Vancouver blogger Chad Skelton — aka “Curious Dad” –  has an interesting series of posts about which neighborhoods in Vancouver are home to the most babies, preschoolers, and elementary school kids.

Many families who are house-hunting in Vancouver want to end up on the city’s tonier west side, where the schools have a strong reputation.

But Curious Dad’s statistics show that families with school-age kids are more-or-less equally divided between the east and west sections of the city.

The neighborhood with the highest percentage of children between the ages of six and 12 is the east-side community of Sunset, the pocket between Ontario and Knight Streets, between E. 41st Avenue and the Fraser River.

Coming in at number 2 is the west-side neighborhood of Dunbar-Southlands.

The top 10 kid-friendly neighborhoods — those with the highest percentage of kids ages 6–12 — include five on the east side and five on the west:

1. Sunset: 8.8% (east)
2. Dunbar-Southlands: 8.7% (west)
3. Killarney: 7.7% (east)
4. Kensington-Cedar Cottage: 7.7% (east)
5. Shaughnessy: 7.5% (west)
6. West Point Grey: 7.5% (west)
7. Hastings-Sunrise: 7.5% (east)
8. Renfrew-Collingwood: 7.4% (east)
9. Arbutus-Ridge: 7.4% (west)
10. Kerrisdale: 7.3% (west)

The areas with the fewest school-age kids? Fairview along Southeast False Creek (2.7%); Downtown, including the rapidly developing Coal Harbour community (2.6%); and the West End (1.7%).

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt (flickr)