private dwellings are apartments in a building five or more storeys compared with 19 percent in all of Ottawa. To some extent these differences are derived from the large proportion of OOE residents living in the Lees Avenue and Greystone Village towers although it won’t be until after the 2026 census that the impact of new development will be fully evident.
Big differences in education and income levels
Education data show another profound difference between OOE and the city average. About 36 percent of OOE residents have either a master’s or doctorate degree as their highest level of education compared to the city figure of 16 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, about three percent of OOE residents aged 25-64 don’t have a high school diploma or equivalent versus more than six percent city-wide.
Income statistics also show some interesting differences. The proportion of “low-income prevalence” is 13 percent while it’s nine percent for the city. This difference may result from the large number of university students in OOE. At the other extreme, about 24 percent of OOE households have an after-tax income of $150,000 or more compared to 19 percent city-wide.
The ONS data are managed by the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study team at Bruyère Health Research Institute and Ottawa Neighbourhood Solutions, a charitable non-profit organization. They “work together as ONS-SQO to uncover how Ottawa’s neighbourhoods shape health and wellbeing, and to provide trusted data for evidence-based decisions.”
The information presented in this article is only a sampling of what’s available on the ONS database. You may want to explore www.ons-sqo.ca.
By the way, ONS says OOE has no cannabis stores although a walk to the Glebe does provide lots of access.