East Toronto Athletic Field
Neighbourhood Park, in the top tier overall (score 50, rank ~95th percentile). Strongest: connectivity; weakest: natural comfort.
Photo by Paul Conley via Google Places · cached 5/9/2026
East Toronto Athletic Field scores 49.5 / 100. Strongest dimensions: enclosure / eyes on park and connectivity. Weakest: amenity diversity (28.4). Border-vacuum risk is elevated (66). This score is a transparent reading of Jane Jacobs-style vitality factors — not a definitive judgment.
Area · 4.34 ha
Weighted across six dimensions · confidence 68%
Scores are not bell-curved. Percentiles and expected scores provide context without changing the underlying model.
Street context
Park polygon highlighted on the citywide map. Connectivity, transit, and edge conditions read at a glance.
Top-down view
City of Toronto orthophoto, ~8 cm/px. Reads the park’s footprint, paths, treed area, and edge conditions from above.
City of Toronto Orthophoto · cot_ortho most-current MapServer
Explain this score
Where did the 50 come from? Each weighted contribution against a neutral 50 baseline. Green = pushed up; red = pulled down.
Sum of contributions = the headline score. A negative bar means that dimension dragged the park below the city-wide neutral baseline.
Why this park works
What limits this park
Most distinctive characteristic
Jacobs reading
Tradeoffs
- Connectivity (78) significantly outpaces natural comfort (38) — well placed in the city but offers little shade or ecological respite.
- High connectivity coexists with high border-vacuum risk (66) — much of that connectivity is to highways, rail, or parking lots, not to neighbourhoods.
- Strong physical conditions (score 50) but weak observed activity signals (9) — the model says this should work, but events, mentions, and counters say it isn't being used at the level the urban form would predict.
- High connectivity (78) coexists with little programming evidence — easy to reach, but no recurring civic life detected.
Performance in context
- This park is a strong overperformer for its cohort — raw 50 versus an expected 37 for similar parks (medium Neighbourhood Park) (gap +12).
Typology classification
Classified as Neighbourhood Park: 4.3 ha, framed by 30 mid-rise vs 0 towers
Edge Activation
Within 100 m of the park edge: 19 active uses (transit_stop, restaurant, retail, cafe, community) and 4 dead/hostile uses (rail, parking_lot). Active edges keep "eyes on the park" through the day; parking lots, blank institutional walls, rail and highway frontages drain street life.
Source: OSM POIs (amenity/shop) + Toronto Building Footprints + land use
Connectivity
Connectivity blends paths, intersections, transit, entrances, and edge density. This park has 3 mapped paths/walkways and 49 sidewalk segments within 50 m; 27 street intersections within 100 m; 40 transit stops within a 400 m walk; 5 estimated access points across ~836 m of perimeter. edge density is healthy — no superblock penalty. Source coverage: centreline, pedestrian_network, transit_osm.
Source: Toronto Centreline V2 + Pedestrian Network + OSM transit stops
Amenity Diversity
3 distinct amenity types in the park (community_centre, playground, sports_field). Diversity, not raw count, drives the score so a park with many distinct activity types can outrank a larger park that repeats the same use.
Source: Toronto Parks & Recreation Facilities + OSM amenity tags
Natural Comfort
Natural-comfort components for this park: ~4.5% effective canopy (0.0% from contiguous tree polygons + scattered tree density); nearest waterbody ~838 m; 28 city-mapped trees inside the polygon (6.5/ha). Reading: exposed. Source coverage: waterbodies, street_trees. Impervious surface is approximated (Toronto's authoritative layer ships only as a raster GeoTIFF).
Source: Toronto Treed Area + Ravine + Waterbodies + Street Tree Inventory
Enclosure / Eyes on Park
120 buildings within 25 m of the park edge (30 mid-rise, 90 low-rise, 0 tower); avg edge height 7.3 m (~2 floors); 14.4 buildings per 100 m of 836 m perimeter — strong frontage density; edges are low-rise (mostly 2–3 floors); no towers immediately adjacent. "Eyes on the park" come strongest from the 30 mid-rise edge buildings.
Source: Toronto 3D Massing (building footprints + heights)
Border Vacuum Risk
Border-vacuum factors within 50 m of the park: Kingston Subdivision, Kingston Subdivision, Kingston Subdivision, parking_lot. Jacobs warned that highways, rail, parking lots and blank institutional edges act as "vacuums" — they suppress foot traffic and isolate the park from its neighbourhood.
Source: Toronto Street Centreline (highways) + rail layer + OSM landuse + building footprints
Equity Context
Equity Context requires inputs not yet loaded for this park (Toronto Neighbourhood Profiles). Score is held at a neutral 50 with low confidence — read with caution.
Source: Toronto Neighbourhood Profiles
Amenities (3 types · 3 records)
- community centre
- playground
- sports field
Nearby active-edge features (32)
- parking lot0 m
- transit stop — Main Street2 m
- transit stop — Gerrard Street East12 m
- transit stop — Gerrard Street East15 m
- transit stop — Osborne Avenue18 m
- rail — Kingston Subdivision19 m
- retail — S Market24 m
- rail — Kingston Subdivision25 m
- transit stop — Gerrard Street East28 m
- cafe — The Bothy28 m
- rail — Kingston Subdivision29 m
- transit stop — Osborne Avenue30 m
- transit stop — Gerrard Street East35 m
- transit stop — Main Street36 m
- transit stop — Danforth38 m
- restaurant — Beach Hill Smokehouse47 m
- retail — Go Transit48 m
- transit stop — Danforth56 m
- cafe — Fade In: Cafe58 m
- restaurant — Hutchie Catering & Caribbean Restaurant84 m
- community — Toronto Public Library - Main Street85 m
- transit stop — Danforth88 m
- transit stop — Danforth90 m
- parking lot110 m
- retail — Pioneer118 m
- retail — Your Convenience123 m
- cafe — Might and Main127 m
- parking lot156 m
- parking lot164 m
- school — Beaches Alternative Junior School179 m
- parking lot181 m
- transit stop — Swanwick Avenue185 m
Park profile
Five-axis radar across the structural dimensions.
Citywide percentile ranks
Across all Toronto parks in the dataset.
- Overall vitality95th
- Edge activation94th
- Connectivity98th
- Amenity diversity92th
- Natural comfort33th
- Enclosure84th
Most similar parks
Closest in metric space across the five structural dimensions.
- S.A.D.R.A. ParkCorridor / Linear Park52
- Wallace Emerson ParkNeighbourhood Park54
- Alexandra ParkNeighbourhood Park55
- Trace Manes ParkAthletic / Recreation Park55
- Fred Hamilton PlaygroundNeighbourhood Park56
Most opposite parks
Furthest in metric space — useful for recognising what kind of park this isn’t.
- Trca Lands ( 26)Ravine / Naturalized Park27
- Toronto Islands - Muggs Island ParkRavine / Naturalized Park25
- Rouge ParkRavine / Naturalized Park28
- Rouge ParkRavine / Naturalized Park26
- Rouge ParkWaterfront Park25
Visitor signals
Public attention measured by Google Places aggregates. This proxies attention, not occupancy. Aggregate-only — no usernames, no review text, no extra photos beyond the cached hero.
p37 citywide · p44 within Neighbourhood Park
Source: Google Places API · match high (0.94 composite confidence) · last refreshed 5/9/2026. Privacy contract. Measures public attention, not occupancy.
Human activity signals
Programming, social attention, temporal rhythm, and nearby pedestrian / cycling flow. An experimental aggregate layer that complements the spatial scores — partial coverage, partial confidence.
Activity reading: no inputs available. The strongest signal is public attention / mentions. Source coverage: google-places.
Does this score feel accurate?
Your read of East Toronto Athletic Fieldmatters. We’re testing whether the model lines up with how people actually use the park. Submissions are stored locally; no account needed.
Tell us how this park feels
We measure structure (canopy, edges, connectivity). You measure feeling. Both matter — and disagreement is itself useful civic data.
What would improve this park?
Generated from the weakest measured dimensions — a starting point, not a prescription.
- Activate the edges: encourage cafés, retail or community uses on the streets that face the park; replace blank or parking-lot edges where possible.
- Diversify what people can do in the park — playground, washroom, water, shade, performance, sport, garden — even small additions raise this score.
- Increase canopy and reduce paved area. Shade and water features extend usable hours and seasons.
- Mitigate border vacuums (highways, rail, parking) with active programming on the still-permeable edges and treat the hostile edge as a design challenge.
Data sources
- City of Toronto Open Data — Parks (Green Space)Polygon boundaries, official names, types.
- Parks & Recreation FacilitiesInventory of in-park amenities (washrooms, fields, rinks…).
- Toronto Pedestrian NetworkSidewalk segments around and through parks; estimated park entrances.
- Toronto Centreline V2Street segments + intersection nodes near park edges; trails and walkways.
- Toronto 3D MassingBuilding footprints + heights for edge-building counts, frontage density, and tower-in-the-park risk.
- Toronto Treed AreaTree canopy share inside park polygons via stratified-grid sampling.
- Toronto Waterbodies & RiversWater surface inside parks + nearest-water distance for cooling.
- Ravine & Natural Feature ProtectionRavine overlap as a cooling / natural-comfort signal.
- Toronto Street Tree InventoryTree count + density inside park polygons.
- Neighbourhood Profiles(Pending) Equity context proxy.
- OpenStreetMap (Overpass API)Cafés, restaurants, retail, transit stops, parking, highways, rail.