So after a reasonably long hiatus, I'm back to blogging; this time about population access and playgrounds in Toronto.

Why I am keen on this topic is: (1) As a new parent, I am starting to get interested in play and play spaces. Seeing as how I will be visiting Toronto in June, I (non-altruistically) wanted to find out where is the best place to visit with regards to playground access for my energetic toddler; (2) I wanted to showcase some of the new (and awesome) Census data; and (3) I wanted to draw attention to what can be accomplished with Toronto Open Data.

So given the above interest, I was able to generate some very interesting questions around playgrounds in the City. For instance:

Where are all the playgrounds in the City of Toronto and how do I get that data? Where are the best and worst parts of the City for play access for young people (0-14yrs old)? Which parts of the City are the particularly challenging from a play access standpoint (ie where is there much potential walking travel along busy roads)? Which areas of the City may benefit from new infrastructure?

Thankfully, getting this information mapped and analysed was not too great of a challenge, thanks, once again to the good folks at open data Toronto. In any event, I needed a few things to get started with this analysis:

First, I searched for a playground dataset - which I found here. However, this was not all the playgrounds in the City, only ones located on City land. To complete my set, I added in all of the non-overlapping locations of junior or elementary schools in the City. (operating on the assumption that most, if not all, elementary schools have playgrounds). I combined the two datasets, and spent about 10 minutes reviewing the data. Check out the map below, (and please let me know if I missed any or added in an unnecessary locations).