Hartford, CT

Built environment  | 2025

Expanding youth access to sports and recreational activities.

Access to sports and organized play is associated with positive physical, social, and academic development in young people. Despite these benefits, young people in Hartford, Connecticut, have experienced the closure of three of the city’s five recreation centers, a reduction in public pool hours during the summer, and the loss of several high school sports teams during the school year, limiting the affordable sports and recreation options available to Hartford’s majority Black and Latino young residents. To create priorities for public investment in recreation and reverse this trend, the Connecticut Data Collaborative (CTData) will collect and analyze data on barriers to youth sports participation in Hartford.

CTData will partner with alumni from its Hartford Youth Data Fellowship to map the proximity of youth to sports programs and recreational facilities. Fellowship alumni will codevelop a survey and facilitate focus groups of youth and families to learn whether current programs meet the community’s diverse needs and to document barriers to participation, such as financial or transportation constraints. The team will synthesize initial findings and present them to city officials, community organizations, and residents in two data walks.

The City of Hartford’s newly established Department of Sports and Recreation will use the findings to inform its investments in youth recreation opportunities and to demonstrate the need for additional resources. Active City, a nonprofit consortium of youth sports programs, will use the data to plan for a spectrum of programs in neighborhoods where residents are best able to access them. Across the public and private sectors, the project will generate momentum for resources to expand sports and recreational opportunities for Hartford children and youth.