Even while he was ranking the best U.S. cities to trick-or-treat in, Richard Florida was thinking how “very special” Toronto is, compared with them.

The urban theorist who now makes Toronto his home compiled his list for the online site The Daily Beast, creating rankings based on number of children, ability to walk around safely, level of income (“You get a better haul of candy”) and a “bohemian” index (“better costumes”).

Top of the U.S. list is the affluent New York suburb from Stamford to Bridgeport in Connecticut.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Florida told the Star in between meetings and appointments. “They’re upscale suburbs, fairly walkable, with an artistic population that’s moved out from New York City.”

The big U.S. cities claimed spots on the top-20 list, but Florida was pleased to see the college towns of Ann Arbor, Mich., (despite its proximity to Detroit) and Boulder, Colo., claim some Halloween limelight.

Still, he says, Toronto is the only place that still does Halloween the way it’s supposed to be done.

“What’s happened in the United States is that the kids are protected. That’s why you have the organized mall events (which figure strongly on his Daily Beast list). In one place, they’ve banned teenagers because the tall kids were scaring the residents.”

In contrast, Halloween in Florida’s Toronto neighbourhood is “toddlers to tweens, with a mosaic of races that make up Toronto.”

From his first Hogtown Halloween in 2007, “I was really struck by the intensity of kids coming. It’s not like we were a well-known, established Toronto family. Our house was mobbed. So it meant the parents weren’t nervous.”

As well, smaller children might have parents tagging along, but “other kids were completely unsupervised.”

Florida penned his Daily Beast list for a U.S. audience but remains so fond of the Toronto experience – “It’s a very special thing that parents and children feel safe. We should not take for granted” – that he’d like, next year, to use his demographic tools to rate the best Toronto neighbourhoods for trick-or-treating.

In the meantime, kids knocking at the Floridas’ door can expect “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers and Kit Kats. All hidden from me right now so I don’t eat them.”

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