York Mills Valley Park
Ravine / Naturalized Park, middle of the pack overall (score 33, rank ~47th percentile). Strongest: connectivity; weakest: natural comfort.
Aerial — City of Toronto orthophoto, ~8 cm/px source · cached 5/9/2026
York Mills Valley Park scores 33.4 / 100. Strongest dimensions: enclosure / eyes on park and connectivity. Weakest: edge activation (0). Border-vacuum risk is elevated (100). This score is a transparent reading of Jane Jacobs-style vitality factors — not a definitive judgment.
Area · 4.44 ha
Weighted across six dimensions · confidence 72%
Scores are not bell-curved. Percentiles and expected scores provide context without changing the underlying model.
Explain this score
Where did the 33 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
- The park is enclosed by buildings (79) but the surrounding streets are quiet (edge activation 0) — frame without animation.
- High connectivity coexists with high border-vacuum risk (100) — much of that connectivity is to highways, rail, or parking lots, not to neighbourhoods.
Typology classification
Classified as Ravine / Naturalized Park: 100% ravine overlap, 3% canopy. Secondary read: Neighbourhood Park (4.4 ha, framed by 26 mid-rise vs 0 towers).
Edge Activation
Within 100 m of the park edge: 13 active uses (transit_stop, cafe) and 35 dead/hostile uses (highway, parking_lot, rail). 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 4 mapped paths/walkways and 30 sidewalk segments within 50 m; 17 street intersections within 100 m; 33 transit stops within a 400 m walk; 4 estimated access points across ~1,423 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
2 distinct amenity types in the park (playground, tennis). 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: 3.3% estimated tree canopy; 100.0% inside the ravine system; 3.3% water surface; 20 city-mapped trees inside the polygon (4.5/ha). Reading: ravine-cooled. Source coverage: treed_area, ravine, 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
55 buildings within 25 m of the park edge (26 mid-rise, 29 low-rise, 0 tower); avg edge height 11.6 m (~4 floors); 3.9 buildings per 100 m of 1,423 m perimeter — strong frontage density; edges are at a Jacobs-scale walkable mid-rise (3–7 floors); no towers immediately adjacent. "Eyes on the park" come strongest from the 26 mid-rise edge buildings.
Source: Toronto 3D Massing (building footprints + heights)
Border Vacuum Risk
Border-vacuum factors within 50 m of the park: Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Miller Tavern Parking, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge-University-Spadina Line, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge-University-Spadina Line, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street, Yonge Street. 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 (2 types · 2 records)
- playground
- tennis
Nearby active-edge features (80)
- transit stop — Mill Street2 m
- transit stop — Wilson Avenue3 m
- transit stop — Yonge Street7 m
- highway — Yonge Street11 m
- highway — Yonge Street11 m
- highway — Yonge Street11 m
- highway — Yonge Street11 m
- highway — Yonge Street13 m
- highway — Yonge Street14 m
- highway — Yonge Street15 m
- highway — Yonge Street15 m
- highway — Yonge Street17 m
- highway — Yonge Street20 m
- highway — Yonge Street22 m
- highway — Yonge Street22 m
- highway — Yonge Street23 m
- highway — Yonge Street23 m
- highway — Yonge Street28 m
- highway — Yonge Street29 m
- transit stop — Yonge Street31 m
- transit stop32 m
- highway — Yonge Street33 m
- transit stop — York Mills Road35 m
- highway — Yonge Street36 m
- rail — Yonge-University-Spadina Line40 m
- rail — Yonge-University-Spadina Line44 m
- highway — Yonge Street50 m
- parking lot — Miller Tavern Parking50 m
- highway — Yonge Street54 m
- highway — Yonge Street57 m
- transit stop — Yonge St at Wilson Ave59 m
- highway — Yonge Street60 m
- transit stop — Yonge / Wilson Northwest Entrance61 m
- rail62 m
- rail63 m
- transit stop — York Mills67 m
- transit stop — Old York Mills Rd Entrance72 m
- highway — Yonge Street75 m
- highway — Yonge Street79 m
- transit stop — York Mills80 m
- highway — Yonge Street80 m
- highway — Yonge Street81 m
- parking lot85 m
- highway — Yonge Street85 m
- cafe — Starbucks89 m
- transit stop — Yonge Street92 m
- parking lot — York Mills TTC Kiss and Ride96 m
- rail97 m
- restaurant — Druxys102 m
- retail — Shell Select104 m
- transit stop — Yonge Street107 m
- transit stop — Yonge St at McGlashan113 m
- transit stop — York Mills Road117 m
- transit stop — Yonge St at McGlashan117 m
- parking lot119 m
- highway — Yonge Street120 m
- parking lot121 m
- transit stop — 4025 Yonge Entrance122 m
- highway — Yonge Street125 m
- cafe — Tim Hortons128 m
- transit stop — 16 York Mills Entrance129 m
- restaurant — Chicken Quarter129 m
- highway — Yonge Street131 m
- restaurant — Bento box133 m
- restaurant — Mr Souvlaki136 m
- highway — Yonge Street140 m
- retail — Gateway Newsstands/Public Mobile141 m
- transit stop147 m
- transit stop152 m
- restaurant — Subway153 m
- transit stop — York Mills Station153 m
- highway — Yonge Street156 m
- transit stop157 m
- transit stop — York Mills Station162 m
- transit stop — York Mills Station164 m
- transit stop — York Mills Station173 m
- transit stop — York Mills Station175 m
- highway — Yonge Street176 m
- transit stop — York Mills Station181 m
- transit stop — York Mills Station183 m
Park profile
Five-axis radar across the structural dimensions.
Citywide percentile ranks
Across all Toronto parks in the dataset.
- Overall vitality47th
- Edge activation59th
- Connectivity92th
- Amenity diversity91th
- Natural comfort54th
- Enclosure82th
Most similar parks
Closest in metric space across the five structural dimensions.
- Warden Hilltop Community CentreParkette44
- Lamport Stadium ParkNeighbourhood Park37
- Orchard ParkNeighbourhood Park45
- Wadsworth ParkNeighbourhood Park44
- East Mall ParkNeighbourhood Park42
Most opposite parks
Furthest in metric space — useful for recognising what kind of park this isn’t.
- Toronto Islands - Muggs Island ParkRavine / Naturalized Park25
- Trca Lands ( 26)Ravine / Naturalized Park27
- Simcoe ParkTower-Community Green Space51
- Rouge ParkWaterfront Park25
- Rouge ParkRavine / Naturalized Park28
Human activity signals — not available
No activity signals have landed for this park yet. The model has scored its physical form but it can’t yet say how often it’s programmed, photographed, or walked through. See /data-ethics for what we will and will not collect.
Does this score feel accurate?
Your read of York Mills Valley Parkmatters. 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.