One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that can recommend leisure activities to a user. During operation, the system receives one or more activity types. Next it receives a bound in terms of a nearness metric such as travel distance, travel time, or travel cost. Next, it receives location information associated with a computing device of the user. The system then uses the location information to identify a cell stored in a spatial database. The system then returns a set of leisure activities that match the activity types and that are within the bound relative to the cell. The spatial database includes leisure activity data that is segmented based on physical position such as latitude and longitude. Moreover, the cells of the spatial database are linked based on the nearness metric.