The area around Tooting is much greener than its crowded streets suggest, with a park a short walk from almost every front door. Tooting Bec Common is the big one. There's water close by too. The high street is mostly shops and restaurants, with few pubs. For somewhere this crowded, there's a surprising amount of open space.
On average, the nearest green space is about 160 metres from a Tooting home, and there are about 23 within a kilometre. That's enough for a favourite, a second favourite and one you avoid because of the dogs.
Water is close as well. The nearest blue space is about 490 metres away on average, with about 16 within a kilometre. The best known is Tooting Bec Lido on the common, the one bit of local water people get into deliberately.
The National Cycle Network is less handy, averaging about 1,380 metres from home, and only about 9% of postcodes are close to it. Most cyclists here use the roads and paths across the commons.
Tooting has 661 shops, 79 restaurants and just 17 pubs. Restaurants outnumber pubs here by a long way.
Wandsworth recorded fine-particle pollution of about 8.9 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024, a borough-wide figure that includes Tooting.
Tooting is really a set of smaller places, with Upper Tooting and Tooting Bec on the higher ground towards the common and Tooting Graveney lower down. Furzedown is a residential pocket on the commons side. Springfield Hospital has registered historic grounds nearby. On Plough Lane, the old greyhound track at Wimbledon Stadium became the home of AFC Wimbledon in 2021. A football club named after the next town along now plays on land that's partly Tooting.
Private gardens amount to about 25,400 square metres per 1,000 residents. Most homes are flats, so for many people the nearest common has to stand in for a garden.
The council tax valuation list has 1,590 rateable business premises in Tooting. Shops are the biggest group, followed by 191 offices, and there's exactly one holiday let. These are premises on a rating list, so some may be empty or in different use. That one holiday let is still one more than you'd expect in Tooting.
The Food Standards Agency has rated 530 food businesses in Tooting. About 66% have the top hygiene score and about 5% are at the low end. For somewhere with this many places to eat, that's a reassuring result.
No protected landscape overlaps Tooting. There's no area of outstanding natural beauty, no site of special scientific interest and no ancient woodland. The green space here is the public kind, made up of commons, parks and a lido.
Green space is one of Tooting's real strengths. Whatever a flat here lacks in garden, a common a few streets away makes up for.