We are looking for a Finance Specialist and a Manager of Administration in the Greater Toronto Area.
Meet the Ontario Community Changemakers and learn more about their inspiring initiatives transforming parks across the province.
Creative ways to connect people to nature, community, and care for ravines in Toronto.
A guidance and resources to measure the impact of your park work on community health and wellbeing, integrating a social equity lens.
Learn more about green social prescribing, an evolving practice that encourages individuals to reestablish connections with nature and one another to enhance their mental, physical, and social wellbeing.
Connect, Support, Influence and Inspire your community parks - Get our newsletter and email updates!
By donating to Park People, you’ll support vibrant parks for everyone.
In the lead-up to the Park People Conference, taking place virtually September 21-23, 2022, Park People met with Lewis Cardinal, a communicator and educator, who has dedicated his life’s work to creating and maintaining connections and relationships that cross cultural divides. Lewis is Woodland Cree from the Sucker Creek Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, Canada. His consulting company, Cardinal Strategic Communications, specializes in Indigenous education, communications, and project development. Currently, Lewis is Project Manager for “kihciy askiy–Sacred Land” in the City of Edmonton, Canada’s first urban Indigenous ceremony grounds.
Lewis Cardinal: Listen, building relationships takes time. Nobody’s done a project like this before so there’s no blueprint. The City of Edmonton didn’t have policies and processes to do something like this. We had to make these things up as we went along and, naturally, that slowed things down.
I mean, the city’s not in the habit of giving land back to Indigenous people.
It took a lot of community consultation to make kihciy askiy happen– with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. The elders made it very clear, that we have to move forward in a good way, and take the time to build the relationships that need to be built.
We said, let’s just keep moving forward with this and try to be as patient as we can because the process is the product. If we want this to be a sacred site that is built on love, trust, respect, and understanding, that’s what we need to embody in the process.
LC: The city and community had to approach learning from each other with an open heart and an open mind. We start with ceremony, respecting our relationship with the city, and respecting the individuals we are working with because, at the end of the day, we’re all just human beings trying to do something to benefit people in our community.
We had to bring the City into how we do things and we had the opportunity to work with the City to learn how they do things too.
To do that you each need to have a clear vision of what you’re trying to build together. From there you share that vision with colleagues, friends, and partners. Then they each start to see themselves in that vision, that story. It is not just our vision, as Indigenous people. It’s a shared vision.
Working in a good way is also about being respectful, even during disagreements. Our Indigenous tradition teaches us that it’s all about relationships, and these relationships are critical to moving anything forward.
I mean, we’re all human beings, right? We lose patience. But when things start going sideways and you’re starting to feel the tension, you have to slip back into the ceremony to bring yourself back into a sense of balance so you can continue to move forward in a good way.
One thing I’ve learned from this process is that you really can’t drag anybody along to where you want to take them. They have to come willingly. And that’s why the vision needs to be shared so everyone involved sees themselves in that story.
LC: Yes, that’s right. We could have pulled all kinds of political cards and tried to force the City to do what we wanted to. But, kihciy askiy would have taken longer than 16 years or it may not have happened at all.
We continuously remind each other that we are in a good relationship, and it becomes almost like a mantra to continually remind us why we’re doing this.
Picture a young man standing with his mom and his little sister at a bus stop in Edmonton with a towel underneath his arm. Somebody asks that young man: “Where are you going swimming?” He responds: “I’m not going swimming. I’m going to a sweat lodge. I want my mom and my sister to see it too.”
When you share that kind of vision, it shakes loose some of the rigidity we may have built up. It cuts through the titles that we have as individuals, and it puts it into the heart of the human being that you’re working with. And I think that’s what works because it’s consistent, it’s like ceremony.
Consensus is a ceremony of communication. Consensus is the sacred process of honouring each person’s vision so that they can connect themselves to an idea in their own way.
When communication fails it creates shadows. Those shadows create doubt and confusion. Then, the process becomes a playground for individuals who might want to take advantage of that communication breakdown. So being consistent in speaking together and building a shared vision is very important.
LC: We always begin with ceremony, prayer, and mindfulness, because they take us back to the essence of what it is that we’re trying to do. Creating consensus can be unnerving at the beginning because people aren’t used to working with it, and they may stumble and fall. But once you get used to it, things move really quickly. Suddenly, everybody’s agreeing to the same vision.
We always make sure to celebrate and honor our partners. Whenever I get a chance to talk to the media or groups of people, I always say what a wonderful relationship we have with the city and how honoured we are to work with the City of Edmonton. This is an act of reconciliation.
By honouring your partners you’re reinforcing the relationship and strengthening it.
Every relationship has its dark side. That is our flaw as human beings –we always tend to muddle things up more than they need to be. We can become controlling and destructive. But the opposite is also true. We can become very creative and very loving and very open and we can make positive changes for a lot of people. So working within this context of consensus and relationship building is foundational.
LC: Over the last 18 years we’ve had the Edmonton Urban Aboriginal Accord, the Edmonton Declaration and the new Indigenous framework. This has helped the city rethink how it works with other communities, beyond Indigenous communities. It’s created a freshness of possibility.
In Cree tradition, we have the word tatawâw, which means you are welcome. It expresses openness to embracing all the people and communities who make Edmonton their home. It says “there is room for you here.”
Here are some resources to help you learn more about Lewis Cardinal and his work:
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
In the lead-up to The Park People Conference, happening September 21-23, 2022, Park People met with Betty Lepps, Vancouver Park Board’s new Director of Urban Relationships. In her previous role at BC Housing, Betty co-led the housing of over 280 folks from Strathcona Park. She was also instrumental in developing the first Indigenous restorative justice court in Calgary. With a background in Childcare Leadership and Social Work, Betty’s work on systemic change with vulnerable populations is highly lauded at municipal, ministerial, community and national levels.
Betty Lepps: Everyone who lives in a city is a constituent. As a constituent, each person is entitled to basic rights, well-being and dignity. The city provides indoor and outdoor amenities that exist to support the well-being of its constituents. That extends to everyone – including those who are sheltering in parks.
It’s about thinking in terms of equity vs. equality. We can’t give each individual park user what they need. But in terms of equality, everyone deserves to be able to experience the well-being benefits that parks exist to offer. Parks are a human service that exists to support people’s well-being. We need to make sure that human service is universally available to everyone who lives in a city.
That’s equality and that has to hold true whether you’re in the park walking, pushing a stroller, using a wheelchair, biking, or whether the park is where you shelter.
But, I want to emphasize that supporting the well-being of constituents in a city is not just the responsibility of the people who run the city. It’s the responsibility of every person who lives in that city. People sheltering in parks are part of the life of the city and their rights and well-being are the responsibility of every person who lives there.
BL: Four things: communication, understanding, respect and collaboration.
Listen, everyone has a story. Building relationships is about hearing each others’ stories so we can break down stigma, shame and false narratives.
In my role as Director of Urban Relationships, the first of its kind in the country, I see myself as a conduit bringing different people together to really hear each other’s stories.
One thing I’ve learned working in community development for 35 years, it takes a long time to create systemic change. But the conversation is what keeps it going.
Without communication and understanding, people create their own narratives about each other. They become deeply disconnected and start to believe false narratives. They may think: “these people are not like me”, “these people are unsafe,” or “this is what these people need.” We have a lot of colonial practices that are barriers to listening and understanding each other.
Unhoused people living in parks is not a one-system issue. Vancouver Park Board has to be involved, fire has to be involved, health has to be involved, the city, the province, housing, and people that live in the neighbourhood. So many parties have to be involved. But, it’s an incredible opportunity to create systemic change. If we build toward collaboration, communication, understanding, and respect, we can keep the conversation going.
BL: Most importantly, we need to change our culture. For us to have parks and recreation services that serve the people they’re intended to serve we need to effectively listen and hear each other’s stories.
That’s the only way we can change the story that’s in our heads and change the culture.
Right now, we think this issue is everyone else’s responsibility or jurisdiction to “deal with.” Yes, we need to have bylaws and set boundaries, but how can we do that without a heavy hand? Without ticketing? How about conversation? Let’s start with conversation.
There’s no simple way to “deal with it.” The only way to “deal with it” is systemic change and that takes deep listening. When that happens, diverse people will be able to enjoy parks that serve their spiritual, physical and emotional needs. Parks will be places where everyone feels safe and welcome, and where we enjoy making memories, in the way they need to.
That’s equity and humanitarian responsibility, and that’s where we need to go when it comes to people sheltering in our parks.
Sparking Change explores the social impacts of communities in underserved neighbourhoods becoming involved in animating and improving their local park, and identifies common strategies taken by both community members and partner organizations to support this work. The report tells the story of communities that have taken action through spearheading improvements, engaging diverse community members, and organizing events and activities that draw people into the park—a process we refer to as park engagement.
Through interviews with community volunteers, partner organizations, and city staff in seven different North American cities, including Toronto, we highlight five major social impacts of park engagement.
“Parks are not simply green places of respite with grass and trees–they are critical pieces of the social infrastructure of our cities. And we believe they have a role to play in creating more inclusive, equitable places that are shaped by and for the people living there.”
Social impacts of communities becoming involved in animating and improving their local park
Green City looks at how parks, once thought of as places of relief from the urban condition, should be viewed as integral with city form, helping to make our cities more sustainable and resilient in the face of climate change. The paper is a refreshing and accessible discussion of how parks have shaped the relationship between nature and society, and calls for a new approach that links good environmentalism and good urbanism through park systems.
“New tools, techniques, and ways of understanding nature in the city are required. Parks, once thought of as places of relief from the urban condition, should be viewed as integral with city form, and as having important roles to play in sustaining life, in addition to providing places for recreation, entertainment, and aesthetic enjoyment. Parks and parks systems are part of our very survival, providing countless environmental functions and giving cities greater resilience to withstand the unpredictability and extremes of climate that are now more common and catastrophic.”
Beverly A. Sandalak, Landscape architect & Planner
A new approach linking good environmentalism and good urbanism through park systems.
From growing food to restoring natural habitat to bringing arts programming to parks, the Weston Family Parks Challenge kick-started a more creative, collaborative approach to green space in Toronto. This report highlights what we can learn from the Weston Family Parks Challenge, and how we can apply those lessons to other municipalities to help guide the future of park philanthropy in Canada.
“While there is a long history in Canada of private donations of land to create city parks, there has been a limited culture of philanthropy for park improvements and programming”.
Applying lessons from the Weston Family Parks Challenge to guide the future of park philanthropy in Canada
It’s become a familiar urban experience. Heavy rain, flash floods, rising water levels, and, ultimately, flooded parks, streets, and homes. With climate change leading to extreme weather—both hot, dry periods and heavy rain—it’s imperative that we design our urban environments to mitigate these impacts.
In this report, Park People explores the challenges and opportunities facing city parks in Canada by offering inspiration, best practices, and key strategies for moving forward.
“Green infrastructure at its core is about creating spaces that help manage stormwater, but these projects also bring a host of other benefits—from habitat creation to providing new spaces for people to gather. Much like parks, the benefits of green infrastructure are deep and layered, touching on the environment, economic, and social.”
Challenges and opportunities facing city parks in Canada
Financing City Parks in Canada surveys the landscape of park funding in Canada, exploring options to ensure reliable and sustainable funding for Canada’s parks. The paper asks questions such as: How much should be spent on parks? How should they be financed? Who should pay? It outlines the major strengths and weaknesses of approaches and breaks down which are appropriate, realistic, and sustainable.
There is no singular or unequivocal business model that addresses the best way to finance capital and operating costs of city parks. There are, however, a number of possibilities; some are used in different cities in Canada and elsewhere, and some may be used in the future.
Explore the landscape of park funding in Canada
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.
______
Climate change is all encompassing. It impacts how we grow food, how we get around, and how we build our homes. Our city parks are no different.
As we outline elsewhere in this report, there are many ways parks help mitigate and adapt to climate change. For example, park vegetation can help pull carbon from the air, reduce temperatures during heat waves, and soak up excess rainfall to avoid floods during extreme weather events.
But climate change also places stress on our green spaces, increasing the chances they will be damaged during a storm and altering the growing climate of plants. Indeed, 84% of cities said that protecting against climate change and extreme weather damage was a challenge.
Ensuring parks can provide important climate resilience benefits means making changes to how we plan, design, and maintain green spaces so they adapt and thrive in a changing climate. These changes ripple across everything from how we plan park systems to the aesthetics of park landscapes to the equipment used to cut the grass.
More and more Canadian cities are planning for climate change adaptation—whether through new climate action plans, climate actions embedded in park system master plans, or both. This year, 72% of cities reported having a climate action plan in place, an increase from last year due both to the inclusion of new cities in the 2021 report and a slew of new climate action plans approved in 2020.
Some of this planning work is in its early stages. For example, while almost all Canadian park system master plans reference climate change, many of the recommendations are for further work to create guidelines that can better integrate climate resiliency standards into park planning.
This doesn’t mean that cities aren’t building climate-resilient parks, but that they may be one-off projects—like a rain garden installed in a park to help reduce flood risk—rather than formalized changes to how all parks are designed and redeveloped.
That is beginning to change, however.
Consider Mississauga’s new Climate Change Action Plan, which calls for integrating climate change considerations into park development standards. The city’s Climate Change Supervisor Leya Barry said that the city was already doing this work on a park-by-park basis, but “some things that were championed by an individual [city staff person] may lose momentum and attention if that individual leaves or takes a different role.” Standardizing climate resilient planning in parks will help institutionalize practices and ensure continuity.
Holistic plans that formalize practices across an entire city can also help cement a new way of doing things and build partnerships between different city departments like parks, transportation, and water.
Vancouver’s Rain City Strategy, for example, coordinates green infrastructure improvements—like rain gardens, bioswales, and retention areas—across streets, parks, and developments to meet a goal of capturing 90% of rainfall. In reporting on why the strategy was so important, park staff noted that “without comprehensive policy, green infrastructure projects have mainly been staff-led pilot initiatives…rather than an integral part of city capital programs.”
Similarly, Kitchener approved a citywide policy that directs all private and public development to mitigate stormwater runoff by capturing the first 12.5 mm of rainfall where it falls, rather than allowing it to run into underground pipes. This attention to managing rainfall is shown in innovative practices at the recently completed RBJ Schlegel Park, which manages all rainfall onsite and reuses water from the splash pad for park irrigation.
Lastly, in Brampton, the recently approved Eco Park Strategy helps guide the development of a resilient, connected park system, grounded in values such as naturalization, ecological integrity, and recognizing social and cultural value. The city is developing an EcoPark toolkit that will provide guidelines for both city park development and community members, such as adopt-a-park groups, on how to implement the strategy’s goals in specific projects. The city is already putting the plan into practice, using an Eco Park lens to re-naturalize the concrete banks of the Jefferson, Jordan & Jayfield channel.
Depending on where you are and the time of year, climate change in Canada is bringing warmer, wetter, and drier conditions. This impacts the types of plants and trees best suited for parks, necessitating a shift to more climate-resilient species and opening the door in some cities for species that wouldn’t have grown there otherwise.
Edmonton’s climate adaptation plan, for example, notes that by 2050, the city’s growing season length could increase by 22 days, which will shift what plantings grow best. While Regina park staff indicated that a changing climate has created an opportunity to plant new tree species.
These shifts will alter the landscape of our parks in different ways. For example, displays of native wildflowers instead of annuals in park gardens. But it also means changes to one of the most ubiquitous landscapes found in parks: the lawn.
Manicured lawns aren’t going away—they’re key for sports and lounging around—but cities are moving towards naturalizing some of these spaces, shifting them to so-called “low mow meadows.”
Moving away from a grass monoculture can boost biodiversity and increase the climate benefits of parks. For example, studies have shown a diversity of plants helps keep spaces cooler than a grass lawn. And as Edmonton city staff noted, “increased naturalization results in less need for mowing,” which reduces emissions from trimming equipment. To increase this practice, Edmonton city staff said they have adjusted the city’s landscape standards to focus on naturalization opportunities “in unprogrammed, low use spaces or spaces where there is environmental benefit to naturalize” Similarly, in Brampton, the city’s 2019 Landscape Development Guidelines promote climate-resilient plantings and include planting density requirements for parks.
Shifting to more naturalized landscapes requires engaging the public, addressing expectations about aesthetics and concerns about wildlife.
“We’ve created an expectation that there will be tight mown grass and formalized flower gardens,” Vancouver Park Board Senior Planner Chad Townsend said. The Park Board, however, is transitioning more spaces to low-mow meadows. A recently approved pilot will see 37 hectares in 18 city parks converted to more naturally managed landscapes.
“It is difficult to manage change for people who are used to a different aesthetic,” Townsend said. “For some, it’s unkempt and messy in comparison, but that’s what naturally managed areas look like.”
Simple signs may help. Townsend said the Park Board will create pathways through some of the meadows, placing signage that welcomes people to use them. Similarly, in Toronto’s Meadoway—a project that is naturalizing a 16km hydro corridor—the Toronto Region Conservation Authority installed signs to educate people about the new meadows and why they may look different than other park landscapes.
Managing expectations also extends to parks that are continually damaged in increasingly strong storms, such as Vancouver’s beloved Stanley Park seawall.
“The first reaction is to just fix what has been quote unquote broken,” Townsend said, adding that “the public expectation is pretty much [that] you’ll find a way to keep those cedars growing, or find a way to keep the ponds full and keep repairing that wall.”
It’s a challenge to think long-term as opposed to “putting a patch on what has been damaged,” he said. He argued, however, that it’s important to strike a balance between forward-thinking actions to create more climate-resilient parks and appreciating public expectations for well-loved park spaces.
The question becomes whether the city fortifies itself against sea level rise or accepts that some parks will flood at times and design them to accommodate, Townsend said.One way Vancouver is tackling this is by inviting the public into a conversation about the impacts of sea level rise through a program called Sea2City that brings attention to how waterfront parks may be impacted. The program includes elements like installing signs calling attention to future high water marks in waterfront parks, and a “Conversations in Canoes” video series with a range of experts.
Despite the major challenge climate change poses, it’s not all about city-led actions. As we pointed out in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report, local actions in small spaces can have far-reaching impacts.
As Nature Canada’s Policy Manager Michael Polanyi argued, neighbourhood-based projects can be “proof of concept,” using success stories to pave the way for larger projects and policy change across the city.
“Initiatives to plant trees in parks or start community gardens or distribute rain barrels in a neighbourhood or try and restore a small wetland—I think those are important in terms of engaging people, in terms of raising awareness, in terms of showing support and energy behind local initiatives which get politicians excited and on board,” he said.
Neighbourhood-level projects also highlight changes needed to reduce barriers that exist in a city in promoting more resilient practices. “When residents try to do something at the local level, you [notice] barriers—whether it’s lack of funding or a ridiculous permit system you have to go through or a by-law that’s in the way.” Polanyi said.
Polanyi also pointed out that “cities are often the modelers of wider change.” For example, local advocates were critical to the enactment of pesticide bans, which started at the municipal level and then moved up to provincial laws.
“Often working at the neighbourhood level, getting something happening at the city level, is the way that change happens,” he said.
As Canadians spent more time outdoors during the pandemic, the benefits of parks were clear. They helped us de-stress, stay active, and connect safely with others. But parks are critical for tackling another looming urban crisis: climate change.
Parks provide a number of climate change mitigation and adaptation benefits, such as cleaning the air, protecting against flooding, and regulating local temperatures. As climate change brings heavier storms and hotter weather, parks become even more important.
However, urban green spaces–and thus their benefits–are not equally distributed.
If you live in a neighbourhood with plentiful parks and trees then you also likely live in a neighbourhood that is whiter and higher income. Multiple studies show that lower income, racialized communities have fewer green spaces, making these communities more vulnerable to climate change impacts.
Sherry Yano, formerly of the David Suzuki Foundation, argued that these communities are also often located closer to more polluted and disaster prone areas. This reality, described as environmental racism, is documented in recent Canadian research:
In response to inequities like these, Canadian advocates have called for centring justice in climate action. These calls follow a long history of the environmental justice movement, which works to redress environmental harms and ensure both negative and positive environmental impacts are equitably distributed.
This movement also includes city parks. We spoke with experts about what taking a justice approach looks like at the scale of the urban park, allowing more people to share in the climate resilience benefits of green space.
While a new federal bill seeks to address environmental racism in Canada, a 2020 study found that “environmental justice indicators are not yet routinely incorporated into policy decision-making at the local, provincial or federal level.” The gap goes deeper: “Even in cases where consideration of equity dimensions is encouraged in planning, guidance on how to measure and monitor those dimensions can be limited.”
This finding reflects our review of Canadian climate change and park system plans. While plans mention equity as a general principle, few carry this forward into policy and even fewer specifically acknowledge racial inequities.
Some cities, however, have begun to step forward:
By taking an equity-based approach to park development, and particularly focusing on communities that may be more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, these plans, if implemented, work towards cities that allow more residents to share in the climate resilience benefits of green spaces.
When we talk about green space inequities, we often point out which neighbourhoods have fewer parks. But, as Setha Low has written, distributional justice is only one aspect of environmental justice in parks. We must also examine whether decision-making processes are fair (procedural justice) and whether people are treated respectfully (interactional justice).
This means asking questions such as:
These questions of process, power, and respect can have a profound impact on a city’s ability to address inequities.
As Vancouver Park Board Senior Planner Chad Townsend said, “it helps to have a master plan policy that recognizes inequity,” like Vancouver’s Initiative Zones, but it “doesn’t immediately change where the loud voices come from.”
In our survey, just 34% of Canadians said they felt they had the ability to influence what went on in their parks.
Reforming how and who we engage is no small matter. The distributional inequities we see today are the result of decision-making power imbalances, Sherry Yano argued, privileging some voices over others. “If you keep reinforcing the same systems, you are reinforcing the way we got to these problems.”
We can start by providing opportunities for a range of people in affected communities to be meaningfully involved in influencing outcomes, rather than positioning engagement solely as a way to seek feedback.
Canadian placemaker Jay Pitter has said that “if the community engagement process hasn’t served the larger purpose of building bridges across difference and fostering new relationships, then it hasn’t served the community.” She suggested smaller gatherings and walking workshops as ways to create opportunities for dialogue.
Larissa Crawford, Founder of Future Ancestors Services, a youth-led Indigenous and Black-owned social enterprise advancing climate justice, advocated for engaging with diverse youth and giving them decision-making power. “These young minds are required to think of sustainability in a way that older generations and even my generation didn’t have to,” she said.
Diversity is not just about race and identity, Crawford added, but about bringing in diverse experiences. This means not prioritizing people based on academic or professional credentials, but widening our scope to value the contributions of people with different lived experiences, including Indigenous land stewardship practices.
“When we only value one way of knowing, and one kind of experience in these environmental spaces, then we’re having conversations with ourselves,” she said.
Parks provide social infrastructure and can strengthen support networks during times of need. We’ve seen this play out with COVID-19, where 71% of Canadians in our survey said parks were critical to their sense of social connection during the pandemic.
Experts say these social connections are also critical when it comes to climate change.
Florence Lecour-Cyr is the Agente de programmation, planification et recherche at CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal. She argued that the connections people create in parks can act as social support networks, especially for people who are more vulnerable, such as older adults or people with less mobility.
As one study pointed out, the social connections afforded by parks “may be a lifeline [for isolated individuals] in extreme temperatures.” Having a neighbour check in during a heat wave or having a place to stay when the power goes out can, in some circumstances, be the difference between life and death.
It’s important, especially in relation to climate change, for cities to measure social connections, argued Anne Pelletier, Service environnement urbain et saines habitudes de vie, Direction régionale de santé publique du CIUSSS du Centre-Sud de Montréal. But she acknowledged that it’s “not a phenomenon that is easy to capture.” Some initiatives have sprung up, such as the U.S.-based Reimagining the Civic Commons project’s measurement framework, and the Toronto Foundation’s Social Capital Study.
Complex challenges like climate change defy the compartmentalized ways in which we often approach problems and in which cities divide up work.
“There’s such a focus on siloes of learning. The mechanics, or the policy, or the science” Sheila Boudreau a landscape architect and Founder of SpruceLab said. “I think cities need to break out of siloed departments,” creating cross-disciplinary working groups.
If we don’t think holistically and broadly about climate change, Boudreau added, then “we’re going to fail in our efforts.” A narrow environmental focus in a project may foster short-term gains, but it may not work long-term or address the social needs of a community.
For example, Boudreau spoke about how confronting discrimination is critical in promoting access to the climate change benefits of parks. If someone feels unwelcome accessing a newly created green space–for example because of a fear of discrimination based on race or because they are an unhoused park user–then they aren’t able to reap its benefits of air quality and cooler temperatures.
The potential for green gentrification is another example of why thinking across disciplines is necessary when pursuing green space projects. Green gentrification occurs when investments in green spaces in lower income neighborhoods result in property value increases, which can displace the residents the investments were meant to benefit.
While new green spaces bring climate-resilience and social benefits, they can also spark concern. For example, a green laneway built in Montreal’s Saint-Henri neighborhood to help mitigate heat caused concern among activists that rising rents could push out local residents. Similar conversations have played out in Vancouver related to a proposed downtown waterfront park nearby the lower-income Downtown Eastside.
Florence Lecour-Cyr said that for green space investments to curb the gentrification process they must coincide with social and housing policies that target affordability. Anne Pelletier argued that involving local communities in the planning and animation of parks will make it possible to create spaces that foster a sense of belonging–a point also made by the National Recreation and Parks Association in their briefing on equitable park development.
Indigenous ways of knowing and approaches to land stewardship have important lessons for thinking about climate change, but are not often reflected in city policies.
Participants at Toronto’s Indigenous Climate Action Summit argued for a more holistic approach that recognizes spiritual and justice concerns. “If the city does not account for and address colonization in its policies it will keep repeating the same problematic behaviours,” the session notes stated. For example, rather than simply quantitative indicators (e.g., counting species), participants suggested measuring success against wider questions, such as whether we are being good ancestors.
“When we aren’t acknowledging how significant a role Indigenous peoples need to play in [conversations about climate change], we cannot produce the most effective and the most reliable outcomes,” said Larissa Crawford.
She pointed towards successful co-management regimes at the national park level between Parks Canada and Indigenous Nations. “Those are some of the most innovative park management regimes I’ve encountered and that are being recognized, especially for their ability to assess environmental health in a completely new way.”
The importance of Indigenous land stewardship practices was highlighted by a 2019 University of British Columbia study which found biodiversity was highest on Indigenous-managed lands—finding a 40% greater number of unique species.
Crawford argued this process must start by acknowledging the harm that’s been caused, and the history of Indigenous land dispossession behind the establishment of parks–a history that is often hidden from view.
Only once we’ve taken the time to acknowledge that harm, can “we seek to establish concrete and meaningful relationships with those original caregivers,” Crawford said.
“Not only are we going to be working towards the spirit of restorative relationships,” she said. “But we’re also going to tap into the plethora of expertise that Indigenous peoples have, especially with regards to the land and its sustainability, and the ecosystem and our roles as humans in that ecosystem.”
After three years without air conditioning, my partner and I finally bought one. Before that, we would sit in front of fans, or, even better, plunge into the Don Valley ravine to beat the summer heat. It was there, leafy trees above me, that I would find relief.
I thought about this as I watched British Columbians deal with an extreme heat event. I know from growing up in Vancouver that few people have air conditioners, which made me think about the role parks play in heat crises–and who has access to life-saving trees and green space.
It’s no secret that our cities are getting hotter due to climate change and that Canada is warming faster than the rest of the world. By building concrete cities, we’ve created “urban heat islands” that absorb the sun’s heat, keeping temperatures hot into the night.
This extreme heat is uncomfortable, but also deadly. More than 700 people died during BC’s recent heat wave. In 2018, 66 people died in a Montreal heat wave. People who lived in neighbourhoods deemed urban heat islands were twice as likely to die.
This will only get worse. As we outlined in our recent Canadian City Parks Report, Health Canada notes that by the middle of the 21st century the number of days with temperatures over 30 degrees will double in Canadian cities. A 2018 study found that, depending on mitigation measures, Canada could see a rise of 45% to 455% in heat-related deaths between 2031 and 2080. If that’s not a national health crisis, I’m not sure what is.
Green spaces are fundamental to reducing the urban heat island effect. We all know the bliss of standing under a shady tree, but vegetation also helps cool cities through evapotranspiration. This is basically when plants sweat, cooling the air around them.
Not every park is the same. A review by the David Suzuki Foundation found that size, (bigger parks extended benefits), shape (irregular-shaped parks increase cooling effects), and connectivity (closer together parks were cooler) have big impacts on the heat-mitigating powers of parks.Even plantings make a difference. Sorry to the lawn lovers, but densely planted naturalized meadows are better at cooling than grass. This makes projects like Vancouver’s recent low-mow meadows, which naturalize park lawns to support biodiversity, an important climate resilience project.
Parks also provide places for people to build social connections. This can quickly become life-saving during a crisis, where people who may be isolated and more vulnerable to heat–like older adults–are able to draw on connections for help. As one study put it, the social connections afforded by parks “may be a lifeline in extreme temperatures.”
This highlights the importance of redressing inequities in high-quality green space access–another topic explored in Park People’s 2021 Canadian City Parks Report.
Multiple studies have shown that wealthier, often whiter, neighbourhoods are also greener. As Health Canada notes, neighbourhoods most affected by heat “disproportionately impact marginalized populations and residents of lower-income communities” who have less green space.
Even when trees exist, they are healthier in wealthier neighbourhoods. A Canadian study found neighbourhoods with high socioeconomic vulnerability had fewer trees and less resilient canopies.
As journalist Jen St. Denis pointed out, urban heat islands map onto areas of Vancouver based on income, with wealthier west side neighbourhoods greener and thus cooler than east side neighbourhoods.
Canadian cities are beginning to step up with more equity-focused plans that, with proper funding and implementation, could start to redress these inequities.
Vancouver’s recent parks master plan includes a mapping tool using indicators such as tree canopy coverage to prioritize green space investments. Ontario’s Peel Region has also done heat mapping, noting that this could be used to target improvements for vulnerable populations.
Meeting this challenge will require an all-hands-on-deck approach. It must involve parks departments, but also streets, city planning, and community organizations. Federal funding for green infrastructure and tree planting should contain equity guidance to ensure improvements are made in the areas that need them first.
If we all work together, we can create cooler, greener, more equitable cities.
This article first appeared on TorontoStar.com, July 7, 2021.