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A reflection on the BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report, exploring how Black communities experience parks and public spaces, and what fosters joy and belonging.
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Parks, sidewalks, transit, and streets are meant to be places of connection and everyday life. Yet the BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report reminds us that public space is experienced very differently depending on who is moving through it.
Led by urban planner and placemaker Jay Pitter, the research fills critical gaps in understanding the Black experience in parks and other public spaces in Canada and the United States. It centres joy, mental wellness, access to opportunity, and the everyday conditions that shape belonging in public life—while also examining how factors such as racism, safety concerns and other challenges influence these experiences.
Jay Pitter extends the research beyond data, grounding it in lived experience and challenging how public spaces are traditionally designed, measured, and governed.
This reflection sits with what the research reveals, not as a technical analysis, but as an invitation to think deeper about joy, belonging, and what it truly means to feel at ease in shared spaces.
Think about the last time you wore culturally inspired clothing without fear, played music loudly in the park, inviting a listener or two, or rested quietly on a shaded bench. Joy is movement without constraint, expression without judgement. In Pitter’s report, joy is described as quiet yet powerful.
That said, you’ll be surprised by how much the little details matter. A clean washroom, a well-maintained trash can, or accessible facilities can turn a simple outing into a space where people feel cared for and safe – a point recognized by 85% of respondents of the survey. Green touches like street trees, gardens, and flowers, along with good lighting and clear sight lines, were highlighted by 84% of respondents as features that invite comfort and presence. Comfortable seating, or even spaces that visibly celebrate Black contributions, were valued by 79% of respondents.
Together, these elements do more than improve infrastructure. They signal that people are respected, seen, acknowledged, and welcome. A bench bathed in sunlight, a well-lit walkway, or a plaque honouring a local Black artist are not merely amenities. They create moments of joy in spaces that might otherwise feel ordinary or unwelcoming.
Joy is also relational. Being around other Black people, or in spaces with diverse communities, was identified by 88% of respondents as a key factor in feeling safe and welcome. Warm greetings from staff or community members (74%) and visible recognition of Black history (70%) further reinforced a sense of belonging. Clear expectations for how people share and interact in these spaces, noted by 65%, also contributed to comfort and safety. Joy grows not just from physical surroundings, but from feeling acknowledged, reflected, and included in the community.
When Black people are able to exist, express themselves, and occupy these spaces freely, the park becomes more than a collection of physical amenities. It transforms into a living, breathing affirmation of presence, belonging, and humanity. Joy emerges in the freedom to inhabit a space fully, to move without constant vigilance, and to feel truly acknowledged and welcome.
While public spaces carry the patterns and routines of daily life, they vary depending on who is walking through them. Waiting for a bus at dawn, walking along a sidewalk after dark, or sitting on a park bench during a weekend morning can feel ordinary for some, but for others, these same activities require careful navigation. The research highlights the absence of comfort that a number of black people feel in these areas that were meant for tranquillity.
The reason for this is that these everyday spaces can carry subtle reminders of surveillance, judgment, and caution for black people. Even spaces designed for leisure, recreation, or daily routines can carry invisible pressures, requiring awareness, vigilance, and sometimes restraint. Streets, sidewalks, parks, and transit that others may take for granted can carry a quiet signal that someone is being observed, scrutinized, or treated differently.
The survey shows that nearly half of respondents, 49%, said buses and subways felt unsafe. A third reported unease on streets, sidewalks, and front stoops, while 27% described discomfort on urban hiking trails or other green spaces. Even outdoor arts venues and concert stadiums were flagged by 21%. These numbers reflect the quiet calculations that Black people make every day – deciding how to move, when to speak, wherever to linger, or if it might be safer to avoid a space altogether. Many respondents also shared that when they witness something harmful or unsafe in public, they often feel powerless to act. This feeling of helplessness adds another layer of emotional weight to navigating public spaces, highlighting how the experience of BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report extends beyond personal safety to affect social and emotional well-being. These numbers are not just statistics; they are stories of lived experience.
Yet even where discomfort exists, people continue to seek out spaces that bring life. Outdoor sport fields and urban hiking trails, for example, were still heavily used by Black people despite being ranked among the least safe public spaces. This highlights how important these areas are: they are chosen for play, movement, and connection, not just as thoroughfares. Public spaces support overall wellness – the survey found that spending time in green spaces, walking trails, and parks improved respondents’ sense of physical health, mental well-being, and community connection. These spaces allow people to bond with others, engage in physical activity, and connect with the rhythms of community life, even when they don’t always feel safe or welcoming.
Structural inequities add another layer to these challenges. Many neighbourhoods with predominantly racialized residents are systemically underfunded, leaving public spaces, parks, trails, and recreational areas poorly maintained, scarce, or lacking amenities. The very spaces that could support health, play, and community connection often receive the least investment, while better-resourced neighbourhoods benefit from ample green space and amenities. This inequity reinforces disparities in access, safety, and opportunity, meaning that Black people must navigate both the social and structural barriers of public life.
Representation and visibility also shape experiences of comfort and unease. Public spaces that fail to reflect Black histories, stories, or contributions can leave people feeling unseen or excluded. A mural, plaque, or place name, however insignificant it may seem to the eye, can signal recognition, belonging, inclusion, and consideration for those who inhabit and contribute to the space. Their absence can leave people feeling excluded and make public spaces feel indifferent.
Challenges in public spaces are therefore not only about physical safety but also about cultural, social and emotional navigation. It is the unspoken rules, the historical weight of surveillance, and the anticipation of judgment that shape how Black people move through these environments. Safety in public space is not simply the absence of harm – it is the freedom to occupy space authentically, to be oneself without restraint. The research captures these everyday realities, highlighting the delicate balance between caution and the desire for connection, movement, and joy. This underscores that creating comfort goes beyond design – it is also shaped by culture, history and how people perceive the space.
After moving through these challenges, public spaces reveal their potential to be more than just physical environments. When care and intention come together, they can become a place of safety, joy, and connection. The research pays attention to small moments – the way a space feels when you arrive, the ease or tension in your body, the quiet signals that tell you whether you can stay. For Black people, these moments are rarely unmarked. They are shaped by how care is shown, by who is acknowledged, and by whether presence feels welcomed or merely tolerated.
When public spaces are designed with attention to who uses them, they transform into places of recognition, connection, and belonging. According to the survey respondents, simple gestures make a meaningful difference: acts that demonstrate openness and the effort to make people feel safe, welcome and like they belong. In these moments, design and culture combine to create outdoor spaces where presence is acknowledged, comfort is tangible, and joy can flourish.
Sports fields, walking trails, plazas, and parks can be more than places to pass through. When care and intention shape them, they become spaces to linger, play, gather, and connect. The report highlights cases where outdoor trails, recreation areas, and plazas have been intentionally shaped with input from Black residents, showing that even modest investments in design programming and signage can make a big difference.
Community programs that invite participation, spaces that celebrate the diversity of cultures present in a place, and thoughtful design and practices that consider the different ways that people use the space all help Black people occupy public spaces fully and authentically.
Beyond design and programming, the research points to the importance of policy, governance, and leadership representation. Inclusive policies that prioritize safety, accessibility, and recognition of Black histories and contributions ensure that outdoor spaces are not only well-intentioned but structurally supportive.
Equitable investment in public spaces, particularly in neighbourhoods that have historically received less funding, is critical to making these benefits tangible. Governance that engages community members – particularly Black residents – in decision-making signals that public spaces are shaped with people who use them in mind. Representation in leadership matters as well: when Black voices are included in shaping policies, programs, and decisions about public spaces, it ensures that outdoor spaces reflect lived experiences and respond to real community needs. It also helps residents see themselves in the decisions that shape their public spaces, fostering trust and a sense that their presence, safety, and voices are valued.
Pitter emphasizes that a public space is never neutral. Thoughtful design, community co-creation, supportive policy, inclusive governance and leadership representation can work together with relational and cultural awareness to transform even ordinary outdoor parks, plazas, or streets from sites of caution into spaces of belonging.
Public space is or should be a mirror of how communities value one another. The inverse remains true in everyday life. Joy, ease, and belonging in public life are not accidental; they are fostered by places shaped by care, recognition, and responsibility.
Creating public spaces where people feel free to rest, express themselves, and move without fear requires more than policy or design alone. It calls for attention, empathy, and willingness to understand experiences different from one’s own. When communities open themselves to listening, dialogue, and shared responsibility, public spaces begin to reflect the people who use them – not just in form, but in the way they are lived and felt.
This reflection invites consideration of our design process itself: what would it look like to design public spaces with lived experience, cultural awareness, and community knowledge and care at the center – and how does this approach foster a sense of belonging, care, and shared ownership among the people who use and bring these spaces to life?
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Jay Pitter has just released her latest book, Black Public Joy. Building on the research in BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report, the book calls on all of us to become better stewards of each other’s public joy, while claiming our own.
Further reading on these themes:
City parks staff steward some of our most vital yet undervalued public assets: urban parks and green spaces. These areas are far more than patches of grass, they are dynamic community hubs, crucial environmental infrastructure, and essential public health resources.
The annual Canadian City Parks Report (CCPR) equips municipal park staff, community advocates, non-profits, and the public with data and stories that make the case for parks. Between 2019 and 2024, the annually released report illuminated trends, challenges, and opportunities in how we plan, manage, and experience our shared green spaces. Forty-six municipalities participated over these years, collectively representing 48% of Canada’s population.
This report synthesizes the major findings from the CCPR over these pivotal years. It serves as a curated and thematically organized index of data and stories from across the years, with comments on the trends we witnessed through that time.
1- Health Imperative: Parks as Essential Public Health Investment
One of the most consistent trends across the CCPR data is the growing use and recognition of city parks as essential public spaces, a shift dramatically accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. What were once considered amenities are now firmly recognized as critical spaces that support the mental and physical health and well-being of city residents.
2- The Funding Gap: Resources and Capacity Constraints
Despite documented increases in park use and public valuing of parks, municipalities report ongoing financial and staffing constraints that limit their capacity to maintain and enhance park systems.
3- Environmental Function: Climate Adaptation and Biodiversity
Urban parks serve important environmental functions, particularly in climate adaptation and supporting urban biodiversity, roles that have gained increased attention as climate impacts intensify. Parks are more and more understood as ‘upstream solutions’ for the environmental and economic impacts of extreme weather events.
4- Equity and Access: Addressing Systemic Barriers
Participating municipalities reported on their efforts to address equity, inclusion, and reconciliation in park planning and management, reflecting broader societal reckonings with systemic barriers to park access and enjoyment.
5- Evolving Practice: Community Engagement and Complex Operations
Park management now encompasses complex social dimensions beyond traditional maintenance, including community engagement strategies and navigation of challenging urban issues that intersect with public space.
How the park sector can meet today’s complex challenges through partnerships and collaboration.
How Addressing Conflict and Reframing Challenges as Opportunities Can Create More Equitable and Sustainable Parks.
How collaboration, mindfulness, and power-sharing in parks can help nurture and repair relationships between ourselves, our communities, and the wider natural world.
How parks can help create more equitable, resilient cities—not only as we recover from COVID-19, but as we address another looming crisis: climate change.
Trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities to inspire action, share learning, and track progress in city parks across the country.
Park People launches the first Canadian City Parks Report, highlighting park trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities.
The Canadian City Parks Report finds tight parks budgets, increasingly extreme weather events, and changing use of parks by residents are challenging cities across the country. But it also finds many cities are leading the way on solutions through an increasing focus on collaborative partnerships, proactive parks planning, and inclusive engagement practices.
In the report, we share:
Budgets tight while populations grow
Cities across Canada are experiencing budget constraints at the same time as growing populations and changing demographics create demand for more parks, amenities, and programming.Resilience must be scaled up. As instances of extreme weather increase, additional pressure is placed on park systems to absorb effects, like flooding. While cities are piloting green infrastructure in parks, there is a need to scale up and standardize these efforts. We found only 48% of cities have citywide green infrastructure strategies that includes parks.
The future is connected
Population growth and urban development is necessitating a focus on proactive parks planning and creative methods to expand and connect parks. Currently 70% cities have updated park system master plans.
Partnerships are powerful
Cities are developing non-profit partnerships and collaborations with resident groups to bring creative programming, alternative funding, and specialized knowledge to help meet new demands on city parks. We found 74% of cities currently have at least one non-profit park partnership.
Inclusion means going deeper
Cities are beginning the work of ensuring parks foster inclusion by exploring their own policies and practices, increasing accessibility, and developing programs for newcomers.
Happy reading!
Park People launches the second annual Canadian City Parks Report, highlighting the trends, challenges, and leading practices in Canadian cities to inspire action, share learning, and track progress in city parks across the country.
As we worked on stories about biodiversity, creative park development, community engagement, and homelessness, the world changed around us. But it quickly became apparent that these stories were not made irrelevant, but more urgent than ever.
This year, the report highlights new city park insights to shape the future of biodiversity, creative park development, community engagement, and approaches to homelessness in city parks.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 27 municipalities and nearly 3,500 residents of Canadian cities.
How urban biodiversity improves our well-being and why that matters even more during COVID-19.
How we can both deepen the conversation about biodiversity and broaden it to include more people
Why habitat corridors are important for urban biodiversity and what cities are doing to make sure parks large and small are connected
As populations and development boom in many cities, finding space for new parks is creating challenges—and spurring innovation
How creative community groups and city support are growing connections through food in parks.
This case study is part of the 2021 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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In Canada, philanthropy has historically been focused on public institutions like universities, hospitals, and the arts, but less so on parks. However, recent years have seen major new public space donations in Canada. With rising appreciation for parks during the COVID-19 pandemic, philanthropic interest in parks could grow, bringing both opportunities and challenges.
For Sheila Taylor, Executive Director of the Parks Foundation Calgary, an independent organization that primarily supports resident-led park projects, park philanthropy is connected to the city’s entrepreneurial spirit.
“Citizens have always gotten involved to create the city that they want,” she said. “People deeply care about parks and public spaces—we’ve seen that more and more through the pandemic. And when people care for something they want to contribute to that—whether it’s their time, talent, or financial contributions.”
This deep sense of connection is also why Toronto’s Parks Forestry and Recreation Division’s Doug Bennet believes people give to parks. “Philanthropy is an opportunity for people to give to causes that are important to them,” he said. “People love our parks and a lot of people feel compelled to give back.”
Park philanthropy is still quite nascent in Canada. While there have been some larger donations, such as $25 million for Toronto’s Meadoway, the majority of funding is for smaller-scale projects, such as playgrounds, and community programming. This can take the form of individual major gifts, foundations, corporate donations, and community-based fundraising.
Bennet said that while donations to parks can make real impacts—and he has seen interest in park philanthropy grow during his eight years at the city—it’s important to keep the scale of these investments in mind compared to the overall publicly funded city parks budget.
“It’s not an insignificant amount, but it’s also not an enormous amount,” Bennet said. In the 2020 Canadian City Parks Report, for example, Toronto reported $8 million from private sources out of a more than $100 million capital budget, showcasing the dominance of public funding.
Even with philanthropy-supported park projects, private dollars rarely cover the whole bill. In Calgary, the city’s Leverage Partners Program provides matching funding for philanthropic and community-led park projects through an $8 million budget over 2019 – 2022. Thunder Bay has a similar program where the city will share half the cost with a community for projects over $100,000, while Ottawa splits its cost-sharing program into both minor and major capital projects.
While Canada is nowhere near the scale of park philanthropy seen in the United States, there are lessons we can take from the American experience where drastically reduced parks department budgets have coincided with an explosion of privately funded and operated parks.
Park budgets in Canada, while strained, have not seen the drastic cuts that many American cities have faced, which have effectively shifted a portion of responsibility of care and funding for city parks from the public to the private sector.
This shift has resulted in some truly eye-watering donations, including $100 million for New York’s Central Park and $465 million for the creation and operation of Tulsa’s Gathering Place.
These increasingly large donations have caused some to raise concerns. Critics argue that big money donations distort park planning towards donor visions, crowd out public dollars, and result in the overfunding of showcase parks in affluent, often whiter, neighbourhoods at the expense of lower income, racialized communities.
In response, a new crop of American philanthropic initiatives have sprouted that centre equity, funding underserved communities, and building local capacity.
Take Reimagining the Civic Commons. This equity-focused philanthropic initiative works in 10 U.S. cities to provide public space funding to support equitable economic development, environmental sustainability, and social connections. The project has published numerous resources to assist others in engagement methods, design, and evaluating impact. The experience of New York’s High Line is another example. Following criticism that the heavily privately-funded linear park catered to mostly white visitors and resulted in gentrifying the neighbourhood around it, the non-profit behind the park launched the High Line Network. This new organization—of which the philanthropic-supported Bentway and Meadoway in Canada are members—publishes resources to help other parks follow a more inclusive and equitable development path.
Successful philanthropy responds to community needs and doesn’t arrive with a fully baked plan that provides little avenue for community members to shape outcomes. For cities, it means ensuring transparent and equitable processes for evaluating projects. While some donors may be frustrated at a slower pace for approvals, these processes are critical in providing public oversight.
In Calgary, Parks Capital Development Manager Nico Bernard said that the city has done a lot of work defining the relationship with the Parks Foundation Calgary, including expectations of how projects align.
The city uses a “stage gate” process that involves projects passing through several evaluations. This ensures projects fit within the city’s strategic vision and meet actual user needs. Projects are evaluated several times from proposal to construction. “There’s a rigor there to make sure projects get vetted,” Bernard said.
Part of vetting is “thinking about the future of the space too, not just what happens when it’s first built,” Sheila Taylor said. It’s important to have conversations up front about who will maintain a space long-term before any fundraising agreements are in place.
The Foundation has also helped the city with its own priority park projects, such as the recently completed Rotary-Mattamy Greenway. With its $50 million budget funded by both private and public dollars, the 138km greenway connects 55 communities around the city and was a part of the city’s strategic vision.
In Toronto, Bennet said any donation over $50,000 must go to city council for a vote, which dictates a level of due diligence. “You’re going to want to make sure that you’re putting forward a project that aligns with city interest,” he said.
Additionally, Bennet said that the city directs corporate giving to the city’s Neighbourhood Improvement Areas, which are defined by a set of equity-focused criteria, and other areas of the city that may not have access to the kind of philanthropic interest certain neighbourhoods receive.
Assessing philanthropic opportunities in parks through an equity lens is important as recent reviews of Canadian giving have uncovered some startling divides.
A 2020 report, Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy, compiled financial data from Canadian foundations to look at what kinds of organizations get funded. While the report doesn’t focus specifically on parks investment, the results point towards a systematic failure of Canadian philanthropy to fund Black-led organizations—one that should make the parks sector pause as well. For each $100 given by top Canadian foundations, 3 cents went to Black-led organizations, while community foundations gave 7 cents.
Rudayna Bahubeshi, a policy and programs specialist with nearly five years of experience working in the Canadian charitable sector, said it’s necessary to evaluate park funding through a racial-equity lens given the mental and physical health benefits we know come from access to high quality green spaces.
While it’s important to review which groups and neighbourhoods have gotten funding in the past, Bahubeshi said that it’s critical for organizations to think upfront in program design about what they can do if they’re not reaching Black and Indigenous-led groups.
For example, if a funder is hoping to reach a certain population, they should be clear about those commitments in the grant itself, she said. If people don’t see people like themselves supported in the past, then “it’s not obvious to them what’s a priority for the organization.”
Reforming how grants are reviewed is also key—a topic Bahubeshi explored in a 2021 article for The Philanthropist on anti-Blackness in the Canadian sector.
She stressed that care needs to be taken when assessing groups based on “capacity” because there’s a tendency to pass over groups who have less experience, ultimately resulting in the same groups being funded time and again. Rather than penalizing groups with less experience writing grants, it should be viewed as an opportunity to support these groups to grow, Bahubeshi said.
This advice supports what urbanist and anti-oppression consultant Lena Phillips wrote in a 2020 article on creating safe public spaces where she argued that current funding models privilege certain groups, containing access barriers such as requirements for charitable status or incorporation.
Some granting organizations have since taken steps to address these gaps. Both the Toronto Foundation and Vancouver Foundation have launched grants that specifically target Black and Indigenous-led organizations, offering phone consultations and reducing some of the barriers to access around charitable status.And, while it is a publicly-funded grant, the Federal Government’s 2021 Healthy Communities Initiative, delivered by Community Foundations Canada, contained equity guidance for applicants designed by Canadian placemaker Jay Pitter that is helpful for organizations, cities, and foundations when designing programs.
While much of the focus on park philanthropy is about money, another important aspect—even more so than the dollars, some experts said—is the community capacity and stewardship-building element.
Park People Managing Director Erika Nikolai said it’s the time and energy people donate through organizing community programming that is so important. These smaller activations help build community connections, but also the capacity of these groups to put on larger activities and advocate for improvements.
She also pointed out that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of community programming in supporting more socially connected and healthier communities. Rather than focusing philanthropic dollars solely on capital projects, she said supporting these types of activities can be beneficial, while also requiring less money.
Philanthropic projects can also help bring people together. While solely city-funded park projects include community engagement elements, the quality of that engagement can be different when community members are more directly involved in raising funds, conceiving of a project themselves, or both.
Sheila Taylor argued philanthropy is about building a constituency of support for parks and a sense of shared responsibility and purpose. “I really believe that philanthropy isn’t just giving money, it’s about a commitment of your time and talents to a cause,” she said.
The Foundation focuses on providing tools to communities rather than taking on projects themselves. This includes grants to support conceptual design work and help managing the financial aspects of projects.
“We built a music garden last year and that was a real labour of love that saw many, many Calgarians donate personally,” Taylor said of the Quinterra Legacy Garden, a park built in memory of five youth who were murdered in 2014. “It was probably hundreds and hundreds of donors to this park to create this music garden and it was such a transformational experience.”
Toronto’s Doug Bennet pointed to the experience of philanthropic-supported playground builds. Engaging residents in constructing playgrounds together is a way to build relationships, Bennet said. “Partnership work can be about building that trust and that’s critical for government.”
Another way to tap into similar stewardship and relationship-building impacts, however, may be through participatory budgeting exercises. This publicly-funded process allows community members to propose and vote on a slate of projects to fund in their own community. Canadian cities such as Kitchener, Montreal, Longueuil, and Toronto have piloted this process to varying degrees, with Montreal launching a $10 million budget focused on social and ecological resilience. These cities touted higher rates of participation than traditional park engagement. But they also raised concerns about the potential to foster a competitive atmosphere, which highlights how an equitable, transparent decision-making process is key—whether privately or publicly-funded.
Finally, philanthropic and community-driven projects can help bring fresh ideas and a creative mindset to public spaces. A community can sometimes see connections across different types of public spaces they use in their daily lives—such as parks, hydro corridors, and streets—that a city parks department may not.
As Calgary’s Manager of Partnerships Marisol Narvaez said, philanthropy “does cause us to rethink how we approach public spaces.”
Just look at Calgary’s recently constructed Flyover Park. This unique park was the result of a community vision to reimagine public space underneath a roadway overpass.
Community members worked with middle school students to envision what was possible, eventually bringing on landscape architecture students from the University of Calgary to help flesh out the design. It was ultimately funded by a collection of private donations and funding from both the provincial government and the city.
Now it has become a much beloved spot in the community, but, as Sheila Taylor put it, “it started with children who had an idea to create a park there.”
Note: This story discusses the racial uprisings and attacks of the past year, including the murder of George Floyd, Wet’sutwet’en land defense struggles and attacks on people of Asian descent.
This past year was marked by an unprecedented wave of racial justice movements that fostered hope and resilience in the middle of a global pandemic (no small task). Across Canada and the world, Black, Indigenous and people of colour demanded justice in all its forms.
Wet’sutwet’en hereditary chiefs asserted their rights to ancestral lands in opposition to an oil pipeline that highlighted how colonization continues to play out in the present day. Months later, the murder of George Floyd prompted a similar reckoning, one that focused on the livelihoods of Black people in America and beyond. These movements forced us to engage in uncomfortable dialogues about the ongoing effects of racism and colonization.
It is no surprise then that the response to these struggles have taken place in public space. Professional fields such as urban planning have traditionally promoted the importance of public space for its ability to stay “neutral” in the face of politics and oppression, presuming everyone to have the same access and interactions with their surroundings, regardless of their identities.
So, when Christian Cooper, an African-American man birding in Central Park, and Justine Abigail Yu, a Filipina-Canadian relaxing in a public park, were both subjected to racial attacks in public spaces, it forced this “neutrality” into question. Over the past year, the Chinese Canadian National Council collected instances of anti-Asian hate crimes online. Of the hundreds of records collected, over 50% occurred in public spaces.
Amid the solidarity actions that shut down streets, railways, and other public spaces in response, prominent thinkers such as Jay Pitter addressed this directly: “urban design either perpetuates urban inequity or it can actually resolve urban inequity,” she stated in a news segment.
These stories and numbers confirmed what many Black, Indigenous, and people of colour already knew about this “neutrality.” In short: it wasn’t real. Not for those whose racial identities shaped their experiences in public space as much as the amenities or maintenance. The right to exist in public space, freely, was just as important to make these experiences enjoyable. And the recognition that it should be those very same communities to make the necessary changes was finally taking hold.
Through research, advocacy, and municipal positions, people of colour have been asserting the right to exist as thought leaders in urban space circles. As grassroots movements forced a critical eye on all the ways we are complicit in racism, people working in parks and public space were forced to do the same.
Jacqueline L. Scott noted the huge uptake in her work as a result. Scott is a PhD Student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto whose research focuses on the experiences of Black people in the outdoors. Since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, she’s had an unprecedented number of webinar and media requests to talk about her work. She credited this interest to a better understanding that “the same racial hierarchies operate in the outdoor or environmental sectors as everywhere else.” In our April 2021 survey of Canadians, 77% of respondents said they thought people experienced parks differently based on aspects of their identity. Creating a “bridge” between environmental and social justice work is also critical in building relationships with communities that are predominantly racialized.
Scott sees those same hierarchies in the parks and recreation departments she has worked with. A “white wall” evident in staffing is a barrier to departments having the internal capacity to make meaningful changes. For example, in the Greater Montreal Area, the Diversity Institute recorded only 2.2% of public sector senior leadership positions were filled by racialized people in 2019.
It’s something Minaz Asani-Kanji, Manager of Outreach at Park People, has also noticed. “You don’t often see Black people or people of color in these positions. From the park supervisors to even the people that are hired for the summer.”
Some cities have hired specialized staff members to bring in new perspectives and lead equity-related initiatives. In Thunder Bay, the Indigenous Inclusion and Relations Manager and Indigenous Liaison have begun discussions on how to decolonize and Indigenize public space. Projects such as the Northwood Splash Pad have benefitted from such targeted engagement. And in Edmonton, the Indigenous Framework is a result of a co-creation process with Indigenous communities that includes commitments such as removing barriers to employment for Indigenous people.
While these are important steps, Asani-Kanji pointed out it may still not reach people who don’t realize working in parks or urban green spaces is even an option for them. Jacqueline Scott described these as “information barriers” or “privileged knowledge.” Not only are certain communities less likely to see themselves working in parks departments, they may not also have access to existing connections to staff and necessary information that would make them successful in obtaining those positions. Building those relationships is part of the critical work Asani-Kanji does at Park People. Doing intentional outreach to underserved communities through Park People’s Sparking Change program, she supports leaders in these communities to bring their park project to life by giving them the tools to navigate parks departments.
Crucial works that build capacity and relationships hint at the heart of these issues: power imbalances.
Lourdenie Jean, founder of “L’environnement, c’est intersectionnel” (“The Environment, It’s Intersectional”) aims to address this directly. In her work, Lourdenie applies an intersectional lens to better understand which communities are marginalized and how.
“We see these power dynamics everywhere, even in parks and green spaces. Racism, sexism and capitalism are always present.” This is true at every level, affecting neighbourhoods, community organizations, and municipalities alike. These are the uncomfortable conversations that may invoke fear but should be met with bravery instead. From them, we see bold ideas arise.
Urban planner Lena Philips offers some ideas for the community organizations ready to allocate resources more intentionally. She writes a necessary first step is to compensate leaders who step up for their labour. In seeking to support their communities, Philips writes that organizations should rethink the criteria they use in funding and program applications to recognize the wealth of expertise BIPOC communities have.
Communities have also been organizing to organically build power from outside of formal institutions. This has taken many forms, though often through empowering community members to lead.
In Halifax, the social enterprise Hope Blooms provides diverse programming to youth centered around agriculture that tends to the lack of food security among its residents and enables youth to become leaders in their community.
The Ethọ́s Lab directly engages Black youth in Vancouver through mentorship opportunities so they can design and create spaces that feel safe for them. In both of these initiatives, emerging leaders are soon able to name and advocate against the power structures that marginalize their communities. Ultimately, Lourdenie Jean reminds people that sharing power should be everyone’s goal as “centering those on the margins is beneficial for everyone”.
As the protests and barricades happen less frequently, it can be easy for people not directly affected by these issues to think the work is over. Of 32 parks departments surveyed for this year’s report, only five (17%) said addressing systemic inequities and discrimination in parks was a major challenge, while eight (27%) said it was a minor challenge.
This is where policymakers and organizations such as Park People have a responsibility to contribute. In June 2020, we released our statement committing to internal processes responding to racism in all of its forms. Since then, Park People has been undertaking work on this, documenting our progress here.
Through these more formal and informal coalitions of changemakers, the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour continue to remain louder than ever. Scott summarized this sentiment brilliantly: “And so for me, for these organizations: you have an opportunity now. Or are you hoping that it will go away? Because my sense is that we are not going to go away.”
Park People launches the third annual Canadian City Parks Report on Centring Equity and Resilience: How parks can help create more equitable, resilient cities—not only as we recover from COVID-19, but as we address another looming crisis: climate change.
Park use during the pandemic spiked across the country as people flooded into outdoor spaces to seek safe ways to connect with others, experience nature, and get some exercise. Parks became more important to Canadians in their daily lives, but cities also faced new challenges with rising demands and public health considerations.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from conversations with city staff with the data we gathered from our surveys of 32 municipalities and nearly 3,500 residents of Canadian cities.
Dive into the pdf to read about our key insights on trends and challenges in city parks:
How climate change is impacting how we plan, design, and maintain parks.
Whether converting streets to cool green oases, designing parks that celebrate water, or re-naturalizing the mouths of entire rivers, these eight Canadian projects point a way forward to more climate resilient cities.
How using an environmental justice lens can help tackle climate change resilience and inequity in parks.
Moving more towards nature-based solutions that view parks as key pieces of green infrastructure.
How Canadian cities can harness the power of park philanthropy—and address some of its challenges
How BIPOC park leaders are centring conversations of justice and power in parks
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.
As encampments grow across the country, parks departments face a unique challenge: parks have become a highly visible site of the housing crisis, but permanent housing solutions lie outside the scope of what parks can offer.
However, as convenors, land stewards, and providers of public amenities, parks departments can lean into their strengths to play a positive role in addressing houselessness—from adopting a human rights approach to service provision, to deepening relationships with encampment residents.
“Since the start of Covid-19, encampments have proliferated and increased in size,” said Dr. Alexandra Flynn, a University of British Columbia professor who has studied cities’ responses to encampments during the pandemic. “It’s put more pressure on Canadian cities to have to engage with encampments.”
In our survey of municipalities, 90% said houselessness is a challenge—one unlikely to end anytime soon.
Experts including frontline workers, people with lived experience of houselessness, and public health professionals all emphasize the urgency of planning for these realities.
“Hopefully it’ll be an ending problem, but for the foreseeable future I can still see there being people sleeping in parks. And it’s sad, but it’s a reality we have to face,” said Matthew Huxley, an advocate with lived experience.
Diana Chan McNally of Toronto Drop-In Network agreed, noting “Even when the intentions are good, there’s always the push to move unhoused people out of parks. You have to abandon that altogether. You just do, because I think the reality is that… there’s absolutely nowhere else for people to go.”
Public health experts echo this advice. Experts urge cities to plan for encampments to enhance the resiliency of parks systems, as unsheltered houselessness is projected to grow in light of climate change, including more people turning to green spaces for relief during heatwaves.
As we wrote about in the 2020 Canadian City Parks Report, displacement-oriented approaches—ranging from defensive design to encampment evictions—cause harm in a number of ways. Pushing unhoused people out of parks can force them to seek shelter in more isolated spaces where they are subject to increased safety risks, and make it more difficult for outreach workers to stay connected with people they’re supporting.
Further, in a context where Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately affected by housing insecurity—representing 28-34% of the unhoused population despite accounting for just over 4% of the Canadian population—displacing people from parks represents ongoing colonial violence and land dispossession, undermining reconciliation efforts.
While there is a widespread perception that encampments prevent others from enjoying parks, our survey of over 3,000 Canadian city residents suggest this is not the case for most.
62% of respondents who noticed encampments in local parks said they had not negatively impacted their park use, pointing to an openness among park goers to share space with unhoused neighbours.
Encampments are often managed through an operational lens, with a focus on park upkeep. While this work is important, it is insufficient to address the complex needs of people sheltering in parks.
Vancouver is deepening their approach through the creation of a new position within the Park Board called the Director of Urban Relationships. A first-of-its-kind role in Canada, the position will focus on building relationships with encampment residents and community partners.
Donnie Rosa, General Manager of the Vancouver Park Board, said that the new position sends a clear message that “this is a line of business that we have” as city park professionals. Having this dedicated staff with appropriate expertise will alleviate pressures on the parks operations team, who often are tasked with responding to houselessness issues.
The new position comes after the Park Board led a process in partnership with the City of Vancouver and BC Housing to move residents of a large encampment at Strathcona Park to indoor accommodations in spring of 2021. However, new encampments that have arisen since then highlight the ongoing need for this work.
In engaging with the Strathcona Park encampment, the Park Board’s approach was guided by four key values: harm reduction, trauma-informed response, reconciliation, and collaboration. In practice, these values looked like relying on social workers rather than police officers, having Park Board staff participate in a ceremonial fire protocol led by Indigenous Elders when entering the encampment, and being mindful of language—for instance, recognizing objects in the park as people’s belongings rather than garbage.
Staying true to these values was not easy within colonial systems, Rosa acknowledged. Meetings with encampment residents could run for several hours on some days, as people had important stories to share with parks staff.
“That’s not how we work. We go from meeting to meeting to meeting,” Rosa said, but these moments were critically important for them and their team.
“As colonizers, but also as the institutions we represented, and we needed to hear it, we needed to spend that time.”
Rosa emphasized that in order to do this work thoughtfully, it’s necessary to be flexible with structure and timelines. “We need to support each other in saying, it’s okay to take this approach, it’s okay to put somebody’s wellness ahead of a deadline.”
Many cities are beginning to adopt a human rights-based approach to houselessness, which focuses on ensuring unhoused people have access to essential amenities and services in parks. For example:
Parks staff, who are often trained in areas like recreation, natural resource management, or landscape architecture rather than social work or community development, may feel ill-equipped to respond to houselessness, Rosa noted.
Indeed, through our survey of 30 municipalities, 56% identified a lack of knowledge or training about houselessness among parks staff as a barrier. Some cities, like Gatineau and Toronto, mentioned recent initiatives to train parks staff in understanding houselessness.
However, Rosa encourages parks staff to recognize the strengths that they do bring: “we’re community developers, we’re community connectors, and we need to use that in this setting to bring people together, create space for that dialogue.”
Fostering a culture of humility, dialogue, and collective learning has been crucial for the Vancouver Park Board in upholding these guiding values. “I learned more … through this process than I could ever have learned going to any sort of course or training,” Rosa said. “Just living those values and making mistakes. And then holding those mistakes up and saying, how can we be better?”
One of the Park Board’s missteps, Rosa noted, is that after campers moved out of Strathcona Park, staff cleared the remaining tents and belongings, thinking they were abandoned. In retrospect, Rosa wishes they had allowed more time for the process to consult with campers and ensure they were only removing items campers were ready to part with.
Taking the opportunity to involve campers in the park remediation process through a peer employment model was another learning for next time. Former encampment residents wanted to be a part of healing the park after their departure, Rosa noted.
A recent York University report highlights that cities have two sets of powers to address encampments: formal legal powers, like bylaws, and soft powers, like city messaging that shapes how the public thinks about encampments.
Parks departments are well positioned to leverage these soft powers to reframe the narrative on encampments. This work is especially important given that 70% of cities reported managing public complaints as a challenge they encounter in responding to houselessness. By cultivating parks as places of public education, cities can not only increase awareness and comfort around sharing space, but also help curb public complaints and alleviate the burden they place on parks staff.
In Gatineau, for example, the city’s recent houselessness action plan identifies “Improving the way we share space and facilitating cohabitation in public space” as a key area of focus. Their efforts so far have included forming neighbourhood-based ‘cohabitation committees’ that work with local stakeholders including social service organizations, residents, and businesses to promote public education on issues related to houselessness.
“What we do on the cohabitation committee is destigmatization,” said Julie Sénéchal, Community Development Coordinator in the Recreation, Sports and Community Development Department at the City of Gatineau. This focus came from unhoused people who participate in the committee, who identified “the issue of prejudice and how they experience it” as an important priority, Sénéchal said.
The first committee was formed in the Île de Hull neighbourhood where a green space co-managed by the National Capital Commission, ministère des Transports du Québec, and City of Gatineau is used as a campsite for unhoused residents. A high school adjacent to the green space was one of the key partners on the committee. The students surveyed their peers to understand their questions and concerns about houselessness. Based on the students’ input, the cohabitation committee is creating informative video clips to educate neighbours to increase their comfort in sharing space.
Public space programs are also helping to support inclusion. The city hosts clean-up activities in partnership with community organizations and residents of the campsite. They are also planning an urban agriculture work program that would hire unhoused people as gardeners in partnership with a local service organization.
The plan is still in its early stages of implementation, and Sénéchal noted that meaningful, ongoing engagement with unhoused communities will be crucial to its success.
“You have to meet people where they are, that’s my working method,” Sénéchal said. She is optimistic that the plan will help to lay the groundwork for stronger collaboration with unhoused communities, noting that it “allows [the city] to put in place tools that will promote real participation and to include people experiencing houselessness in the planning process.”
“[Unhoused people] know the city from a different perspective than us,” Sénéchal said. “[They] have things to say and we want to be sure to hear them.”
In Montreal, the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough is moving in a similar direction with its new plan for social cohabitation and sharing of public space*. The plan includes an accompanying information tool that outlines realities of houselessness and encourages residents to form friendly relationships with their unhoused neighbours by saying hello or sharing a coffee.
Community-led programs can also help reshape public perspective. In Montreal’s Martin-Luther-King Park, community organization Exeko hosted a photo expo* featuring portraits of unhoused residents to help spark conversation among park goers.
Park programs can be especially helpful in addressing controversial issues related to encampments. Initiatives like a stigma reduction event hosted in honour of International Overdose Awareness Day in Thunder Bay’s Kaministiquia River Heritage Park can help community members develop a more compassionate outlook on the issue of discarded needles in parks, for example.
Programs like these offer inspiration in moving toward a future where parks, and parks departments, are seen as part of the solution to houselessness. For Donnie Rosa, the challenge moving forward is to think about “How do we make this [park] something that is enjoyable and not just a respite? How can we make your stay, your time, your life here one that works for you the best way possible?” of people who care very deeply and passionately about these issues.” When communities and cities commit to working together better, it’s a powerful pairing for parks.