New ranking shows which Toronto neighbourhoods are best and worst for kids to play outside

A new index is offering residents of Canada’s largest urban and suburban centres, a look at just how well their neighbourhoods support outdoor play for kids.

A new one-of-a-kind index is offering residents of Canada’s largest urban and suburban centres, including Toronto, a look at just how well their neighbourhoods support outdoor play for children.

The “playability index” was developed by Emily Gemmell, a postdoctoral researcher at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, to take a look at how well communities support outdoor free play for children ages two to six.

“In Canada and, and actually across the world, there are many urban metrics that look at the healthiness of urban environments, but they’re mostly focused on adult behaviors and movement patterns… There wasn’t really anything for children,” she told CP24.com on Thursday.

“And yet this is a developmental period where the experiences and exposures that happen in early childhood have arguably the biggest impact on health across the lifespan. So I wanted to look at that.”

The index examines spaces for play, opportunities for social interaction, traffic environments, natural environments, and child-relevant destinations.

“Those five major domains interacted to influence outdoor play. For instance, there could be space outdoors, but (there is) a really busy road right next to it… So you need all of those components to some degree, “

“It’s a rough measure, but because we’re using data that’s available, that doesn’t get at some of the nuance… but (it’s about) the big picture of what it looks like for a child in a certain area.”

In Toronto, the lowest playability scores can be found in Toronto’s downtown core, while areas outside the core typically scored higher on the index.

The neighbourhood with the lowest playability score was Wellington Place, which is located in the city’s downtown core. Wellington Place had an average playability score of 2.54. The highest playability score was given to Lambton Baby Point at 8.07, followed by High Park-Swansea at 7.55 and Roncesvalles at 7.45.

“Maybe the downtown core is lower in the natural environment domain, but it’s higher in the child-relevant destinations. And so there’s a trade-off that you make,” Gemmell said.

“If you’re going to live in the suburbs, if there’s nowhere to walk, it might result in going outdoors less… there are trade-offs and there’s nuance.”

Gemmell said she hopes the index raises awareness about the importance of outdoor play spaces for children within neighbourhoods.

“Look around outside your neighborhood. How does a five-year-old look at this? What activities or what kind of interactions can a five-year-old have walking outside their building or their door,” she asked.

“Developmentally, the experiences of early childhood are really central to developing the brain infrastructure that kind of underlies all future learning, so the diversity of experiences in early childhood is really important and if children are excluded from outdoors, their world shrinks.”