Introducing “Care Blocks”: How an urban planning strategy crafted in Colombia could address Toronto’s care crisis

In Spacing, Obaid Khan explains that, in Toronto, many low-income caregivers have to navigate to different parts of the city to access care infrastructure, often without reliable access to transit, which results in time poverty, family strain, and workforce withdrawal. Obaid points to manzanas del cuidado, or “care blocks,” as a potential solution. Developed in Bogotá, Colombia, care blocks co-locate care infrastructure within a 15-minute walk in neighbourhoods in which care burdens fall the hardest. Obaid argues that adopting this strategy in Toronto would not require massive amounts of new spending, but rather intentional coordination across municipal departments.

Obaid Khan is an MBA candidate at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Citation

Khan, O. (2026). Introducing “Care Blocks”: How an urban planning strategy crafted in Colombia could address Toronto’s care crisis. Spacing. https://spacing.ca/toronto/2026/05/06/op-ed-introducing-care-blocks/

Excerpt

Toronto already has the raw materials: community centres, libraries, schools, public health offices, settlement services. A pilot care hub in a transit-accessible, high-need neighbourhood such as Rexdale, Malvern, or Thorncliffe Park could demonstrate what co-ordinated, place-based care infrastructure looks like in a Canadian city. It would not require building something new from scratch. It would require building differently with what already exists.

Bogotá’s Care Blocks remind us that equity is built into the streets, schedules, and systems of a city. If we want a caring, functional, economically resilient Toronto, we need to design for it.