News – Platial Analysis Lab

NABSA’s Shared Micromobility Research Showcase

May 3, 2025

Professor McKenzie helped kick off the NABSA’s Shared Micromobility Research Roundup this week. Click through for the video…

Platial Lab attending AGILE 2025

May 2, 2025

PhD candidate Dan Qiang and former student Dr. Hongyu Zhang will travel to Dresden, Germany in June to present their work…

Recruiting Fully Funded MSc Position on Equity in Shared E-Micromobility (Fall 2025 Start)

April 15, 2025

Project: Shared Electric Micromobility as a Transportation Solution in Canadian Suburban Communities (SEM-Can)…

Honours student Talia Cohen-Fette presents her work on Digital Twins

April 7, 2025

Talia’s thesis is titled “Digital Twins as Urban Game-Changers: A Cross-City Analysis of their Benefits”…

Highlights from AAG 2025 in Detroit

March 28, 2025

PhD candidate Dan Qiang and Prof. Grant McKenzie attended the American Association of Geographers (AAG) annual meeting in Detroit, MI this week…

Geoprivacy for Personalized Health: Insights from Luxembourg Workshop

March 14, 2025

Professor McKenzie co-organized and participated in the 2nd workshop February 27-28 in Luxembourg…

New research highlights gender differences in urban running

March 3, 2025

Our recent publication identifies gender differences in urban running patterns with the objective of shaping safer, more inclusive cities…

Lights Out: Examining Power Outages and Energy Equity in Quebec

January 24, 2025

Our proposal to examine power outages and vulnerability across Quebec has been selected for funding…

McKenzie, Grant; Romm, Daniel; Féré, Clara; Balarezo, Maria Laura Guerrero

Gender differences in urban recreational running: A data-driven approach Journal Article

In: Journal of Transport Geography, vol. 124, no. 104171, 2025.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

Zhang, Hongyu; McKenzie, Grant

Geoprivacy knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours in contemporary China Journal Article

In: Geographical Review, 2024.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

Qiang, Dan; McKenzie, Grant

Navigating the Post-Pandemic Urban Landscape: Disparities in Transportation Recovery & Regional Insights from New York City Journal Article

In: Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, vol. 110, pp. 102111, 2024.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

Verma, Priyanka; McKenzie, Grant

Regional Comparison of Socio-Demographic Variation in Urban E-scooter Usage Journal Article

In: Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 2024.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

@article{Verma2024,

title = {Regional Comparison of Socio-Demographic Variation in Urban E-scooter Usage},

author = {Priyanka Verma and Grant McKenzie},

url = {https://grantmckenzie.com/academics/Verma_2024.pdf},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-03-26},

urldate = {2024-03-09},

journal = {Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science},

abstract = {In recent years we have witnessed explosive growth in the shared, free-floating, electric scooter industry. While still controversial in many North American cities, a number of large e-scooter operators have managed to carve out a piece of the urban transportation landscape. As these vehicles shift from novelty services to increasingly reliable modes of short personal travel, the discussion has turned to investigating who exactly benefits from these micromobility services and who are being left behind. Though population surveys have been administered to identify the socio-demographic characteristics of e-scooter riders in the past, little work has linked these characteristics through trips, or investigated the regional variation in these demographic factors. In this work we explore the variability and similarities in e-scooter rider characteristics across three major U.S. cities. To accomplish this, we apply a Moran’s Eigenvector Spatial Filtering linear regression model and compare our results to more commonly used spatial regression approaches. Our results indicate that the spatial filtering approach outperforms other methods in identifying socio-demographic characteristics of e-scooter users, across multiple regions. We find that many socio-demographics associated with e-scooter usage are regionally variant, despite younger users making up the core user base in all cities. There are variations in usage based on gender, income, and race across cities with Black and Hispanic populations remaining underserved. The implications of these findings are discussed.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

Brunila, Mikael; LaViolette, Jack; CH-Wang, Sky; Verma, Priyanka; Féré, Clara; McKenzie, Grant

Toward a Critical Toponymy Framework for Named Entity Recognition: A Case Study of Airbnb in New York City Best Paper Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP2023), 2023.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX