Key Insight

Park budgets are not keeping pace with need

Years of insufficient parks operations budgets are challenging city parks departments and coinciding with a slip in resident satisfaction.

Waterfront guided tour, Park People Conference in Toronto. Credit: Park People

Since 2019, we’ve heard consistently from cities about the operational budget gap between what’s needed to keep parks in good shape and what funding is provided every year. Essentially, parks departments are expected, year after year, to do more with less as populations grow, park use rises, and pressures, like extreme weather, increase. 

Another result is a slip in residents’ satisfaction with the state of their parks. This year, 65% of residents said their parks were well-cared for. While nearly two-thirds of residents is a good result, this also represents a drop from 78% who said the same in 2021. There is however, strong support for more park funding – if politicians have the will to act. The majority of residents (85%) said they would like to see more public funding invested in parks.

Key Insight

Residents feel disempowered, but want to engage

While residents want to get more involved in parks, city parks departments struggle with limited resources to provide opportunities for long-term engagement.

“Parole d’excluEs” workshop to amplify the voices of neighbourhood residents and park users, RaCINE Committee, Montréal-Nord. Credit: Bakr Elfekkak, Montreal Park People Network.

A continuing trend is the gap between residents’ desire to get involved in parks and their perceived ability to do so. The top three reasons residents felt disengaged from parks were because they weren’t sure how to get involved, didn’t feel their participation would make a difference, or there weren’t enough opportunities. Indeed, 83% of cities said they were challenged to create avenues for ongoing, proactive community involvement in parks.

Given the choice, nearly 60% of residents said they would be interested in advocating for park improvements and green space protection, while participating in park events/activities organized by someone else came in second at 45%. 

This highlights a potential engagement growth opportunity for cities by expanding and better advertising park-based activities, whether delivered by the city or a partner organization. 

While city staff cannot directly get involved with organizing residents related to park advocacy, supporting more engaged residents through park activities may be one way to foster a sense of shared purpose amongst residents who may then be more likely to advocate for more park funding and protections. 

Key Insight

Mental and physical health benefits are key, but lack proactive programs

Mental and physical health are the top benefits of park use for residents, presenting a big opportunity for cities to further these impacts with specific programs.

Street dance performance by the School of Groove, mentorship program empowering women through dance, Toronto. Photo credit: Kat Rizza, Arts in the Parks.

The mental and physical health benefits of parks are well-known and accepted. However, we found that despite this, there is a lack of confidence in city staff on how to proactively act on these benefits–just 25% of cities said they feel “well-equipped” to address mental and physical health and well-being through their work in parks. 

This is misaligned with the top reasons that residents visit parks, which is for their mental and physical health. There are of course passive ways that parks boost well-being: simply walking in a green space has been found to boost mood and lower stress. However, if we are to fully capture the health benefits of parks, it’s not enough to rely on their passive power. 

City staff do not need to create new programs to address these needs on their own. Building partnerships with non-profit organizations whose missions align with mental and physical well-being is one way cities can actively address mental and physical well-being through parks. As an example, see the case study in this year’s report from the City of Victoria’s work addressing health directly through park-based food growing programs. 

Key Insight

Departmental structures can promote collaboration–or disconnection

A minority of cities structure their parks departments with operations and design together, potentially leading to gaps between what gets built and how it gets maintained.

Vancouver Park People Social, Museum of Vancouver. Credit: Park People.

Looking at how a city structures its parks department seems a bit like examining snowflakes–each one is a little different. While there’s no right or wrong way to organize a parks department, how work is structured does impact internal collaboration strengths and focused priorities. It’s important to understand the trade-offs. 

For example, when parks are housed within infrastructure departments, we heard it allows for greater collaboration with technical experts in areas like stormwater management; however, it may also mean a greater focus is put on parks as hard infrastructure to the detriment of how parks can drive social equity and community health impacts (for more information refer to Data Section: Canada-wide trends, Chart 2).

Internal structures can also impact how well parks are maintained over time–a constant challenge with constrained budgets. Less than 40% of cities include parks planning/design in the same department as parks operations, which may be exacerbating the divide between what gets built in city parks and how infrastructure is maintained. As one municipal parks staff person said: “We plan better parks and services [when] we know and truly understand our operational limits.” 

Key Insight

Partnerships are critical, but cities need policies and structures

City parks departments recognize the benefit of partnerships, but struggle with the policies and procedures to navigate them with ease.

Planting and inauguration of the Talon Gardens as part of the participatory depaving program ‘Bye Bye Béton,’ Montreal. Credit: Louis-Etienne Doré, Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension Borough.

Partnerships are a cornerstone of good park systems. Cities know they can’t go it alone in addressing the issues facing parks and providing the programs that residents need. We found 91% of cities partner with school boards, 88% with recreation leagues, and 79% with non-profit organizations. 

The benefit of partnerships with non-profit and other community-based organizations is that they are often more nimble and able to deliver locally relevant programming and services at the neighbourhood level. They are also sometimes seen as a friendlier face to engage with than the city itself, especially for more vulnerable communities.

However, city staff find managing partnerships and collaborations challenging. In our survey this year, the top barriers were the staff time required to coordinate with partners, the ability of partners to meet municipal standards, budgetary concerns, ensuring accountability, and liability concerns. Interestingly, just 14% said lack of connections to non-profit organizations was a barrier. These findings suggest that it’s not for lack of awareness that partnerships are challenging, but having the right policies in place to manage expectations and relationships (which, in turn, also reduce the staff time burden in partner coordination). 

Ultimately, partnerships should be a complement to city park staff work–not a replacement for that work. In this year’s report, we have a number of case studies that showcase how partners work with city staff to address both gaps and provide value add to already existing programs. For more information, see our case study on Victoria’s park-based food growing program and Toronto’s work animating vacant spaces before they are turned into parks.

Key Insight

Growing park issues require more training and collaborations

There are big issues facing parks and residents want to see cities act, but to do so park staff need more training and collaborations with other city departments.

Kihcihkaw askî, permanent cultural site for Indigenous ceremonies, events, and knowledge sharing, Whitemud Park, Edmonton. Credit: Julian Parkinson, Reimagine Architects Ltd.

We know park use is changing, evolving from primarily recreation-based activities to more informal social spaces–a process that has sped up since the pandemic saw a boom in park use. With this change, we’re seeing a growing gap between what park staff feel equipped to deal with and what feels outside of their expertise. In fact, city staff indicated they did not feel well-equipped to deal with many issues in parks, with active transportation the only issue ranked above 50% in our survey–even higher than issues like biodiversity. 

While the benefits of parks for physical and mental health, biodiversity, and climate resilience were at the top, residents also understand and value parks as places to address social issues. For example, residents agreed or strongly agreed that parks had a role to play in racial justice (66%), Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples (59%), and houselessness (40%). 

Meanwhile, city staff felt only somewhat or ill-equipped with the knowledge and tools to deal with many of these same issues. Just 17% feel well-equipped to address anti-racism, 14% Truth and Reconciliation, 9% houselessness, and 9% green gentrification. Additionally, the city departments outside of parks that park staff work with the least were those related to anti-racism, housing, and public health, pointing to a potential benefit of increasing internal collaboration and de-siloing of what constitutes “park issues.”

Without training and skill-building amongst city park staff as well as collaboration with other divisions and partners, there will be a growing divide and frustration between what people expect from parks and what their cities can deliver. For more information, see our case studies on Metro Vancouver Regional Park’s collaborative work with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and our conversation with Jay Pitter on her BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC SURVEY.