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This case study is part of the 2022 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.
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The ongoing discoveries of unmarked graves has forced Canada to reckon with its ongoing legacy of residential schools as part of the colonial tactics that strived for Indigenous erasure. Municipalities, street names, secondary and post-secondary institutions have all been under pressure to change names that step away from the colonial figures they were named after.Canada was born the moment settlers began claiming land, creating borders, and dispossessing First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. And while the ongoing effects of colonization can look vastly different across geographies, the prairies in particular trace land theft and displacement of Indigenous livelihood to agricultural opportunities that allowed white settlement to prosper. For Indigenous Peoples, this meant a violent history of land extraction, residential schools, and starvation methods through buffalo extinction and government policy.Inherently, cities remain a site of dispossession, and the land on which city parks exist are no exception. Nahomi Amberer reminds us of the pre-existing relationship with land Indigenous people held prior to contact, and how this relationship was undermined by land dispossession by European settlers, including land used today for parks. “Dividing up land was central to claiming ownership of a land already inhabited by Indigenous Peoples,” she wrote in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report. Indigenous Peoples continue to be reminded of these violent histories often; whether driving through the country or walking through an urban neighbourhood, place-names continue to honour colonial figureheads who played instrumental roles in the genocide against Indigenous populations. However, city spaces can also be a site of mass education. So, how do we create spaces that decentralize the colonial past and instead, promote Indigenous knowledges?
Over the past year, a handful of prairie city parks have taken steps towards decolonizing public spaces, making room for Indigenous histories in a way that hadn’t been done before. This is a particularly important step for prairie cities that reflect some of the highest urban Indigenous populations across the country. Further, city parks moving towards the process of decolonizing space provides urban Indigenous folks access to nature and ceremony without the barrier of having to leave the city.
Take Winnipeg – Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population – and the Indigenous Peoples Garden as a start. Anna Huard, Manager of Education and Programs at Assiniboine Park Conservancy described the Garden as a massive joint effort of community consultation, Matriarchs, Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and an Indigenous architecture firm. “It’s important that the consultation process on a project like this includes a lot of different connections,” she said. “As soon as others were able to help out, it started to feel like a community. We cannot just rely on one Indigenous spokesperson.”Native plant species helped guide the Garden’s development, and to further community inclusion, Indigenous youth also had a hand in planting trees and building boardwalks. The park includes fire and water nodes as well as interpretive signage that includes ancestral languages of Ojibway, Cree, Dakota, Oji-Cree, Michif, Dene and Inuktitut translations.
With last summer being the Garden’s launch, Huard is ready to see the space used more frequently for youth storytelling programs, language learning, and an Indigenous plants program that includes a guided tour and salve-making classes. Most importantly, Huard noted that the space provides urban Indigenous folks the opportunity to strengthen their understanding of land and culture within city limits.
The city of Regina also experienced a big leap forward in decolonizing park spaces recently. Last year, the city finally caved to public pressure to relocate the Sir. John A. MacDonald statue in Victoria Park in downtown Regina. Although grassroots initiatives and petitions for the statue’s removal have been circulating for a few years, the city’s website stated that in March of 2021, city council approved the relocation of the statue to storage, “while Administration proceeds with broader public engagement and working with partners to identify an appropriate future location and contextualization.”Further, the Buffalo Peoples Art Institute (BPAI), a grassroots community organization driven by social justice in Regina, played a significant role in advocating for the name change of an inner-city public park. In spring of last year, the city officially changed Dewdney Park in the North Central neighbourhood to Buffalo Meadows Park due to ongoing pressure from organizations like BPAI and public community support. The city also voted in favor to change Dewdney Pool to Buffalo Meadows Pool. Edgar Dewdney was a colonial figure who administered and oversaw residential school policies and the starvation crisis faced by Indigenous Peoples in Canada.Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway, a member of the White Bear First Nation and a resident of Regina, said she started the Institute to help re-educate prairie learners about the significance of the buffalo’s presence before its erasure. She explained that Regina, often referred to as ‘Pile of Bones’ because of its creation literally being built on the bones of buffalo, must acknowledge the original histories of the land. “This was buffalo land before colonization,” she said.Advocating for the name change started a few years ago, and eventually led to public awareness campaigns through community barbeques and petition signing. After enough signatures were collected, the grassroots group and their allies presented the petition to the city council and the civic naming committee. The city vote to rename the park was successful, but the BPAI is still waiting for the approval to change a major street name, Dewdney Avenue to Buffalo Avenue, as well.The park’s name change encourages a reconnection to the land and is crucial for Regina’s north central community where many Indigenous people reside, BigEagle-Kequahtooway explained. “Even in an urban setting, our environment should reflect who we are as a community,” she said. “We need to determine whether the legacies of [colonial figures] are something we want to emulate or preserve for the future, and further question whether those names play a role moving forward in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation.”
BPAI plans to continue to bring awareness to the buffalo’s history on the plains through public art installations, courses on preparing buffalo hides, and hosting an annual buffalo festival all in the newly named park.
The city of Edmonton also had a big year for centering Indigenous knowledges in parks as construction on the kihciy askiy park (Cree for Sacred Land) started in Whitemud Park last year.
The park has been 15 years in the making after the city received a proposal from the Indigenous Elders Cultural Resource Society outlining an urban cultural site where Indigenous people could practice cultural ceremony and learning opportunities. Although long overdue, the city’s website acknowledges that “long before becoming farmland, the kihciy askiy site was used for many centuries by the Indigenous people foraging for medicines for healing purposes.”After forming a Counsel of Elders in 2015 to work alongside a city project team, the city followed cultural leadership throughout the park’s entire design process. Alongside consultation from Elders and Knowledge Keepers, the city has also called upon the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, the MMIWG Calls for Justice, and United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to help guide the work.“Consistent with Indigenous culture of respecting the land, the project is designed to be completely synchronized within its location in the Edmonton River Valley,” Chelsea Burden, City of Edmonton’s Project Manager shared. With this in mind, the city also conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment to ensure the construction of the site results in minimal destruction to native plant and tree species along the River Valley.
The park’s development plans include spaces for ceremony and sweats, the opportunity to grow medicinal native species plants, and the infrastructure to host culture camps and talking circles. The park plans to officially open in early 2023.
As more graves continue to be uncovered, the urgency to recognize Indigenous history and presence must be prioritized. Acknowledging that colonialism continues to have a devastating impact while actively making changes led by the Indigenous community with ancestral ties to the land are two processes that can and should happen in tandem.
For example, in January of 2022, Vancouver’s Park Board chair Stuart McKinnon presented a motion that calls for the co-management of city parks that fall under the traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. “I think it’s important as we recognize reconciliation in this country, that the land Vancouver sits on was occupied land,” McKinnon shared in a CBC article.
There is still plenty of work left to undo the colonial violence of the past, and governments at the municipal, provincial and federal level should actively engage in meaningful Indigenous consultation to lead the creation of cultural learning spaces in city parks as a starting point. In order to achieve successful consultation, engagement strategies must build authentic relationships with multiple Indigenous community members and respectfully make space for varying Indigenous worldviews. Further, municipalities must acknowledge that empowering Indigenous community members to lead educational programming, park signage, language camps, and plant/medicine gardens also empowers the community as a whole. Doing so promotes a way forward that allows urban Indigenous presence to access aspects of ceremony and tradition, and in turn, allows non-Indigenous people to learn more about the original stewards of the lands they occupy.
And perhaps above all, working alongside one another in mutual respect is one way to honour the spirit in which Treaty relationships were built upon.
It’s a tale as old as time—or at least as old as parks department budgets. As cities grow, and more people use parks for different activities, park budgets—particularly operating budgets—become strained.
So what happens when park departments that were already experiencing constraints and aging infrastructure come face to face with a global pandemic?
In short: additional pressures, creative thinking, and a heightened focus on how we can plan together for more equitable park investments going forward.
For the second year, cities said Covid put pressure on already strained operations budgets—the money that funds work like cutting the grass. Budgets weren’t cut during the pandemic, but the additional public health-related tasks meant the same pot of money had to cover more things.
As Niall Lobley, Director of Parks and Cemeteries for the City of Kitchener said: park budgets have been “routinely stretched to the maximum extent possible—and have been even further stretched.”
“A “huge” amount of resources were invested during the pandemic into sanitation, extra staffing to monitor physical distancing and high use areas, litter pick-up, and mitigating damage done to natural areas from high use.”
Niall Lobley
In Regina, Parks Support Operations Coordinator Trevor Klein said staff worked hard to find room in existing budgets to launch programs like the winter cities program, which encouraged people to use parks during the colder months.
Klein also mentioned that service requests and expectations of park quality rose during the pandemic. People working from home had more time to visit local parks during the day, increasing their contact with parks staff while they were on the job. This led to an “increase in service requests and a higher level of expectation on [grass] cuts and trimmings and what facilities were available to residents,” Klein said.
At the same time, Klein said the department was dealing with reduced staff early in the pandemic due to a city directive to not hire additional casual staff in summer 2020. This meant training costs were higher when these staff were reintroduced in 2021. Indeed, 50% of cities noted that reduced staff was a challenge during the pandemic.
In Ottawa, city staff said Covid impacts started with “simple reductions to maintenance,” which was “in part to meet a departmental need to conserve funds as additional pressures were expected throughout 2020.”
These services were then adjusted to meet “changing needs,” which included a spike in waste collection costs that began in 2020 and continues today. City staff also said that some “parks operating funds were diverted to help compensate for Covid-related costs,” including portable washrooms and hand-washing stations.
It hasn’t been all bad, however. Some parks departments have been able to tap into Covid funding, particularly for active transportation projects such as trail enhancements or for local economic recovery through tourism funding.
While budgets on average have held steady during the pandemic, Kitchener’s Niall Lobley does worry about what future years hold as city governments begin to grapple with the budgetary fallout from high spending during the pandemic.
“I expect that we have some years where there is likely to be pain felt within tax-supported structures, whether that be at the municipal, provincial or federal level.”
“Traditionally speaking, those periods of payback can be quite hard on soft services like parks and recreation,” Lobley added. “We can see those suffering the more significant and earliest cuts in a time where we’ve seen very high levels of public spending that need to be recouped.”
It’s clear, however, that city residents want to see more, not less, investment: 87% of respondents to our survey of over 3,000 Canadian city residents said they wanted to see more public funding for parks. This included 36% who wanted to see more funding for maintenance and 35% for higher quality designs. Positioning parks as public health infrastructure and citing the rising importance of parks in the last two years for mental and physical health may be one way to ensure funding keeps pace.
In addition to being asked to do more with less, many cities also indicated that building and upgrading parks has become more expensive. In fact, 69% of cities said they had to delay capital projects due to Covid and 86% said cost increases were a challenge.
It’s difficult to attribute these rising costs solely to the pandemic, Lobley said, noting the trend had been in place before Covid. But the pandemic and recent supply chain challenges haven’t helped.
Lobley specifically mentioned playground costs, which have risen as much as 15% a year while “general infrastructure like benches, seats, picnic tables, and all those sorts of things are seeing cost increases as global supply chains are strained.”
Community expectations around park designs have also changed as park use increases, impacting the cost of design and construction.
“It’s not just a case of replacing a few pieces of playground equipment; these are much more comprehensive renewals of neighbourhoods parks.”
“I’m certainly foreseeing 2022 and beyond being very difficult in terms of bringing projects on time and on budget,” Lobley said.
Ottawa city staff also noted this long-term challenge, saying that, if sustained, rising costs may “reduce the number of renewal projects completed annually, or necessitate larger budgets for renewal to maintain existing service levels.”
In addition, staff said that, “extended lead times for parks materials have resulted in some project delays, but these longer lead times and cost increases are being built into our project planning process. Future projects may take longer to deliver, and may be more costly, but we will continue to adjust budgets and timelines based on market conditions.”
A key trend emerging from the pandemic has been a renewed focus on the already existing inequities in how parks are accessed and enjoyed. As parks were held up as critical places for mental health and community connection, it became harder not to notice how some neighbourhoods were greener than others.
Now, as cities begin to shift focus from immediate pandemic needs to longer-term planning, many are turning their energy towards new strategies that use equity-based metrics to guide park investment decisions for years to come.
The “single biggest focus and single biggest change in work focus” in Kitchener’s under-development Places and Spaces Strategy is the focus on equity-led investment, Lobley said.
“What I mean by that is making sure that we don’t just invest where the [development] money is, or invest where the new parks are being built, but that we are deliberately investing in areas which have been underserved in terms of park rehabilitations and new park developments. Our oldest parks are in communities that probably have the greatest need from a social perspective for those parks,” he said.
Consider the urban forest—a topic we explored in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report. Through city-wide mapping, Lobley said the city found some communities are over the city’s goal of 30% tree canopy, while some are sitting at less than half that level. “When we overlay two maps and see where we’ve got less canopy, these tend to be the equity-deserving communities—communities in high density developments, high population of rental apartments, lower socioeconomic status,” he said.
While Kitchener was already moving in this direction pre-pandemic, Lobley noted he “can’t help but think it’s at least partly influenced” by the pandemic, which put a heightened focus on equity.
The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Land Back Camp advocating Indigenous land rights in Kitchener, helped raise both awareness and put pressure on decision-makers to act, Lobley said.
“I would say that the social movements we’ve seen grow through Covid have really allowed us to move [the equity-led focus] forward with a greater sense of urgency.”
Other Canadian cities are moving on this as well. Vancouver and Toronto both released park plans with equity-focused metrics in recent years. Regina’s Trevor Klein noted that the city’s forthcoming 25 year parks and open space master plan will focus on the equitable distribution of parks—not just the green space, but facilities and amenities like picnic spots.
In Ottawa, city staff pointed to the city’s new park master plan, which uses the Ottawa Neighbourhood Equity Index, a resource created by the Social Planning Council of Ottawa, as a lens through which park investment priorities can be made. City staff also said this equity-based approach will be important in the city’s forthcoming Greenspace and Urban Forest Master Plan and in its Climate Resilience Strategy.
While the impacts of the pandemic will likely continue to be felt for years to come, this sharpened focus on equitable investment will help cities plan more resilient park systems for the future.
While municipalities offer multiple ways for residents to get involved in budgets through town halls, surveys, and other activities, it’s often unclear how community input influences final decisions. Proponents of participatory budgeting hope to change that by providing a direct route for residents to make funding decisions.
Toronto, Kitchener, and Longueuil have piloted participatory budgeting processes in the past. On the positive side, participatory budgeting was found to promote higher rates of participation than traditional park engagement, but it also raised concerns about the potential to foster a competitive atmosphere among community members.
How to devise a transparent, fair, and inclusive participatory budgeting process is something Isabelle Gaudette has thought a lot about. Gaudette is the Coordinator for Participatory Processes for the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal, which worked with the City of Montreal to devise and run its $10-million participatory budgeting program in 2021.
The city received 620 submissions from the public, which were whittled down based on feasibility to a final 35 that people voted on in June 2021. Projects had to be between $500,000 and $3 million, take place on city property, and “contribute to Montreal’s ecological and social transition” by addressing climate change, biodiversity, equity, or sustainable resource consumption. Montreal is continuing the program, Gaudette said, setting aside a budget of $60 million over the next three years.
The voting age was set to those above 12 years old and the process also allowed non-citizens to vote–in fact, approximately a quarter of those who voted were youth and non-citizens, Gaudette said. Voter turn-out met the project team’s goal of 1% of the population. While that may seem small, she said, it represents 20,000 people directly voting on budget decisions that are usually left to a handful of elected officials and city staff.
Participatory budgeting also shows how the priorities of the public may differ from those of city officials, Gaudette said. The seven winning projects included mini forests, urban agriculture, green laneways, and more. But the second most voted on improvement was adding 125 water fountains and filling stations to parks in six boroughs.
“I don’t think that the professionals, the elected officials, would have said: “we are going to put drinking fountains in each park”. It seems basic, but that’s what people chose. It is a basic need.”
Isabelle Gaudette, Coordinator for Participatory Processes for the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal
Gaudette’s advice for participatory budgeting:
Most Canadian cities offer a grant or matching fund program for residents who want to undertake public space projects, ranging from small events to larger infrastructure projects.
However, many of these grant programs were thrown into uncertainty when park amenities were closed or restricted due to Covid and public health guidelines discouraged gathering.
Recognizing this, the City of Waterloo introduced temporary changes to some of its community grants. This included more flexibility in how funds could be used (for example, buying personal protective equipment for volunteers), reducing matching fund requirements in recognition that volunteer hours may be more difficult to contribute, and encouraging projects that addressed public health, community well-being, and social isolation. Waterloo city staff said that these “changes were an important step to help remove barriers and to encourage unique and safe ways for the community to lead opportunities for connection.” Projects funded through the Neighbourhood Matching Fund included additional park seating, community message boards, and expanding community gardens. A mini-grant providing up to $300 also supported small-scale park events such as an ice cream social with rapid test pop-up.
In Hamilton, the city is testing a new approach with its Placemaking Grant pilot program. Made possible by a $100,000 donation by the Patrick J. McNally Charitable Foundation, Program Manager Sarah Ehmke said it specializes in “creative, temporary ways of activating public spaces.”
While conceived pre-Covid, Ehmke said the pandemic only made the program’s goals more relevant as people looked to engage in outdoor spaces. While the city only had funding for 10 to 12 projects, Ehmke spoke with 50 people proposing ideas. “A number of the proposals that we received…were directly in response to people’s experiences during Covid in public spaces,” she said.
One project in Hamilton Amateur Athletic Association Park included a local photographer who had taken photos (with permission) of people using the park in various ways during the pandemic. The grant funded a photo gallery in the park “to show the different ways people have been using the park during Covid,” Ehmke said. Photos showed dog walkers, kids playing, and people using park infrastructure as an outdoor gym.
To ensure projects were community- and equity-focused, the city encouraged applicants to propose projects in their own neighbourhoods and demonstrate partnerships to make sure the group had “considered the needs and wants and uses of public spaces beyond their own use.”
Ehmke’s advice for community grants:
While the federal government doesn’t have a long history of investing in city parks, two new funding initiatives have opened up new opportunities for collaboration.
National Urban Parks Program
While still in development, in 2021 the federal government announced a $130 million commitment over five years for Parks Canada to develop a National Urban Parks Program. This follows the federal government’s investment in 2012 to create the Greater Toronto Area’s Rouge National Urban Park.
“Urban parks represent the next evolution for Parks Canada, which has a long history of over 110 years of establishing national parks, national historic sites, and national marine conservation areas,” said Parks Canada Director of Urban Parks and Ecological Corridors Miriam Padolsky.
The new program, which the government views as part of its goal to conserve 25% of land and inland waters by 2025, will see Parks Canada work with governments, Indigenous partners, conservation organizations and other stakeholders to create or expand national urban parks in or near municipalities.
“National urban parks will offer a number of important benefits that align with Parks Canada priorities, including protecting biodiversity, contributing to climate resilience, connecting people with nature, and supporting reconciliation with Indigenous populations.”
Miriam Padolsky, Parks Canada Director of Urban Parks and Ecological Corridors
Healthy Communities Initiative
The Healthy Communities Initiative was a federally funded program with a unique structure that provided funding to community-based organizations to “create and adapt public spaces to respond to the new realities of COVID-19.” The $31-million program was managed by Community Foundations Canada (Park People was also a partner).
The program funded over 550 projects, but the demand was far greater. Over 6,000 applications were received, totalling $650 million in requested funding, showing how great a need there was–and is–for community-based public space funding.
Three quarters of the funding went to non-profits and charities, a point Community Foundations Canada emphasized in their final report: the initiative demonstrates “how small-scale innovations can have a big impact in communities to transform public spaces” and “how community-led infrastructure re-thinks social challenges and plays a critical role in providing innovative recovery solutions.”
The program included an equity guidance document prepared by Jay Pitter Placemaking for prospective grantees. This document has proven useful for other city-led granting programs as well, with the City of Hamilton referring grantees to the document in their Placemaking Grant pilot described earlier. When analyzing where grants went, Community Foundations Canada found that the communities most served by the initiative were “people experiencing low income or living in poverty, persons with disabilities, and newcomers.”
The full list of projects can be viewed on a map, but included initiatives by
This case study is part of the 2020 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.
With their impressive array of social, health, and food security benefits, amenities like community gardens have become a staple in many cities. Community food infrastructure holds even greater value in times of crisis, as we saw when provinces like Ontario, British Columbia, and New Brunswick declared community gardens an essential service during COVID-19. As community resilience takes on heightened importance, roughly three quarters of cities reported demand for food opportunities in parks is also on the rise, creating an opening for cities to use food in parks to strengthen communities.
When Halifax was hit by Hurricane Dorian leaving residents without electricity, the Park Avenue Community Oven group in Dartmouth stepped up to provide pizza to the community at a local park’s bake oven. And in response to the COVID-19 crisis, Victoria temporarily reassigned park staff to grow up to 75,000 food plants for residents in need.
These examples showcase how park-based food amenities and the support networks they create offer “an important buffer from stressful life events,” as one 2019 study found. Yet it often falls upon community groups to advocate for features like community gardens after the park is built, said Alex Harned, Food Systems Coordinator at the City of Victoria, noting that this can be cumbersome and involve competing for space with other user groups.
Instead, Harned sees great potential for cities to start integrating these amenities into the (re)design phase as “a necessity within every park, and not just an afterthought.” While Harned noted this is largely “a shift that’s yet to happen,” we found some cities are taking steps in the right direction:
Whether a garden, bake oven, or edible forest, food amenities often depend on the maintenance and programming efforts of dedicated volunteers.
Cities can lend a helping hand by providing coordination and resources, as Victoria has since 2016 through Growing in the City. Created in response to community demand, GITC supports community-led food projects in green spaces—from small-scale commercial agriculture, to boulevard gardening, to fruit tree stewardship, and more.
GITC provides support to groups at the start-up phase and beyond. For example, the city helps connect community garden groups to available land and offer start-up funding (new in 2020), but also offers $10,000 grants for garden volunteer coordinators to ensure the work remains sustainable over time and to support garden-based programming.
All of this work is overseen by Victoria’s full-time Food Systems Coordinator—a unique role based out of the parks department, created as part of GITC. Other cities are also helping to coordinate garden groups, either directly or through partnerships:
While some enjoy the labours of gardening or running a bake oven, there is a need to ensure accessible food opportunities for those with less time to commit.
One way to do so is through providing free publicly accessible produce. A 2019 study of an edible orchard in Montreal found that food bearing plants can enhance residents’ social capital, place attachment, and food knowledge—all without requiring a high level of time, skill, or commitment.
Community groups across the country are showcasing how food can create a starting point for learning and connecting with one another.
Much of the low hanging fruit is gone, but cities are finding the fruit higher up tastes a bit more interesting. Or, as Ann-Marie Nasr, Toronto’s Parks Development and Capital Projects Director put it: “Part of not having a lot of land around to turn into parks means you become more inventive, right?”
Nasr is overseeing a burst in innovative park building, including rooftop recreation facilities, parks over rail corridors, and linear parks in hydro corridors. Vancouver’s experience is similar, with designs for a new downtown park including an elevated walkway. “We need to think in three dimensions,” Dave Hutch, the Vancouver Park Board’s Planning Director said, and “use every square inch, especially on small sites.”
While the majority of the projects in this article were in development before COVID-19, physical distancing requirements have put additional pressure on cities to creatively and quickly expand public space, potentially bolstering arguments for and accelerating planning for new public spaces.
However, as these constraints push public space creation into so-called “leftover” spaces in a city, such as under a highway or along rail lines, it can have unintended effects. This includes displacing people occupying those spaces for shelter and potentially spurring gentrification.
Despite its popularity, many have criticized New York’s elevated High Line park as contributing to unaffordable housing and catering to overwhelmingly white visitors despite the racial diversity of the neighbourhood. In response, the Friends of the High Line spun out a new entity called the High Line Network to advise infrastructure reuse parks on more inclusive practices. Toronto’s Bentway and The Meadoway are the groups only Canadian members. The Network has published toolkits with strategies for community-based planning and equitable development principles, which can be helpful guides as Canadian cities embark on a new era of park building.
One trend likely to grow is building parks on top of other infrastructure, like a parking garage. These are called strata parks because of their stratified ownership: the city doesn’t own the land underneath, just the layer on top.
On its face, it seems like a win-win situation. A property owner gets to build something and the city gets a park on top. But in reality, strata parks present a number of logistical, design, and legal challenges with which cities are grappling.
The structural integrity of what is below dictates the amount of soil you can place on top, which impacts landscaping. Additionally, when the waterproof membrane separating the park from the structure below needs replacing or maintenance, the park must often be scraped off and rebuilt. These parks can end up less green because of these factors, Nasr said—an issue when cities facing climate change want to add more greenery for stormwater management and urban heat mitigation.One city that has seen rising pressure to accept strata parks is Richmond Hill. “Land value has appreciated quite substantially in the last 10 years,” said Michelle Dobbie, the city’s Park Planning Manager, leading developers to maximize land by pushing parking underground.
Aside from the design challenges of strata parks, there’s a host of legal and logistical implications, like long-term financial liability for future upgrades. Recognizing that this pressure is not abating, Richmond Hill has commissioned a study to look at strata parks and help guide its decisions on accepting this type of parkland.
Vancouver’s plans for a new park partially on top of the redeveloped Oakridge Mall shows both the promise and complexity of strata parks. The 3.6 hectare park will rise from ground level onto the mall’s roof with areas for social gathering, gardening, and sports. Using the roof allowed the city to create a much larger park, Hutch said.
The Park Board worked hard to negotiate an ownership structure with the mall, Hutch said, including a provision that park maintenance and future capital renewal are paid for and done by the landowner, not the Park Board. A first for the Park Board, this was negotiated due to the complexity of having multiple maintenance crews on site and liability if a Park Board staff person damaged the protective membrane. An operating committee including Park Board and mall staff will be created to troubleshoot issues.
As we reported in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report, parks planning is increasingly concerned with connectivity. Linear parks, trails, and other green spaces that thread their way through tight spots—repurposing rail corridors and hydro corridors to do so—are becoming more common.
One such project is the Edmonton High Level Line, a vision by a group of community members that has caught city officials’ attention. The plan proposes connecting neighbourhoods along a 4km route using an existing rail corridor across the North Saskatchewan River. It’s an idea that follows the principles of connectivity put forward in the city’s 2019 Downtown Public Places Plan.
The project envisions tying existing parks together, but also plays off opportunities on private lands. For example, property owners could develop their sites to open up onto the Line or provide amenities. “Edmonton has this great asset in the North Saskatchewan River and the River Valley…but it also acts as a real barrier,” said Kevin Dieterman, spokesperson for the group. But the project isn’t just about moving from A to B, he said, it’s “the experience that you have along the way.”
Land in the public right-of-way, such as streets, is increasingly being viewed as a resource for temporary and permanent public space creation. New designs that employ low curbs and special paving allow streets to be used more flexibly. Toronto calls this design approach “parks plus.” As Nasr explained: “If you think of it as an equation, parks plus streets equals an amazing public realm.”
However, it’s Montreal that has been a pioneer with 15 shared/pedestrian streets developed in the last five years adding to the 50 already in existence. The city’s Shared and Pedestrian Streets Program (“Le Programme de rues piétonnes et partagées”), which has developed an inspirational catalogue, supports the implementation of projects that reflect the culture of a neighbourhood, including a participatory design process.
While street reallocations have been happening for years, the practice accelerated during COVID-19. Starting in April, cities across Canada including Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, began turning over car lanes to pedestrians to create temporary public space to help with physical distancing. Advocates and urbanists have since deepened that conversation. For example, placemaker Jay Pitter highlighted the “spatial inequities” that underscore the limits of such reallocations and which populations they serve. She has called for the need to centre discussions around racial and socioeconomic inequities, and specifically anti-Black racism, as cities expand public space—a call that other writers have echoed. Rising incidents of anti-Asian racism in public spaces, for example, have also been reported in Canada during the pandemic.
Over a third of cities we surveyed reporting increasing demand for privately-owned public space development (POPS). POPS are built and maintained by private property owners, with city agreements to ensure public access. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver already have many POPS, while Mississauga, Richmond Hill, and Waterloo said they were contemplating their use.
“I think being clear about [POPS’] role and function is really important,” said Nasr. In Toronto, POPS have been used to create a more connected public realm, like a landscaped walkway or small gathering space in the front of a building, but not to replace requirements for parks. They can also help take some pressure off parks in dense areas, Nasr said.However, the “publicness” of POPS have been called into question with disputes over access and encroachment from businesses. And since they’re privately owned, these spaces could be redeveloped over time, as has happened in Vancouver. In a bid to raise awareness and promote better design and visibility, Toronto mapped POPS and produced design guidelines and a signage strategy to clarify that POPS were public spaces.
Weighing the cost and benefits of expanding parkland versus improving the parkland you have should be part of the discussion, said Chris Hardwick, Principal at 02 Planning + Design, who has worked on park plans in Edmonton, Halifax, Toronto, and Winnipeg.
In cases where land is expensive and scarce, the best strategy may be to deploy resources to improve parkland to ensure it’s performing its best, Hardwick argued. However, it’s critical for cities to get ahead of development by targeting land acquisition in areas that are slated for growth, as opposed to playing catch up later.
Different challenges exist in different urban contexts, depending on growth and demographic change, he said. Some cities are dealing with a lack of park space, while others are dealing with too much or the wrong kind of spaces. For example, Prince George reported turning underused baseball diamonds into dog parks.
Other cities are in between. They’re shifting from a more suburban style of development to higher density development, necessitating shifts in policies, financial tools, and planning to ensure new neighbourhoods have the parks they need as they grow. For example, Surrey reported land banking in growth areas to prepare for future development.
Toronto’s Nasr said that suburban malls are becoming another focus of new park development, with some malls slated to be transformed into the centres of new, dense neighbourhoods. “They’re big blocks of land in which parks become an organizing element to inform those transformations,” said Nasr.Toronto has three major mall redevelopments underway that contain new anchor parks, including Cloverdale, Yorkdale, and Agincourt. In neighbouring Mississauga, the redevelopment of Square One Mall will include 37 towers and new parks.
If you want to see a park staffer cringe, just mention dog parks. There’s hardly a park amenity more controversial than setting aside space for dogs to run off-leash in green space.But off-leash dog areas are also increasingly in demand, as 85% of cities noted in our survey, and they can provide important social benefits. However, cities are challenged to find suitable land and deal with community concerns. The COVID-19 crisis further complicates the issue as many Canadian cities including Edmonton, Ottawa, Calgary, and Toronto restricted, or closed, off-leash parks to encourage physical distancing. In May, Edmonton opened up off-leash parks as part of its first phase of re-opening. However, longer-term physical distancing requirements may challenge cities already struggling to provide enough off-leash space.
As cities grow, so does our population of four-legged friends. Many cities are under pressure to create more space for dogs, while juggling demand for other park uses, which leads to conflicts.
In 2011, Waterloo dropped a pilot to create six off-leash areas due to lack of public support and is now looking to expand their one off-leash area to three. Guelph city council nearly closed the city’s only fenced-in leash-free park due to community complaints, before reversing course. The animosity can quickly reach ridiculous heights. In Toronto, someone locked up an off-leash dog area and a resident played recordings of barking out a window to rile up the dogs.
Conflict with natural areas is another area of concern, with the potential for off-leash dogs to trample sensitive plantings and disturb wildlife. Ron Buchan, Parks Community Strategist for the City of Calgary, said that the city has turned down community requests for new off-leash areas adjacent to natural areas. However, of the city’s 152 off-leash areas, only 11 are fenced, meaning that in parks where existing off-leash areas abut natural spaces, there is nothing physically stopping dogs from heading into sensitive habitats. To address this, Calgary is working on initiatives that include a park ranger program targeted to high user conflict areas, education on habitat restoration and dog etiquette, and an adopt-a-park program to encourage stewardship.
The number of off-leash areas varies widely between cities and many appear to have been planned in an ad hoc manner. Finding appropriate sites to locate off-leash areas is difficult, especially in cities already dealing with park deficiencies.
“There are many areas in Hamilton that are parkland deficient,” Hamilton city staff said. “There is a bit of a tug of war between folks who want land for people and those that want it for dogs.” In an indication of how challenging space constraints have become, the last two off-leash areas the city created were approved by council direction even though they didn’t conform to the city’s policies on size.
A citywide strategy for managing and expanding off-leash areas can go a long way to alleviating concerns—both from dog owners and others, said Eric Code, founder of the 2,000 member Toronto Dog Park Community Group. “If you’re going to walk across a tight-wire, you need a pole,” he said. “That’s what policy is.”
We found one third of cities have off-leash strategies that include planning and design criteria for establishing and managing areas citywide. In Calgary, Buchan said the city’s decade old management plan helped “tremendously” by providing a clear decision-making framework for where and how to expand off-leash areas and clarity in responding to residents. In Ottawa, the city uses a point system to designate off-leash areas. The city allows dogs off-leash in 175 parks and in 62 others only in certain areas or at certain times, with nine of these areas fenced-in.
For Eric Code, the benefits of the dog park go far beyond being a place for his dog to play—they create a sense of community, providing a “third space” between work and home where he connects with others.
Taking your dog to the park makes it easier to start up a conversation with a stranger, Code said. You wouldn’t necessarily go up to people throwing a ball around and start chatting, Code said. But you can easily meet new people at the dog park.
“In today’s world, especially in Toronto, where life can be a bit cold, there’s a small town feeling in dog parks that you just can’t get elsewhere,” he said. The importance of dog parks for social connection is backed up by research. One study found having dogs increased the likelihood of people meeting others in their community, acting as an ice-breaker, while another study found that dogs help reduce feelings of social isolation and increase the chance of building social support networks. Dog parks have also been shown to increase perceptions of safety as dog owners use parks in the “off hours” of early morning or evening.
Some Canadian cities rely on, or are developing, programs that involve community members to fundraise for and manage dog parks—a response to both budgetary pressures and desires for greater community engagement.
After noting the city’s “limited resources,” Edmonton is studying the creation of community-operated off-leash areas to help expand offerings. Montreal’s Club d’Agilite de Montreal is run by a community non-profit that provides space for dog agility training. And in Gatineau the 1,200 member Aylmer Canine Club has an agreement with the city to run an off-leash area in Paul Pelletier Park.
But it’s Mississauga that has the most developed community-run off-leash arrangement out of the cities we surveyed. In 1997, a city by-law created off-leash zones in parks, but also placed the costs and management on a non-profit called Leash-Free Mississauga; however, in 2016 due to funding challenges as demand grew, the city stepped in with financial support.
In Calgary, where the city runs a volunteer program called P.U.P.P.Y (Pick Up Pooch’s Poo Yourself), Buchan said that dog park community groups help reduce complaints as people take on a stewardship role.
Eric Code noted that programs to get residents more involved in dog parks can be a way to harness people’s frustrations for good. It can help build a sense of responsibility, reducing incidents of dog owners not respecting the rules.
“If you make people volunteers, and give them the ability to make the dog park better, they’re going to take that much more care and pride in it.” Code said.
This case study is part of the 2019 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.
Though the impression from outsiders of Canada as an always cold, frozen country is a myth, it’s impossible to deny that for many months our cities are chilly, snow-covered places.
Some Canadian cities have embraced their wintery-ness, celebrating it as a time to get outside and enjoy parks rather than hunker down indoors with a cup of tea.
Edmonton leads the pack with its WinterCity Strategy and organizing of the inaugural Winter Cities Shake-Up conference in 2017. Saskatoon, which hosted the Winter Cities Shake-Up in 2019 is working on its own WintercityXYE Strategy.
Edmonton actively promotes and runs a variety of winter programming—from snowshoeing to winter picnicking—to invite people outdoors. A recent survey by the city found 44% of residents said they had a more positive perception of winter since the program began.
The City also expanded its popular Green Shack Program—where City staff help program parks with recreational amenities housed in a green shack—to all year round in a 2017 pilot. The $120,000 pilot included eight green shacks that rotated through parks between September and June. Attendance was on par with summertime programming.
But it’s not just Edmonton that’s having fun in the snow.
Another Canadian city that truly embraces winter creatively is Montreal. In January 2018, a group of collaborators including La Pépinière Espaces Collectifs*, Rues Principales* and Vivre en Ville* launched the Winter Laboratory*. The project aims to reclaim winter through fun activities, starting with the publication of an active winter public spaces guidebook*.
Boasting the largest fleet of artificial outdoor ice rinks in the world, Toronto worked in partnership with Montreal-based Le Pepiniere to kick off its Rink Social Program in early 2019. The program animated outdoor rinks with fireplaces, food and beverages, social gathering spaces, and skate lending. The City also hosts training sessions for residents that want to create natural ice rinks in parks, including a handy tip sheet for would-be ice makers.
Both Halifax and Charlottetown have found creative ways to get people outside and moving around in winter. At Halifax’s Emera Oval, one of the largest skating rinks in Canada, you’ll find movie and DJ nights and artist-inspired warming huts. And Charlottetown hosts WinterlovePEI every February, which is put on by a grassroots organization that promotes cold-loving events like “snoga in the park.”
Go to a park and take a deep breath. Feel better? You’re not alone. Research has established strong links between spending time in nature and improved mental health. A partnership between the City of Victoria and Human Nature Counselling builds on that with a program called New Roots.
The program brings youth out into city parks for nature-based therapy that targets anxiety and negative thinking. Participants take part in a variety of solo and group activities such as mindfulness, journaling, hiking, and nature play. It helps “them to slow down and dip into their senses and connect them to the natural world,” said Katy Rose from Human Nature Counselling.
Running the program in city parks is an important part of its success because youth “want to be there,” Katy said. Other mental health programs are indoors, which can be uncomfortable for some people. “It’s just so much easier to build community outside,” she said, adding that youth are also building connections to their local parks.
The City is a crucial champion of the program, helping to find funding and making connections to specific parks. The afterschool program, fully funded by Island Health in 2018, is open to youth in middle and high school.
Staff also provide youth with service projects, such as pulling invasive English ivy, which is then dried and woven. Katy said this helps show youth how so-called negatives can be translated into positives by using the invasive species as a metaphor.
One of the program’s key champions is Shelley Brown, a City Parks and Recreation Programmer. She had been working with students on a meadow restoration program and “saw how quickly the youth became passionate about parks and natural spaces,” she said.
Shelley said a big part of her job is to help find funding to keep New Roots free. “Because this program is fairly new and quite different to what people think of when they think therapy, we wanted as few barriers as possible,” she said.
The role of nature in positive mental health outcomes is also key to another partnership, this time in Guelph. There, the City hosts a registered charity that runs the Enabling Garden in Riverside Park, offering therapeutic experiences through horticulture in an accessible garden space.
“The therapeutic garden provides both a soothing and engaging atmosphere that allows individuals, with the assistance of the Registered Horticultural Therapist, to connect creatively in their community and share stories that encourage wellness and ease suffering,” said Anna Kroetsch, a Horticultural Therapist at the garden.
The garden is specifically designed for those of all ages and abilities. “With a low-glare, wide accessible pathway, Braille signs, and raised garden beds, people that may not usually be able to access nature are able to comfortably engage with the natural world’s smells, textures, and tastes no matter their ability,” Anna said.
Vancouver is turning would-be empty park buildings into hotspots of arts and culture in its inventive Fieldhouse Activation Program.
In a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours partnership, the City connects community groups with vacant park buildings that used to be caretaker’s suites, providing rent-free space in exchange for 350 hours of community animation.
Running since 2011, it now operates in 22 parks and accepts applications from groups working in arts, sport, environment, local food, or social engagement to host three-year residencies.
For the next residency, which started in 2019, programs include Indigenous food, intergenerational activities, girls rock camps, seed swaps, eco-film workshops, and more.
In Toronto, the city is heading into the third year of its popular Arts in the Parks program, which is run by the Toronto Arts Council. As TAC Director Claire Hopkins said in a 2018 blog, the idea came from the fact there were few venues for artists to present their work outside the downtown.
She also noticed that many artists were having difficulty getting park permits and permissions. As Claire put it: “Taxpayer dollars are going to fund arts organizations to make art, and they’re forced to spend most of their money on permits and marketing for a free public event.”
The program isn’t meant to parachute arts into neighbourhoods, so a lot of attention is dedicated to working with local community groups to make sure the art is appropriate and locally-responsive.
In 2018, the program saw 282 events in 36 parks across the city, with the majority of those happening outside the downtown. A 2019 toolkit provides more information for those wanting to create similar programs, with information on funding, partnerships, outreach, and evaluation. The City of Waterloo operates a smaller scale program with their Artist in Residence. An initiative of the City’s Culture Plan, this program provides “opportunities for artists to partner with the City to deliver community art projects to citizens of all ages, abilities, and experience.” In 2018 the program showcased the work of artists Denise St Marie and Timothy Walker in Waterloo Park, including word walks, storytelling activities, and treasure hunts.
Parks are not “nice to haves,” they are critical social, health, and environmental infrastructure for Toronto. City parks are lifelines in extreme heat waves. Social connectors in an age of increasing polarization. Keepers of biodiversity despite ever fragmenting urban landscapes.
To meet the biggest challenges we face in Toronto—climate change, biodiversity loss, social polarization, rising inequality—we need whole new ways to plan, design, manage, program, and govern parks.
This shift requires doing things differently. It requires ensuring proper funding, sharing decision-making power, addressing inequities head-on, and prioritizing action on truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
As Toronto faces upcoming municipal elections, we urge candidates for Mayor and Council to accelerate the transition to a more equitable, resilient future for city parks by working with us on the ideas presented in this platform.
All of the ideas in this platform require us to invest more time and money into city parks. In our 2022 survey of residents of Canadian cities, 87% said they support more investment in parks.
Responsible for 60% of Canada’s infrastructure, municipalities like Toronto receive only 10 cents on every tax dollar. That means our three levels of government, each of which has responsibilities for our natural environment and human health, all need to come to the table.
This is easier said than done. The multiple benefits of parks—health, environmental, social, economic—actually make it harder to invest at the scale we need to. Why? Because the benefits of investing in parks are distributed across many different ministries and government departments, each of which is accountable for its own budgets and plans. That is why we need to support governments to pursue an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to investment in Toronto parks.
Investing more in city parks is not an imposition or an obligation. It is an opportunity to transform Toronto for the better.
There is a clear and growing disparity in who has access to quality green spaces in Toronto. As COVID laid bare, equity-deserving communities face complex, interrelated health crises. Toronto must recognize how race, income and the built environment conspire to make parks a pressing environmental justice issue in our city.
Park Policy Directions:
Usable parks are the bar for entry. Toronto’s parks maintenance and operating budget have not kept pace with use and demand. There’s an urgent need to increase park operating budgets to ensure basic amenities like bathrooms and water are the standard in every single Toronto park.
Spending on park operating budgets must start to keep pace with demand. It is basic: amenities like bathrooms and water must be the standard in every single Toronto park, with a priority focus on equity-deserving and high-use parks. Investments in basic amenities that promote park use must include:
Further reading:
Towards equitable parks, Canadian City Parks Report 2020
People living in Toronto will need to adapt to hotter, wetter and more unpredictable climates. Climate change is here and is already impacting our city. With the right investment, parks can serve as climate infrastructure and provide people with critical places of refuge in hot, dense cities where a major health crisis is looming.
At the same time, people are seeking out nature more for its mental and physical health benefits. People want more places to experience nature close to home: 71% of survey respondents said they value visiting naturalized spaces within a 10-minute walk of homes, such as a native plant garden or small meadow. In fact, 87% of respondents said they were in favour of more native plant species within parks—the second most requested amenity after public washrooms. Toronto’s Ravine Strategy offers a strong road map for ensuring these vital biodiversity and natural habitats are safeguarded for the future and enjoyed by residents, but funding has remained limited.
Policy Directions:
Invest in the co-benefits of naturalized spaces as climate resilience infrastructure, urban biodiversity habitat and vital nature connections in Toronto.
Further reading
Deepening the conservation conversation, Canadian City Parks Report 2020
There is an urgent need for new models of Toronto park governance rooted in shared decision-making power. We need a new way of managing city parks that are more inclusive, community-focused, and respects the land rights of Indigenous peoples and the knowledge of communities.
Park planning and design practices
Over the past several years, communities have been actively working to decentralize power in institutional spaces.
It is time for Toronto to give communities more decision-making power on the park issues that affect them most, particularly in equity-deserving communities.
Abundance, the theme of Park People’s 2022 Conference, is an invitation to radically reimagine city parks. For three days, September 21-23, the virtual event will focus our collective attention on the transformational park work charting a new path forward in cities.
Community park groups, park non-profits and park professionals are recognizing parks as essential urban infrastructure and building new approaches to collaboration, community engagement and nature connections. The Park People Conference is an invitation to engage with the incredible people, places and projects that manifest abundance in our city parks.
We’ve identified 4 key pathways to generating abundance in parks: decolonizing practices and narratives, engaging in power sharing, recognizing parks as sites of healing and justice, and cultivating human/nature connections.
Indigenous leaders and allies are calling for settlers to reckon with colonialism and decentre settler approaches in park work. We’re hosting numerous sessions during the Park People Conference that feature people and organizations that are leading the movement to collectively decolonize Canada’s city parks.
How can municipalities, community groups, non-profits and residents meaningfully work together to create spaces that address community needs in parks? The Park People Conference features several sessions that approach collaboration as an act of power-sharing where the process is just as important as the project itself.
What would parks look like if we saw everyone as equally worthy of having their needs met in shared spaces? Inclusion and access look much different from the perspective of those who are too often viewed as outsiders. But, their experience in parks tells us much about our communities, our cities and ourselves.
Several Park People Conference presenters demonstrate how centring nature builds both community and ecological resilience.
Check out the whole agenda, and 100+ speakers bringing together the incredible people, places and projects that manifest abundance in city parks.
See you at the Park People Conference!