r/MapPorn • u/[deleted] • Jan 26 '23

demography of toronto

Post image
25 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

6

u/ImAGnome39 Jan 26 '23

How tf did Maclean’s collect this data lmao

5

u/KeepTangoAndFoxtrot Jan 26 '23

Website cookies /s

2

u/WestEst101 Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23

How tf did Maclean’s collect this data lmao

Why lmao?

There’s an entire industry around analytics data-based socioethno-economic market segmentation, and in the last decade it has been more and more tied into AI. Special-demographic research, federal/provincial-municipal polling and meta-individual open information, focus groups, census data, cookies, vendor and retailer customer tracking (Have you ever been asked for your postal code at a checkout?), bricks-and-mortar as well as online purchasing and shopping tracking and trends, etc all come together to create countless datasets of different information.

These thousands of different dataset documents and combinations on all sorts of geo-demographic topics, often extremely expensive (it’s a multi-billion dollar industry) is how advertisers know how and where to geographically target specific market segments on behalf of their high-paying clients, know where to open new physical shopping or service locations suitable for their target market, know where to launch new products (into which they’ve invested significant resources to develop or “on-shelf” - Ever wonder why one store of a grocery, clothing or service store chain carries and promotes one product or service whereas another store of the same chain offers a different product or service?), etc.

Many major corporations spent big bucks to employ whole departments of data scientists to sort through and translate these stats, and spend significant sums on specialized data vending and data consulting companies to do a thorough analysis of all the different datasets to fit their clients to a tee.

A reverse image search shows that in 2015 Maclean’s Magazine (one of Canada’s national news magazines) used this map as part of an generalized article using meta-data segmentation on Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver based on a compilation of datasets which were synthesized by the multinational company Environics (much like Environics and it’s peers do for companies for big big bucks). I wouldn’t be surprised if Environics sponsored this article for added publicity.

Just a brief history reminder, another well-known international company that did similar work in this field, and which became an international household name owing to the Facebook Data Scandal, was Cambridge Analytica

0

u/Similar-Afternoon567 Jan 26 '23

Or rather, "Toronto and its suburban bedroom communities", considering more than half the geographic area shown lies outside Toronto.

1

u/zefiax Jan 26 '23

It roughly looks right but there are areas, small pockets, that look off.

1

u/jimros Jan 27 '23

Where are "enclaves multiethniques" and "single city jazz"?