1 minute read
A message from … Toronto
Jesse Terhorst
(BSc in Human Geography and Planning, 2015; Economic Geography, 2016) is a data analyst at Environics Analytics, a Canadian survey and market research company.
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Utrecht is more like a village
text Jurgen Sijbrandij
‘I never expected I’d end up in Canada. After finishing my Master’s research in Malaysia, I decided to travel through Australia. I was planning to go back to the Netherlands afterwards. It all turned out differently:
I met my Canadian girlfriend there, and live in Toronto these days.
When I got my work permit, I took a job at Environics Analytics. We use our demographic, financial and socioeconomic databases and a national segmentation system to help companies and government agencies in Canada and the United States understand the characteristics, motivations and values of their customers, target demographics or residents. The outcomes of those analyses are used to develop marketing strategies, campaigns and policies. I‘m working out of my little flat in downtown Toronto at the moment because of the COVID-19 measures.
The pandemic is also affecting my work in other ways. We use anonymised mobile phone data to map the movements of groups of people in busy locations, such as parks and shopping malls. For example, we learned that many residents started using shopping malls just outside the city during the city of Toronto’s regional lockdown. As a result, the number of COVID-19 infections went up despite the measures.
We’ve also noticed that people from poorer neighbourhoods go out more often than those in wealthier areas because they tend to work in retail, for example, and can’t work from home.
I apply the knowledge I learned at Utrecht University in my work. For example, I use some geographical information systems that I learned about when I was doing my Bachelor’s degree. Still, you mainly learn things in practice, on the job, especially in terms of quantitative data analysis.
I was born and raised in Utrecht. I have to say it’s a bit like a village in comparison with Toronto. Toronto is bigger, and more car-oriented. People are used to long commutes, and a three-hour drive for a short visit isn’t unusual here. That wouldn’t really happen in the Netherlands. It’s just on a different scale.’
