The City of Hamilton’s new Neighbourhood Action Strategy is working towards improving social, economic and health outcomes in targeted neighbourhoods in the city. The City is working with community partners, neighbourhood groups, and residents to develop neighbourhood action plans – these action plans lay out a vision for the future of each neighbourhood and the specific, concrete projects to be undertaken to get there. Another important part of this work is research and evaluation – finding out more about residents’ views and priorities, about how well the planning and neighbourhood projects are going and what might need to be changed along the way, and about what kind of impact the strategy has on residents in the neighbourhoods overall. Our research team at McMaster, led by Dr. Jim Dunn, has undertaken the Hamilton Neighbourhoods Study to help answer these questions. In this report, we’ve focused in particular on the questions we asked residents about how they feel about their neighbourhood now and their priorities and concerns. We talk about what we found in our survey in comparison to Stinson’s neighbourhood plan. We also present results on other areas that our survey asks about – housing, safety and security, and civic engagement.
