Etobicoke data projectWhen did Etobicoke get its public art? A decade chart from the City’s own list
The City of Toronto publishes its public art inventory as open data: artworks owned by the City and works delivered through its percent-for-art program with private developers. Our older kids keep the rows in wards 1, 2 and 3, the three wards whose names begin with Etobicoke, and count the works by decade. That ward choice is ours, and every number below is our own count from the file downloaded on 22 October 2026.
Public artworks in Toronto wards 1, 2 and 3 (Etobicoke North, Etobicoke Centre, Etobicoke-Lakeshore) by the decade in the YEAR column, our count from the City of Toronto Public Art file| Decade | Works in the file | As a text bar |
|---|
| 1930s | 1 | # |
| 1950s | 1 | # |
| 1960s | 3 | ### |
| 1990s | 6 | ###### |
| 2000s | 3 | ### |
| 2010s | 2 | ## |
| 2020s | 8 | ######## |
| Year unknown | 1 | # |
The file holds 459 rows for the whole city; 25 of them sit in the three Etobicoke wards, 15 in ward 3, 7 in ward 1 and 3 in ward 2. The newest work is dated 2024 and the oldest 1930, and the 2020s already have more works than any earlier decade. Here is the program an 11-year-old writes, using only the Python standard library:import csv
decades = {}
with open("public-art.csv", encoding="utf-8") as f:
for art in csv.DictReader(f):
if art["WARD"] in ("1", "2", "3"):
year = art["YEAR"]
if year.isdigit():
label = str(int(year) // 10 * 10) + "s"
else:
label = "unknown"
decades[label] = decades.get(label, 0) + 1
for label in sorted(decades):
print(label, "#" * decades[label])
Decades by division
Integer division throws away the remainder: 1997 // 10 is 199, and times 10 is 1990. Adding an s gives the label. It is the Grade 3 decade pattern, done by a computer.
When the year is missing
One row says unknown instead of a year. Calling int on it would crash the program, so isdigit checks first, and the row lands in its own group rather than vanishing.
A chart from symbols
Multiplying a string repeats it, so "#" * 8 prints eight marks. A child sees the 2020s bar is longest without any charting library at all.
Why we match the number, not the name
Our first try matched the ward names exactly as the City’s ward file spells them and found 21 works. Four were missing. The art file writes ward 2 as Etobicoke-Centre, with a hyphen, and one ward 3 row adds (3) to the name. Matching the WARD number instead finds all 25. Across the city, 36 rows put a number in brackets after the ward name. Real files are typed by people, and a good program trusts the code column over the label.
There is more for a curious class. Sculptures make up 20 of the 25, with two murals or paintings, two pieces of architecture or landscape and one multidisciplinary work. 13 belong to the City’s own collection and 11 came through the developer program. Searching the materials column, after making everything lower case, finds steel in 9 rows and bronze in 5; a single row can name more than one material, so those numbers overlap and must not be added together. The package notes say the inventory “shows over 400 works of public art throughout the City of Toronto”, which matches the 459 rows we downloaded. We print counts, decades and materials only, never artists, titles or descriptions. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - Toronto (licence terms, Public Art dataset).
