The Measuring Main Streets platform is a part of the Research Knowledge Initiative program from Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada.
Main streets are the backbone of Canadian society, with 85% of Canadians living within one kilometer of a main street. These streets are home to 280,000 businesses, providing 1.9 million jobs and generating $300 billion in annual revenue. They also house over 98,000 community and civic infrastructure assets.
The Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) has developed a groundbreaking toolkit on the newly released Measuring Main Streets platform. These resources, backed by two years of research funded by Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, offer city builders the means to make informed investments at the main street scale to enhance community, resilience, and equity outcomes.
The Measuring Main Streets tool aims to include every main street across Canada, allowing users to evaluate housing, services, civic infrastructure, and more all in one place. This is the first research tool to use main streets as the primary unit of analysis, allowing any user to make the case for their main street.
