We are looking for a Partnerships and Project Specialist in Toronto.
TD Park People Grants support local leaders to organize environmental education, sustainability or stewardship events that bring people together across Canada.
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.
Parks are not neutral spaces but places where legacies of colonialism and white supremacy too often perpetuate urban inequity. At the same time, Black and racial justice movements have helped reimagine parks as places where the presence, experiences, and needs of Black Canadians can be visible and valued.
To recognize Black History Month, we’ve selected some of the content that has resonated with Park People over the past years, highlighting works that contribute to centering Black liberation in planning, designing, and managing parks and public spaces. We’re grateful to the Black thought leaders and communities contributing to a radical rethinking of our parks and public spaces.
Race and Nature in the City: Engaging youth of colour in nature-based activities, 2021, Nature Canada
An evidence-based, community-informed needs assessment that makes recommendations for meaningfully engaging racialized communities in nature and nature-based programming in urban areas.
Healing Disconnectedness with Collective Stewardship, Canadian City Parks Report, 2021, Park People
How reframing our notions of park stewardship can help restore relationships to the land. Parks have become a vital communal space in the COVID-19 pandemic. They appeal to our need for relationships; both to each other in a time of social distancing and to the outdoors as we are asked to stay at home. But we often fail to acknowledge the role of parks in generations of dispossession.
An Invitation to Hike: Let’s Hike T.O.’s Approach to Connecting People of Colour, Newcomers and Young Adults to Nature in Toronto, Park People
Let’s Hike TO is a thriving Toronto organization that intentionally extends a warm invitation to people of colour, newcomers and young adults to join in engaging group hikes. While anyone can attend their walks regardless of age or identity, the group has made an intentional effort since its inception in July 2021 to become the city’s diversity-focused hiking group.
Humber River Black History Walk, Jacqueline L. Scott, 2021, Park People
A guest post was written by Jacqueline L. Scott. Jacqueline is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto, OISE, in the Department of Social Justice Education. She is a hike leader with two outdoor clubs. Jacqueline leads Black History Walks in Toronto. She is the author of travel and adventure books, from a Black perspective.
Urban Park Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Are Socially Vulnerable Communities Disproportionately Impacted? Edited by Michelle L. Johnson, 2021, Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.
The COVID-19 pandemic altered human behaviour around the world. To maintain mental and physical health during periods of lockdown and quarantine, people often engaged in outdoor, physically distanced activities such as visits to parks and green space. However, research tracking outdoor recreation patterns during the pandemic has yielded inconsistent results, and few studies have explored the impacts of COVID-19 on park use across diverse neighbourhoods. The research team used a mixed-methods approach to examine changes in park use patterns in cities across North Carolina, USA, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an emphasis on impacts in socially vulnerable communities (based on racial/ethnic composition and socioeconomic status).
Examining privilege and power in US urban parks and open space during the double crises of antiblack racism and COVID-19, Fushcia-Ann Hoover & Theodore C. Lim, 2021, Springer Link
Creating the positive outcomes socio-ecological researchers and practitioners seek for urban areas requires acknowledging and addressing the interactions of race and systemic racism in parks, open and green spaces. Racial experiences are inseparable from physical landscapes and the processes of designing, managing, or studying them. From COVID-19 to the Black Lives Matter movement and protests, the events of 2020 in the United States underscore how considerations of social justice must extend beyond the conventional distributional focus of environmental justice. It must incorporate an understanding of how the built environment is racialized spatially, but not always readily quantified through the proximity-based measurements frequently used in research and practice.
Jay Pitter On ‘Being Black In Public’ — And Its Implications For Sustainable Transport Policy, Jay Pitter, 2024, Streets Blog
An interview with placemaker and mobility justice icon Jay Pitter to talk about “Being Black in Public” and her work to inspire policymakers to adopt new strategies and approaches to “transform Black public space precarity into equitable and joyful public space through policy reform.
Public Safety at the City’s Core, Jay Pitter, 2021, Azure Magazine
Public safety is not merely the absence of physical threat; it is the presence of inclusive places shaped by equitable urban placemaking and policy. It is the visceral yet indescribable sense of belonging that is experienced in spaces which invite rather than tolerate differences.
Want safer cities and public spaces? Invest in BIPOC-led work. Lena Phillips, 2021, Safe in Public Space
Given the increasingly urban orientation of the world, a re-set of how cities are shaped moving forward is critical. Socioeconomic disparities have long been named by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC). This has been compounded by the heightened visibility of systemic racism, particularly its impact on Black lives. The field of planning, specifically, is tasked with constructing our built environments and mediating our socioeconomic infrastructure through mechanisms like funding, governance and public space policy. However, through ongoing processes of colonialism and racism, planning works to reinforce oppressive systems. The lack of diversity and critical interrogation within this field – one that fails to recognize its impact on the everyday lives of communities – contributes to the perpetual underfunding of BIPOC-led initiatives and allows systemic injustice to play out in our public spaces.
6 ways to approach urban green spaces in the push for racial justice and health equity, Nahda Hassen, 2021, The Conversation
How can we take an intersectional, anti-racist approach to plan urban green spaces as a public health measure? Policy-makers, planners and public health professionals can learn from critical race and critical theory scholars in pushing for multidisciplinary action. Here are six ideas for policy-makers, city officials, public health, city builders and planners to consider in research, policy and practice.
Green spaces, mental health and well-being in the time of COVID-19, Nadha Hassen, 2021, York U
In her doctoral study on “Parks Prescriptions and Perceptions: Experiences of Racialized People with Mood Disorders in Green Spaces,” Vanier scholar Nadha Hassen explores the experiences of racialized people living with mental illness in urban green spaces in Toronto. Using a visual research method called photovoice, Hassen’s research captures the experiences of people who are racialized and living with mood disorders as they interact with Toronto’s urban green spaces.
Leveraging built environment interventions to equitably promote health during and after COVID-19 in Toronto, Canada, Nadha Hassen, 2021, Oxford Academics
This paper puts forward three considerations for built environment interventions to promote health equitably: addressing structural determinants of health and embedding anti-racist intersectional principles, revisiting tactical urbanism as a health promotion tool and rethinking community engagement processes through equity-based placemaking. This paper outlines four built environment interventions in Toronto, Canada, that seek to address the challenges in navigating urban space safely in the short term, including street design that prioritizes pedestrians, protected cycling infrastructure, access to inclusive green space and safe, affordable housing. Longer-term strategies to create equitable health-promoting urban environments are discussed and may be valuable to other cities with similar urban equity concerns.
‘Without social justice, you cannot have environmental justice’: Making Toronto’s urban forests more inclusive spaces, Ambika Tenneti, 2021, University of Toronto, Scarborough
“Access is not just about proximity,” says Tenneti, an environmental science graduate from India who is currently enrolled in a doctoral program at U of T’s Daniels Forestry. People may live near a ravine, but if there’s no entrance near where they live and they have to walk, bike or take public transit before getting into it, then it’s not accessible. That also costs time and money, which recent immigrants often lack when they first arrive. Likewise, there are some psychological barriers that prevent people from enjoying the ravines and other natural areas in the city. This is where Tenneti’s research comes into play. As a recent immigrant to Canada, she investigates community engagement in the city’s urban forests, looking specifically at factors that lead to inclusion or exclusion, with a focus on the experience of new immigrants. Her research suggests that immigrant communities are interested and do enjoy urban nature, but they prefer parks over wilderness areas. She says in general, people feel comfortable going to well-maintained, multi-use green areas where children have access to playing fields and other amenities such as seating, equipment, trees and gardens. Access to washrooms and drinking water is also important for planning family outings.’
A question of life and death’: Why climate action must also take racial justice into account, What on Earth, 2021, CBC
Jesse Firempong is a communications officer with Greenpeace Canada. She spoke to What on Earth host Laura Lynch about how major environmental groups often centre white voices to the exclusion of BIPOC voices and concerns.
Parks Need Leaders of Colour, Canadian City Parks Report, 2021, Park People
How BIPOC park leaders are centring conversations of justice and power in parks. 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.
‘She’s out here trailblazing’: these 10 Black environmentalists are building community, Serena Austin, 2024, the Narwhal
Black Canadian scientists, researchers and environmental advocates discuss the importance of mentors, protégés and friends in their fields
Black Placemaking: United Through Heritage, Selma Elkhazin, 2023, Heritage Toronto
The African and Caribbean diaspora in Toronto consistently crafts places for the dynamic Black community. These places are spaces of belonging for the Black identity, and allow for the community to connect, invent, and continue creating diverse culture in the city.
Nothing for us, without us, 2024, University of Toronto and School of Cities
This mini-documentary explores anti-Black racism in Canadian city planning (Little Jamaica in Toronto, Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver, and Africville in Nova Scotia) and sheds light on the persistent issue of anti-Black racism and its impact on urban planning.
Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax, Ted Rutland, 2018Modern urban planning has long promised to improve the quality of human life. But how is human life defined? Displacing Blackness develops a unique critique of urban planning by focusing, not on its subservience to economic or political elites, but on its efforts to improve people’s lives. In his book, the author shows how race – specifically blackness – has defined the boundaries of the human being and guided urban planning, with grave consequences for the city’s Black residents.
Watch: A Conversation About Racism in the Outdoors, Brentin Mock, 2021, Audubon
On this episode of I Saw a Bird, Brentin Mock, a staff writer for CityLab, joined hosts David Ringer and Christine Lin to discuss his recent article on the dangers Black people face in the outdoors
How will we ensure equitable access to parks and public spaces? City Talk Canada, 2020, Canadian Urban Institute
Featuring Dave Harvey, Executive Director, Park People; Carlos Moreno, Scientific Director, Chair ETI (Entrepreneurship – Territory – Innovation), Panthéon – Sorbonne University; Rena Soutar, Reconciliation Planner, City of Vancouver Parks & Recreation; and Cheyenne Sundance, Founder & Farmer, Sundance Harvest Farm.
Advancing Climate Justice in Parks, 2021, Park People
Urban green spaces help mitigate the impacts of climate change by reducing temperatures and lowering flood risk. However, unequal access to these spaces leaves many lower-income, racialized communities more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Addressing these inequities involves the more equitable distribution of green space and changes in how we engage and involve communities in the design and planning of city parks.
Change, Hope, and Tension: Perspectives and Practices on Making Green Spaces BIPOC Inclusive, 2021, Park People
A candid conversation with 3 distinguished panellists exploring the barriers and opportunities for creating parks as natural places for engagement across differences.
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 advocates have pushed for action on issues ranging from policing, to houselessness, to racial justice, the past two years have brought to light fractured relationships, mistrust, and frustration. But equally, these efforts have highlighted that communities are eager to have their voices heard.
“There’s much more attention that’s being placed on the city and the city’s choices by residents and by advocacy communities,” said Dr. Alexandra Flynn, a University of British Columbia professor and municipal governance expert. Dr. Flynn noted that parks have been a key space of protest and pushback and “expectations are very high that municipalities are going to be responsive.”
At the same time, however, the pandemic has turned park engagement on its head. When Covid-19 first hit, in-person consultations became impossible, leading cities to go virtual, with 81% reporting increased use of online engagement methods.
But the impacts on park engagement go deeper than the shift from in-person to online.
Early in the pandemic, cities rushed to establish pilot projects, like converting streets into pop-up parklets and loosening bylaws on alcohol consumption. In the urgency to respond to emerging needs, engagement was often rushed or bypassed altogether. Fast forward to this year: 92% of cities we surveyed said that they had extended or made permanent at least one park pilot program initiated in response to Covid.
Dr. Flynn, who studied municipal governance during the pandemic, terms this shift in engagement “pop-up governance.”
“It’s easy to be in favour of pop-up governance when you really like the outcome,” Dr. Flynn said, noting that public space expansions have been popular among many urbanists. But the process is inherently undemocratic, said Dr. Flynn, noting that cities “leveraged the pandemic, in some ways, to not engage.”
For Dr. Flynn, this raises questions about “why did [these projects] have to happen without engagement? And does that speak to larger issues with the existing processes?” In her view, “governance models even outside of the pandemic, in most jurisdictions, really aren’t able to appropriately address the engagement needs of people who want to be weighing in” on park decision-making.
Indeed, our survey results found that only 22% of city residents feel they have the ability to influence what goes on in their local park—a decrease from 34% in last year’s report.
As cities shift from addressing immediate pandemic needs to planning for the future, there is an opportunity to rethink community engagement to give communities more decision-making power on the park issues that affect them most, said Koa Thornhill, a Program Manager at Park People with expertise working with equity-deserving communities.
As Thornhill put it, grassroots advocacy movements during the pandemic have “brought us to this beautiful point of thinking about, how do we decentralize some of the power that exists in [institutional] spaces?”
Shifting power means moving beyond one-off project-based consultations toward ongoing relationship-building with communities. This requires recognizing and valuing that communities know their needs best.
Zahra Ebrahim, Co-founder of Monumental and Park People Board Chair, said that investing time and resources in building meaningful community relationships upfront is well worth the effort “so that when you actually get to those places where you do need to do some really acute engagement… There are deep relationships.” As Ebrahim put it, “It’s a reorientation to how we come together and build partnerships—that is, going slow to go fast.”
The City of Edmonton is putting this approach into practice. Through their RECOVER Urban Wellness initiative, city-supported ‘social prototypes’ explore creative models for engaging with equity-deserving communities. One of the 2021 prototypes, called Auricle, asks “what would it look like for a city to engage citizens in more humble and authentic ways, deeply listening and understanding what wellbeing means to them?”
The project involved hiring a team of 10 Local Listeners—community members living in Edmonton’s Alberta Avenue neighbourhood—to engage neighbours using storytelling methods. Through this process, the Listeners collected over 150 stories, which were then shared back to the community at an event called Knowsy Fest. The festival, a celebration of community knowledge, invited residents to interpret the stories themselves, and share ideas for how the city might use their insights.
Azkaa Rahman, Strategic Planning Analyst at the City of Edmonton and part of the RECOVER team, said that this kind of community engagement “requires a paradigm shift towards deeply recognizing that relationships move at the pace of trust.”
“Having the time and resources dedicated to relationship building can be tough when we’re on taxpayers’ dime,” Rahman said. “Given that impact isn’t seen in the immediate term, people may have a hard time justifying why just ‘listening’ and fostering relationships is worthwhile.” But for Rahman, this approach is essential to make meaningful change in communities.
When it comes to building relationships, it’s important to be sensitive to neighbourhood dynamics, said Dr. Flynn. Connecting with communities that have been historically well-served by government may be relatively straightforward, but “there’s a lot of communities who don’t share that same trust,” she said.
To understand the unique priorities that exist in each neighbourhood, Ebrahim and her colleagues suggest that cities undertake neighbourhood-based “equity impact assessments” every few years.
This would involve co-creating neighbourhood profiles using demographic data to provide insight into how to tailor engagement methods to meet local needs—such as providing childcare where there’s a high proportion of single parents, or translating materials into commonly spoken languages.
Brampton’s Nurturing Neighbourhoods platform provides a useful model for relationship and trust building. The program was created in response to a commitment in the Brampton 2040 Vision strategy to conduct neighbourhood audits to identify priorities for ongoing, incremental improvements in neighbourhoods based on collaboration with residents.
For 2021, the Nurturing Neighbourhoods program offered guided virtual walking tours in each of the city’s neighbourhoods. The tours highlighted local parks, businesses, and community spaces, and emphasized ways residents could engage in their community. The tours were complemented by neighbourhood-specific online surveys and interactive mapping tools which invited residents to mark locations where they have concerns or ideas for improvement. The insights generated are then used to create a long-term action plan for each neighbourhood.
Kelowna is also moving toward a neighbourhood-centred approach to community engagement. The city is working with neighbourhood associations to “decentralize park programming [and] introduce park amenities and programs that better reflect the needs of the local community,” city staff said.
Koa Thornhill echoed the importance of cities committing to “hav[ing] strong ties to local organizations,” and also pointed out the opportunity to connect with residents directly through existing on-the-ground staff.
Parks maintenance staff, for example, could see it as their role to maintain human relationships the same way they maintain the grass. Thornhill recommended providing on-the-ground parks staff with “training to maintain and navigate relationships.” She noted it could boost morale by “help[ing] them see that community members are really grateful for the work that they do and it doesn’t go unseen.”
In thinking through how to strengthen relationships with communities, results from our national survey of 150 community park groups provide insight on how municipalities can move forward.
63% of cities said they had a strong relationship with local community park groups, but when asked the same question, only 44% of community groups said they had a strong relationship with the city. This number was even lower, at 38%, for groups that identified as equity-deserving. This discrepancy highlights that community relationships may not be as strong as city staff perceive.
The good news is that 83% of community groups said they’d be interested in deepening their relationship with their municipality. When asked what cities could offer to support community groups’ work, some common themes emerged:
Above all, what groups are looking for is to be recognized as valued collaborators working toward a shared goal of ensuring that parks best serve communities. As one group put it, “We need municipalities to trust us; the people who look after these spaces often are the most knowledgeable about what it needs because we are there every day.”
Dr. Alexandra Flynn is hopeful that we can work toward this future, noting that “municipalities are full of lots 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.
Park engagement has been transformed by the pandemic. In our survey, 92% of cities said Covid has changed how they engage communities, and 23% said engagement has become a greater priority since the start of the pandemic.
As we’ve written elsewhere in the Canadian City Parks Report, it’s not just the format of engagement that has changed as cities shift from in-person to online methods. Cities are also sharpening their focus on building relationships with groups that have historically been left out, with 35% reporting that the pandemic has prompted more intentional outreach to equity-deserving groups.
“There is new awareness about systemic inequity, and creating equity in our park system means talking with those most affected.”
City staff, Gelph
This work is needed. Our public survey showed that equity-deserving groups face disproportionate barriers to participating in city-led park planning processes. Overall, the top three barriers respondents cited were: being unsure of how to get involved (36%), unsure if their participation would make a difference (31%), and not having enough time to participate (28%). These percentages were higher for respondents who identified as Black, Indigenous or a person of colour (BIPOC), at 48%, 35%, and 36%, respectively.
Cities and community groups across the country are responding to these barriers through creative methods that put equity at the fore.
It is vital to involve communities in deciding what the engagement process looks like, said Jennifer Chan, Co-founder and CEO of the Department of Imaginary Affairs (DIA) . Last summer, the organization led a project called A Tale of Two Parks to surface stories of safe and unsafe experiences that exist at the same park. Through the project, six racialized youth were hired as Social Researchers to engage park goers, especially BIPOC communities, in two Toronto parks.
Through conversations with community members at the park, the DIA team learned that park goers often have great ideas for changes they’d like to see, but community members often felt that “it doesn’t really matter what our ideas are, since the city doesn’t care about us” Chan said. “This statement really struck me in thinking about, how can we meaningfully engage with community when the starting perspective is that ‘the city doesn’t care about us?'”
In response, the DIA designed a participatory planning game called “What if Parks Were Designed By Us?” The game allows participants to experience and define a months-long planning process in a matter of minutes. It invites community members to work together to develop their own planning process, strengthening their ability as a community to identify issues, build a unified vision, and even practice dealing with monkey wrenches getting thrown into their plan.
By gamifying the planning process, DIA aims to reduce barriers to existing planning processes as well envision new possibilities for park engagement, shifting away from traditional mechanisms like town halls “where all the power is held by the city, not with the community,” Chan said.
The City of Toronto has been engaging residents for the Toronto Island Park Master Plan since 2020, which will set out a new vision for a beloved destination park accessible by ferry just minutes from downtown. It’s a signature project that involves many stakeholders, as the Island is meant to serve all Torontonians.
A key priority for the engagement team is embedding an equity lens throughout the process. “Equity really is framed by identifying who is and who isn’t at the table,” said Daniel Fusca, the city’s Manager of Consultation for Parks, Forestry and Recreation.
The process started with a pre-engagement phase—a new approach for the division. This involved meeting with relevant community organizations, Indigenous partners, and other departments within the city, to get a sense of their priorities and determine how they wanted to be involved.
The pre-engagement phase “goes against most people’s instincts of what is appropriate engagement,” Fusca said. There’s an expectation, rooted in conventional engagement practices, to “put something in front of the public for them to react to or else it’s a waste of their time.”
“It took a bit of work to convince everybody that this is actually a good idea,” Fusca said. “There’s a bit of getting people out of their comfort zone.”
The pre-engagement with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) and other Indigenous partners was especially vital given the significance of the Islands as a sacred place of healing and ceremony. Through these conversations, the city heard about the importance of incorporating ceremony into the engagement events, and re-working their land acknowledgment to recognize the waters as well as the lands.
They also heard that each Indigenous partner had different collaboration preferences. Some rights holders preferred regular meetings with the city. For the urban Indigenous communities, they’ve held sharing circles during each phase which are led by an Indigenous facilitator—something the community identified as important.
Lori Ellis, Project Officer of Strategic Projects, acknowledged that the pre-engagement took time and required them to adjust their original scope of work. “But it’s worth its weight in gold in regards to building that foundation of trust and transparency,” she said, noting that the city is now looking to incorporate a pre-engagement phase into future projects.
It’s also laid a foundation for ongoing collaboration with different communities to share back how their input has been used. The project team has tried to make these touchpoints meaningful by tailoring them to the community’s specific interests and input, Fusca said. “We would hone in the presentation to just focus on the things that were most meaningful to them and try to reflect back anything they told us,” he shared.
Constantly scanning to “identify the key voices that are still missing, and to do our best to address that” has been another strategy at the heart of the city’s approach, Fusca said. For example, after identifying that youth and racialized communities living outside of the downtown core were underrepresented in the first phase of engagement, they developed a Youth Ambassador Program.
The program hired a team of 10 youth between the ages of 15 to 27 who collectively spoke nine different languages and lived in neighbourhoods outside of the downtown core. They were provided with training and a budget to design their own outreach program to engage their communities.
Pablo Muñoz, a Senior Public Consultation Coordinator for the city who has previous experience as a youth worker, noted the important role youth play as conduits of information to and from the community. “For a lot of immigrant and refugee families, children and youth tend to be the connection to the Canadian English-speaking world. They tend to be the translators, and in many ways, have a big leadership role,” he said. This is a finding echoed in recent Park People research that explored barriers to park engagement in Vancouver’s equity-deserving neighbourhoods.
Another learning from the process is that despite the breadth of audiences involved in the project, it’s been important to hold space to go deeper through small group workshops centred on equity.
Some workshops included visioning exercises guided by Bob Goulais, an Anishinaabe facilitator, where participants closed their eyes to envision the future of the Islands. “It’s a much different way than bureaucratic engagement, where we’re going inwards and acknowledging a little bit more of the soul and the spirit,” said Muñoz.
Other initiatives included an “equity and belonging deep-dive,” and a video interview with activists and historians about the LGBTQ2S+ history of Hanlan’s Point, a clothing-optional beach on the Islands.
At these sessions, “the turnout would be smaller, but the conversation would be much richer. None of these conversations ever went the way you thought that they were going to go. And they always were incredibly meaningful,” Muñoz said.
What other cities are doing:
Zahra Ebrahim, Co-founder of Monumental and Park People Board Chair, said that when it comes to deepening engagement, in many ways cities are “set up to fail.” Through research to inform the Making Space toolkit—a resource for engaging equity-deserving communities in planning processes—Ebrahim and her team learned that cities may face internal barriers to implementing meaningful processes.
However, many of these issues could be addressed through “simple intervention points,” Ebrahim said:
In exploring the research on nature connectedness and health, many strategies are identified to facilitate human-nature connections, including stewardship activities, nature mindfulness, preserving natural wooded areas, embedding sports into nature programs, and embracing diverse cultural knowledge and practices into park maintenance and events. But how do these strategies work on the ground with actual urban residents? We turned to our new Cornerstone partner, Meewasin Valley Authority, to understand how they foster nature connectedness in their urban park.
The Cornerstone Parks program, which works to maximize the impact and influence of Canada’s large urban parks, underwent two years of research with large urban park users and stewards to better understand the connection between parks and health. The recently published results suggested something we were already keenly aware of through conversations with communities and from our passions for spending time in parks – park use is associated with better health and well-being. But what really stood out from the research was that the most predictive factor of better health and well-being was park users’ feeling of nature connectedness.
Our Cornerstone Parks survey of park users found a significant relationship between feeling connected with nature and higher reported mental health, physical health and general well-being. This means that as large urban park users feel more connected to nature, they rate their mental, physical, and wellbeing higher.
However, most park users (67%) who visit Cornerstone parks primarily spend their time engaging in social activities, sports or recreational activities rather than enriching nature-based activities (33% of park users). And we see that park users who engage primarily in nature-based activities in Cornerstone parks report stronger nature connections and higher well-being scores.
So how do we, as park users, park professionals and community members, ensure that people are getting the greatest benefit from visiting large urban parks? In exploring the research on nature connectedness and health, many strategies are identified to facilitate human-nature connections, including stewardship activities, nature mindfulness, preserving natural wooded areas, embedding sports into nature programs, and embracing diverse cultural knowledge and practices into park maintenance and events. But how do these strategies work on the ground with actual urban residents? We turned to our new Cornerstone partner, Meewasin Valley Authority, to understand how they foster nature connectedness in their urban park.
Meewasin Valley is a 6700-hectare park that spans the South Saskatchewan River for 75 km through and beyond the city of Saskatoon. The park is an ecological treasure composed of a prairie landscape with several unique ecosystems not found throughout the rest of the country. Grasslands, like those found in Meewasin, are one of the most imperilled ecosystems on the planet. They are incredibly rich in biodiversity and have been one of the most affected by human activity.
Due to Meewasin’s central location and massive trail system, the park welcomes over 2 million visits annually! The accessibility of the park allows city residents and tourists to easily explore nature without leaving the city.
Meewasin Valley Authority is a leader in innovative nature programming. They host curriculum-connected programs for children, an app sharing Indigenous stories of the Valley, pollinator walks, dark skies stargazing, and sheep grazing demonstrations.
So what can we learn from Meewasin’s diverse nature programming, and how can those learnings, along with what the research tells us, be leveraged to optimize the health benefits of large urban parks?
At Meewasin, stewardship is a major part of park programming. Meewasin has over 1,000 volunteers who work on various stewardship activities throughout the Meewasin Valley, including wrapping trees with wire to mitigate beaver damage, removing invasive species, replanting of native vegetation, engaging in wildlife inventory and litter clean-up in the park.
One way Meewasin ensures that stewardship activities are accessible and encouraging to diverse users is by offering various volunteer opportunities. This ensures that people can be involved in ways that most pique their interests or needs. For example, those looking to contribute to conservation efforts in the park that are not physically able to do plantings and invasive species control can help with wildlife inventory projects, public education and nature interpretation at events or join the marketing and public programming team.
There is a growing body of research around the benefits of nature mindfulness and ecotherapy activities, increasing their popularity. Nature mindfulness and ecotherapy are broad terms that refer to activities involving mediation, bringing awareness of the natural world around us, yoga, deep breathing and raising consciousness of our place in the natural world. Not surprisingly, the research on these types of activities suggests that they deepen people’s connection to nature.
Research has also found that nature mindfulness activities have significant implications for children specifically. Engaging in nature mindfulness activities improves children’s sense of connection to nature, motivation for pro-environmental behaviours, and overall mood. Meewasin seems to be well aware of the benefits of mindfulness as their school education programs include nature mindfulness activities to help ground students in the park and strengthen their connection to nature.
In a time where we are inundated with negative news, specifically climate and environmental disasters, it can be hard not to feel overwhelmed and disempowered. This can lead to disengagement with nature and nature programs as people try to avoid feelings of eco-grief and climate anxiety.
Meewasin looks to provide relief from climate anxiety and negative environmental news with their more lighthearted programs like Naughty by Nature, which looks at the dating and mating strategies of the animals in the park. The program allows people to engage in joyful activities in nature and appeals to those who may not already be interested in conservation.
By offering different types of programs and focusing on fun, Meewasin can engage new populations in conservation and connect people to nature and conservation in a joyful way.
We often think of sport and park recreation as directly conflicting with nature conservation. In the past, we’ve seen nature spaces cleared to make way for new sports facilities.
However, the health of nature and sports are directly intertwined. As the climate changes, certain winter sports may become obsolete, and summer sports may become dangerous in extreme heat. So, it only makes sense that those passionate about sports also feel a sense of responsibility to the environment.
Many research institutions and policymakers have picked up on this connection and have started to make the case for using sports and recreation as a gateway to nature education. Using sports as an entry point, we can engage a whole different group of people in nature conservation and fuel their sense of connection to nature.The Sip and Skate program at Meewasin is a great example of how to put this approach into practice. Meewasin attracts visitors to join an evening of skating in the river valley with food and drinks and then provides opportunities for conservation education throughout the event. The brilliance of these events is that the Meewasin team inspires a passion for conservation by emphasizing the need to care for the planet to ensure that outdoor skating rinks can continue to exist.
Biocultural diversity refers to the idea that the way we think about nature is based on our culture and heritage. For example, humans have evolved alongside the unique biodiversity in their native regions, have different languages and cultures, and therefore have different names, knowledge and practices relating to the land. This is biocultural diversity.
One explanation for why people feel disconnected from nature is due to a lack of cultural ties to their current environment. In Canada, we see this through the erasure of Indigenous cultures and Indigenous traditional knowledge and practices of caring for the land. This creates a disconnect between Indigenous peoples and nature.
To combat this, Meewasin, alongside other Cornerstone parks, is working towards building strong partnerships with Indigenous groups and ensuring stewardship practices are informed by the traditional caretakers of the land. Meewasin is currently working with many partners to expand access to traditional medicines and plants, provide urban ceremonial space and host fire ceremonies. This allows Indigenous populations to connect with nature in the park in ways that are most meaningful to them.
Now that we better understand the pathways to improved health through park use, wherein the key is nature connectedness, we must optimize these benefits for everyone! Cornerstone parks have demonstrated their ability to foster nature connections for city residents and are leaders in finding innovative approaches to bring nature to more people.
As we advocate for more nature spaces, we also need to advocate for more nature programs that appeal to diverse users and incorporate many ways to connect with the land. Follow Park People, Meewasin and the rest of our Cornerstone partners online as we unpack more innovative nature programs and design strategies to optimize the interconnected health of our people, parks and cities.
The ongoing discoveries of unmarked graves has forced Canada to reckon with its ongoing legacy of residential schools as part of the colonial tactics that strived for Indigenous erasure. Municipalities, street names, secondary and post-secondary institutions have all been under pressure to change names that step away from the colonial figures they were named after.Canada was born the moment settlers began claiming land, creating borders, and dispossessing First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. And while the ongoing effects of colonization can look vastly different across geographies, the prairies in particular trace land theft and displacement of Indigenous livelihood to agricultural opportunities that allowed white settlement to prosper. For Indigenous Peoples, this meant a violent history of land extraction, residential schools, and starvation methods through buffalo extinction and government policy.Inherently, cities remain a site of dispossession, and the land on which city parks exist are no exception. Nahomi Amberer reminds us of the pre-existing relationship with land Indigenous people held prior to contact, and how this relationship was undermined by land dispossession by European settlers, including land used today for parks. “Dividing up land was central to claiming ownership of a land already inhabited by Indigenous Peoples,” she wrote in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report. Indigenous Peoples continue to be reminded of these violent histories often; whether driving through the country or walking through an urban neighbourhood, place-names continue to honour colonial figureheads who played instrumental roles in the genocide against Indigenous populations. However, city spaces can also be a site of mass education. So, how do we create spaces that decentralize the colonial past and instead, promote Indigenous knowledges?
Over the past year, a handful of prairie city parks have taken steps towards decolonizing public spaces, making room for Indigenous histories in a way that hadn’t been done before. This is a particularly important step for prairie cities that reflect some of the highest urban Indigenous populations across the country. Further, city parks moving towards the process of decolonizing space provides urban Indigenous folks access to nature and ceremony without the barrier of having to leave the city.
Take Winnipeg – Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population – and the Indigenous Peoples Garden as a start. Anna Huard, Manager of Education and Programs at Assiniboine Park Conservancy described the Garden as a massive joint effort of community consultation, Matriarchs, Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and an Indigenous architecture firm. “It’s important that the consultation process on a project like this includes a lot of different connections,” she said. “As soon as others were able to help out, it started to feel like a community. We cannot just rely on one Indigenous spokesperson.”Native plant species helped guide the Garden’s development, and to further community inclusion, Indigenous youth also had a hand in planting trees and building boardwalks. The park includes fire and water nodes as well as interpretive signage that includes ancestral languages of Ojibway, Cree, Dakota, Oji-Cree, Michif, Dene and Inuktitut translations.
With last summer being the Garden’s launch, Huard is ready to see the space used more frequently for youth storytelling programs, language learning, and an Indigenous plants program that includes a guided tour and salve-making classes. Most importantly, Huard noted that the space provides urban Indigenous folks the opportunity to strengthen their understanding of land and culture within city limits.
The city of Regina also experienced a big leap forward in decolonizing park spaces recently. Last year, the city finally caved to public pressure to relocate the Sir. John A. MacDonald statue in Victoria Park in downtown Regina. Although grassroots initiatives and petitions for the statue’s removal have been circulating for a few years, the city’s website stated that in March of 2021, city council approved the relocation of the statue to storage, “while Administration proceeds with broader public engagement and working with partners to identify an appropriate future location and contextualization.”Further, the Buffalo Peoples Art Institute (BPAI), a grassroots community organization driven by social justice in Regina, played a significant role in advocating for the name change of an inner-city public park. In spring of last year, the city officially changed Dewdney Park in the North Central neighbourhood to Buffalo Meadows Park due to ongoing pressure from organizations like BPAI and public community support. The city also voted in favor to change Dewdney Pool to Buffalo Meadows Pool. Edgar Dewdney was a colonial figure who administered and oversaw residential school policies and the starvation crisis faced by Indigenous Peoples in Canada.Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway, a member of the White Bear First Nation and a resident of Regina, said she started the Institute to help re-educate prairie learners about the significance of the buffalo’s presence before its erasure. She explained that Regina, often referred to as ‘Pile of Bones’ because of its creation literally being built on the bones of buffalo, must acknowledge the original histories of the land. “This was buffalo land before colonization,” she said.Advocating for the name change started a few years ago, and eventually led to public awareness campaigns through community barbeques and petition signing. After enough signatures were collected, the grassroots group and their allies presented the petition to the city council and the civic naming committee. The city vote to rename the park was successful, but the BPAI is still waiting for the approval to change a major street name, Dewdney Avenue to Buffalo Avenue, as well.The park’s name change encourages a reconnection to the land and is crucial for Regina’s north central community where many Indigenous people reside, BigEagle-Kequahtooway explained. “Even in an urban setting, our environment should reflect who we are as a community,” she said. “We need to determine whether the legacies of [colonial figures] are something we want to emulate or preserve for the future, and further question whether those names play a role moving forward in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation.”
BPAI plans to continue to bring awareness to the buffalo’s history on the plains through public art installations, courses on preparing buffalo hides, and hosting an annual buffalo festival all in the newly named park.
The city of Edmonton also had a big year for centering Indigenous knowledges in parks as construction on the kihciy askiy park (Cree for Sacred Land) started in Whitemud Park last year.
The park has been 15 years in the making after the city received a proposal from the Indigenous Elders Cultural Resource Society outlining an urban cultural site where Indigenous people could practice cultural ceremony and learning opportunities. Although long overdue, the city’s website acknowledges that “long before becoming farmland, the kihciy askiy site was used for many centuries by the Indigenous people foraging for medicines for healing purposes.”After forming a Counsel of Elders in 2015 to work alongside a city project team, the city followed cultural leadership throughout the park’s entire design process. Alongside consultation from Elders and Knowledge Keepers, the city has also called upon the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, the MMIWG Calls for Justice, and United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to help guide the work.“Consistent with Indigenous culture of respecting the land, the project is designed to be completely synchronized within its location in the Edmonton River Valley,” Chelsea Burden, City of Edmonton’s Project Manager shared. With this in mind, the city also conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment to ensure the construction of the site results in minimal destruction to native plant and tree species along the River Valley.
The park’s development plans include spaces for ceremony and sweats, the opportunity to grow medicinal native species plants, and the infrastructure to host culture camps and talking circles. The park plans to officially open in early 2023.
As more graves continue to be uncovered, the urgency to recognize Indigenous history and presence must be prioritized. Acknowledging that colonialism continues to have a devastating impact while actively making changes led by the Indigenous community with ancestral ties to the land are two processes that can and should happen in tandem.
For example, in January of 2022, Vancouver’s Park Board chair Stuart McKinnon presented a motion that calls for the co-management of city parks that fall under the traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. “I think it’s important as we recognize reconciliation in this country, that the land Vancouver sits on was occupied land,” McKinnon shared in a CBC article.
There is still plenty of work left to undo the colonial violence of the past, and governments at the municipal, provincial and federal level should actively engage in meaningful Indigenous consultation to lead the creation of cultural learning spaces in city parks as a starting point. In order to achieve successful consultation, engagement strategies must build authentic relationships with multiple Indigenous community members and respectfully make space for varying Indigenous worldviews. Further, municipalities must acknowledge that empowering Indigenous community members to lead educational programming, park signage, language camps, and plant/medicine gardens also empowers the community as a whole. Doing so promotes a way forward that allows urban Indigenous presence to access aspects of ceremony and tradition, and in turn, allows non-Indigenous people to learn more about the original stewards of the lands they occupy.
And perhaps above all, working alongside one another in mutual respect is one way to honour the spirit in which Treaty relationships were built upon.
It’s a tale as old as time—or at least as old as parks department budgets. As cities grow, and more people use parks for different activities, park budgets—particularly operating budgets—become strained.
So what happens when park departments that were already experiencing constraints and aging infrastructure come face to face with a global pandemic?
In short: additional pressures, creative thinking, and a heightened focus on how we can plan together for more equitable park investments going forward.
For the second year, cities said Covid put pressure on already strained operations budgets—the money that funds work like cutting the grass. Budgets weren’t cut during the pandemic, but the additional public health-related tasks meant the same pot of money had to cover more things.
As Niall Lobley, Director of Parks and Cemeteries for the City of Kitchener said: park budgets have been “routinely stretched to the maximum extent possible—and have been even further stretched.”
“A “huge” amount of resources were invested during the pandemic into sanitation, extra staffing to monitor physical distancing and high use areas, litter pick-up, and mitigating damage done to natural areas from high use.”
Niall Lobley
In Regina, Parks Support Operations Coordinator Trevor Klein said staff worked hard to find room in existing budgets to launch programs like the winter cities program, which encouraged people to use parks during the colder months.
Klein also mentioned that service requests and expectations of park quality rose during the pandemic. People working from home had more time to visit local parks during the day, increasing their contact with parks staff while they were on the job. This led to an “increase in service requests and a higher level of expectation on [grass] cuts and trimmings and what facilities were available to residents,” Klein said.
At the same time, Klein said the department was dealing with reduced staff early in the pandemic due to a city directive to not hire additional casual staff in summer 2020. This meant training costs were higher when these staff were reintroduced in 2021. Indeed, 50% of cities noted that reduced staff was a challenge during the pandemic.
In Ottawa, city staff said Covid impacts started with “simple reductions to maintenance,” which was “in part to meet a departmental need to conserve funds as additional pressures were expected throughout 2020.”
These services were then adjusted to meet “changing needs,” which included a spike in waste collection costs that began in 2020 and continues today. City staff also said that some “parks operating funds were diverted to help compensate for Covid-related costs,” including portable washrooms and hand-washing stations.
It hasn’t been all bad, however. Some parks departments have been able to tap into Covid funding, particularly for active transportation projects such as trail enhancements or for local economic recovery through tourism funding.
While budgets on average have held steady during the pandemic, Kitchener’s Niall Lobley does worry about what future years hold as city governments begin to grapple with the budgetary fallout from high spending during the pandemic.
“I expect that we have some years where there is likely to be pain felt within tax-supported structures, whether that be at the municipal, provincial or federal level.”
“Traditionally speaking, those periods of payback can be quite hard on soft services like parks and recreation,” Lobley added. “We can see those suffering the more significant and earliest cuts in a time where we’ve seen very high levels of public spending that need to be recouped.”
It’s clear, however, that city residents want to see more, not less, investment: 87% of respondents to our survey of over 3,000 Canadian city residents said they wanted to see more public funding for parks. This included 36% who wanted to see more funding for maintenance and 35% for higher quality designs. Positioning parks as public health infrastructure and citing the rising importance of parks in the last two years for mental and physical health may be one way to ensure funding keeps pace.
In addition to being asked to do more with less, many cities also indicated that building and upgrading parks has become more expensive. In fact, 69% of cities said they had to delay capital projects due to Covid and 86% said cost increases were a challenge.
It’s difficult to attribute these rising costs solely to the pandemic, Lobley said, noting the trend had been in place before Covid. But the pandemic and recent supply chain challenges haven’t helped.
Lobley specifically mentioned playground costs, which have risen as much as 15% a year while “general infrastructure like benches, seats, picnic tables, and all those sorts of things are seeing cost increases as global supply chains are strained.”
Community expectations around park designs have also changed as park use increases, impacting the cost of design and construction.
“It’s not just a case of replacing a few pieces of playground equipment; these are much more comprehensive renewals of neighbourhoods parks.”
“I’m certainly foreseeing 2022 and beyond being very difficult in terms of bringing projects on time and on budget,” Lobley said.
Ottawa city staff also noted this long-term challenge, saying that, if sustained, rising costs may “reduce the number of renewal projects completed annually, or necessitate larger budgets for renewal to maintain existing service levels.”
In addition, staff said that, “extended lead times for parks materials have resulted in some project delays, but these longer lead times and cost increases are being built into our project planning process. Future projects may take longer to deliver, and may be more costly, but we will continue to adjust budgets and timelines based on market conditions.”
A key trend emerging from the pandemic has been a renewed focus on the already existing inequities in how parks are accessed and enjoyed. As parks were held up as critical places for mental health and community connection, it became harder not to notice how some neighbourhoods were greener than others.
Now, as cities begin to shift focus from immediate pandemic needs to longer-term planning, many are turning their energy towards new strategies that use equity-based metrics to guide park investment decisions for years to come.
The “single biggest focus and single biggest change in work focus” in Kitchener’s under-development Places and Spaces Strategy is the focus on equity-led investment, Lobley said.
“What I mean by that is making sure that we don’t just invest where the [development] money is, or invest where the new parks are being built, but that we are deliberately investing in areas which have been underserved in terms of park rehabilitations and new park developments. Our oldest parks are in communities that probably have the greatest need from a social perspective for those parks,” he said.
Consider the urban forest—a topic we explored in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report. Through city-wide mapping, Lobley said the city found some communities are over the city’s goal of 30% tree canopy, while some are sitting at less than half that level. “When we overlay two maps and see where we’ve got less canopy, these tend to be the equity-deserving communities—communities in high density developments, high population of rental apartments, lower socioeconomic status,” he said.
While Kitchener was already moving in this direction pre-pandemic, Lobley noted he “can’t help but think it’s at least partly influenced” by the pandemic, which put a heightened focus on equity.
The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Land Back Camp advocating Indigenous land rights in Kitchener, helped raise both awareness and put pressure on decision-makers to act, Lobley said.
“I would say that the social movements we’ve seen grow through Covid have really allowed us to move [the equity-led focus] forward with a greater sense of urgency.”
Other Canadian cities are moving on this as well. Vancouver and Toronto both released park plans with equity-focused metrics in recent years. Regina’s Trevor Klein noted that the city’s forthcoming 25 year parks and open space master plan will focus on the equitable distribution of parks—not just the green space, but facilities and amenities like picnic spots.
In Ottawa, city staff pointed to the city’s new park master plan, which uses the Ottawa Neighbourhood Equity Index, a resource created by the Social Planning Council of Ottawa, as a lens through which park investment priorities can be made. City staff also said this equity-based approach will be important in the city’s forthcoming Greenspace and Urban Forest Master Plan and in its Climate Resilience Strategy.
While the impacts of the pandemic will likely continue to be felt for years to come, this sharpened focus on equitable investment will help cities plan more resilient park systems for the future.
While municipalities offer multiple ways for residents to get involved in budgets through town halls, surveys, and other activities, it’s often unclear how community input influences final decisions. Proponents of participatory budgeting hope to change that by providing a direct route for residents to make funding decisions.
Toronto, Kitchener, and Longueuil have piloted participatory budgeting processes in the past. On the positive side, participatory budgeting was found to promote higher rates of participation than traditional park engagement, but it also raised concerns about the potential to foster a competitive atmosphere among community members.
How to devise a transparent, fair, and inclusive participatory budgeting process is something Isabelle Gaudette has thought a lot about. Gaudette is the Coordinator for Participatory Processes for the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal, which worked with the City of Montreal to devise and run its $10-million participatory budgeting program in 2021.
The city received 620 submissions from the public, which were whittled down based on feasibility to a final 35 that people voted on in June 2021. Projects had to be between $500,000 and $3 million, take place on city property, and “contribute to Montreal’s ecological and social transition” by addressing climate change, biodiversity, equity, or sustainable resource consumption. Montreal is continuing the program, Gaudette said, setting aside a budget of $60 million over the next three years.
The voting age was set to those above 12 years old and the process also allowed non-citizens to vote–in fact, approximately a quarter of those who voted were youth and non-citizens, Gaudette said. Voter turn-out met the project team’s goal of 1% of the population. While that may seem small, she said, it represents 20,000 people directly voting on budget decisions that are usually left to a handful of elected officials and city staff.
Participatory budgeting also shows how the priorities of the public may differ from those of city officials, Gaudette said. The seven winning projects included mini forests, urban agriculture, green laneways, and more. But the second most voted on improvement was adding 125 water fountains and filling stations to parks in six boroughs.
“I don’t think that the professionals, the elected officials, would have said: “we are going to put drinking fountains in each park”. It seems basic, but that’s what people chose. It is a basic need.”
Isabelle Gaudette, Coordinator for Participatory Processes for the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal
Gaudette’s advice for participatory budgeting:
Most Canadian cities offer a grant or matching fund program for residents who want to undertake public space projects, ranging from small events to larger infrastructure projects.
However, many of these grant programs were thrown into uncertainty when park amenities were closed or restricted due to Covid and public health guidelines discouraged gathering.
Recognizing this, the City of Waterloo introduced temporary changes to some of its community grants. This included more flexibility in how funds could be used (for example, buying personal protective equipment for volunteers), reducing matching fund requirements in recognition that volunteer hours may be more difficult to contribute, and encouraging projects that addressed public health, community well-being, and social isolation. Waterloo city staff said that these “changes were an important step to help remove barriers and to encourage unique and safe ways for the community to lead opportunities for connection.” Projects funded through the Neighbourhood Matching Fund included additional park seating, community message boards, and expanding community gardens. A mini-grant providing up to $300 also supported small-scale park events such as an ice cream social with rapid test pop-up.
In Hamilton, the city is testing a new approach with its Placemaking Grant pilot program. Made possible by a $100,000 donation by the Patrick J. McNally Charitable Foundation, Program Manager Sarah Ehmke said it specializes in “creative, temporary ways of activating public spaces.”
While conceived pre-Covid, Ehmke said the pandemic only made the program’s goals more relevant as people looked to engage in outdoor spaces. While the city only had funding for 10 to 12 projects, Ehmke spoke with 50 people proposing ideas. “A number of the proposals that we received…were directly in response to people’s experiences during Covid in public spaces,” she said.
One project in Hamilton Amateur Athletic Association Park included a local photographer who had taken photos (with permission) of people using the park in various ways during the pandemic. The grant funded a photo gallery in the park “to show the different ways people have been using the park during Covid,” Ehmke said. Photos showed dog walkers, kids playing, and people using park infrastructure as an outdoor gym.
To ensure projects were community- and equity-focused, the city encouraged applicants to propose projects in their own neighbourhoods and demonstrate partnerships to make sure the group had “considered the needs and wants and uses of public spaces beyond their own use.”
Ehmke’s advice for community grants:
While the federal government doesn’t have a long history of investing in city parks, two new funding initiatives have opened up new opportunities for collaboration.
National Urban Parks Program
While still in development, in 2021 the federal government announced a $130 million commitment over five years for Parks Canada to develop a National Urban Parks Program. This follows the federal government’s investment in 2012 to create the Greater Toronto Area’s Rouge National Urban Park.
“Urban parks represent the next evolution for Parks Canada, which has a long history of over 110 years of establishing national parks, national historic sites, and national marine conservation areas,” said Parks Canada Director of Urban Parks and Ecological Corridors Miriam Padolsky.
The new program, which the government views as part of its goal to conserve 25% of land and inland waters by 2025, will see Parks Canada work with governments, Indigenous partners, conservation organizations and other stakeholders to create or expand national urban parks in or near municipalities.
“National urban parks will offer a number of important benefits that align with Parks Canada priorities, including protecting biodiversity, contributing to climate resilience, connecting people with nature, and supporting reconciliation with Indigenous populations.”
Miriam Padolsky, Parks Canada Director of Urban Parks and Ecological Corridors
Healthy Communities Initiative
The Healthy Communities Initiative was a federally funded program with a unique structure that provided funding to community-based organizations to “create and adapt public spaces to respond to the new realities of COVID-19.” The $31-million program was managed by Community Foundations Canada (Park People was also a partner).
The program funded over 550 projects, but the demand was far greater. Over 6,000 applications were received, totalling $650 million in requested funding, showing how great a need there was–and is–for community-based public space funding.
Three quarters of the funding went to non-profits and charities, a point Community Foundations Canada emphasized in their final report: the initiative demonstrates “how small-scale innovations can have a big impact in communities to transform public spaces” and “how community-led infrastructure re-thinks social challenges and plays a critical role in providing innovative recovery solutions.”
The program included an equity guidance document prepared by Jay Pitter Placemaking for prospective grantees. This document has proven useful for other city-led granting programs as well, with the City of Hamilton referring grantees to the document in their Placemaking Grant pilot described earlier. When analyzing where grants went, Community Foundations Canada found that the communities most served by the initiative were “people experiencing low income or living in poverty, persons with disabilities, and newcomers.”
The full list of projects can be viewed on a map, but included initiatives by
This case study is part of the 2020 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.
With their impressive array of social, health, and food security benefits, amenities like community gardens have become a staple in many cities. Community food infrastructure holds even greater value in times of crisis, as we saw when provinces like Ontario, British Columbia, and New Brunswick declared community gardens an essential service during COVID-19. As community resilience takes on heightened importance, roughly three quarters of cities reported demand for food opportunities in parks is also on the rise, creating an opening for cities to use food in parks to strengthen communities.
When Halifax was hit by Hurricane Dorian leaving residents without electricity, the Park Avenue Community Oven group in Dartmouth stepped up to provide pizza to the community at a local park’s bake oven. And in response to the COVID-19 crisis, Victoria temporarily reassigned park staff to grow up to 75,000 food plants for residents in need.
These examples showcase how park-based food amenities and the support networks they create offer “an important buffer from stressful life events,” as one 2019 study found. Yet it often falls upon community groups to advocate for features like community gardens after the park is built, said Alex Harned, Food Systems Coordinator at the City of Victoria, noting that this can be cumbersome and involve competing for space with other user groups.
Instead, Harned sees great potential for cities to start integrating these amenities into the (re)design phase as “a necessity within every park, and not just an afterthought.” While Harned noted this is largely “a shift that’s yet to happen,” we found some cities are taking steps in the right direction:
Whether a garden, bake oven, or edible forest, food amenities often depend on the maintenance and programming efforts of dedicated volunteers.
Cities can lend a helping hand by providing coordination and resources, as Victoria has since 2016 through Growing in the City. Created in response to community demand, GITC supports community-led food projects in green spaces—from small-scale commercial agriculture, to boulevard gardening, to fruit tree stewardship, and more.
GITC provides support to groups at the start-up phase and beyond. For example, the city helps connect community garden groups to available land and offer start-up funding (new in 2020), but also offers $10,000 grants for garden volunteer coordinators to ensure the work remains sustainable over time and to support garden-based programming.
All of this work is overseen by Victoria’s full-time Food Systems Coordinator—a unique role based out of the parks department, created as part of GITC. Other cities are also helping to coordinate garden groups, either directly or through partnerships:
While some enjoy the labours of gardening or running a bake oven, there is a need to ensure accessible food opportunities for those with less time to commit.
One way to do so is through providing free publicly accessible produce. A 2019 study of an edible orchard in Montreal found that food bearing plants can enhance residents’ social capital, place attachment, and food knowledge—all without requiring a high level of time, skill, or commitment.
Community groups across the country are showcasing how food can create a starting point for learning and connecting with one another.
Much of the low hanging fruit is gone, but cities are finding the fruit higher up tastes a bit more interesting. Or, as Ann-Marie Nasr, Toronto’s Parks Development and Capital Projects Director put it: “Part of not having a lot of land around to turn into parks means you become more inventive, right?”
Nasr is overseeing a burst in innovative park building, including rooftop recreation facilities, parks over rail corridors, and linear parks in hydro corridors. Vancouver’s experience is similar, with designs for a new downtown park including an elevated walkway. “We need to think in three dimensions,” Dave Hutch, the Vancouver Park Board’s Planning Director said, and “use every square inch, especially on small sites.”
While the majority of the projects in this article were in development before COVID-19, physical distancing requirements have put additional pressure on cities to creatively and quickly expand public space, potentially bolstering arguments for and accelerating planning for new public spaces.
However, as these constraints push public space creation into so-called “leftover” spaces in a city, such as under a highway or along rail lines, it can have unintended effects. This includes displacing people occupying those spaces for shelter and potentially spurring gentrification.
Despite its popularity, many have criticized New York’s elevated High Line park as contributing to unaffordable housing and catering to overwhelmingly white visitors despite the racial diversity of the neighbourhood. In response, the Friends of the High Line spun out a new entity called the High Line Network to advise infrastructure reuse parks on more inclusive practices. Toronto’s Bentway and The Meadoway are the groups only Canadian members. The Network has published toolkits with strategies for community-based planning and equitable development principles, which can be helpful guides as Canadian cities embark on a new era of park building.
One trend likely to grow is building parks on top of other infrastructure, like a parking garage. These are called strata parks because of their stratified ownership: the city doesn’t own the land underneath, just the layer on top.
On its face, it seems like a win-win situation. A property owner gets to build something and the city gets a park on top. But in reality, strata parks present a number of logistical, design, and legal challenges with which cities are grappling.
The structural integrity of what is below dictates the amount of soil you can place on top, which impacts landscaping. Additionally, when the waterproof membrane separating the park from the structure below needs replacing or maintenance, the park must often be scraped off and rebuilt. These parks can end up less green because of these factors, Nasr said—an issue when cities facing climate change want to add more greenery for stormwater management and urban heat mitigation.One city that has seen rising pressure to accept strata parks is Richmond Hill. “Land value has appreciated quite substantially in the last 10 years,” said Michelle Dobbie, the city’s Park Planning Manager, leading developers to maximize land by pushing parking underground.
Aside from the design challenges of strata parks, there’s a host of legal and logistical implications, like long-term financial liability for future upgrades. Recognizing that this pressure is not abating, Richmond Hill has commissioned a study to look at strata parks and help guide its decisions on accepting this type of parkland.
Vancouver’s plans for a new park partially on top of the redeveloped Oakridge Mall shows both the promise and complexity of strata parks. The 3.6 hectare park will rise from ground level onto the mall’s roof with areas for social gathering, gardening, and sports. Using the roof allowed the city to create a much larger park, Hutch said.
The Park Board worked hard to negotiate an ownership structure with the mall, Hutch said, including a provision that park maintenance and future capital renewal are paid for and done by the landowner, not the Park Board. A first for the Park Board, this was negotiated due to the complexity of having multiple maintenance crews on site and liability if a Park Board staff person damaged the protective membrane. An operating committee including Park Board and mall staff will be created to troubleshoot issues.
As we reported in last year’s Canadian City Parks Report, parks planning is increasingly concerned with connectivity. Linear parks, trails, and other green spaces that thread their way through tight spots—repurposing rail corridors and hydro corridors to do so—are becoming more common.
One such project is the Edmonton High Level Line, a vision by a group of community members that has caught city officials’ attention. The plan proposes connecting neighbourhoods along a 4km route using an existing rail corridor across the North Saskatchewan River. It’s an idea that follows the principles of connectivity put forward in the city’s 2019 Downtown Public Places Plan.
The project envisions tying existing parks together, but also plays off opportunities on private lands. For example, property owners could develop their sites to open up onto the Line or provide amenities. “Edmonton has this great asset in the North Saskatchewan River and the River Valley…but it also acts as a real barrier,” said Kevin Dieterman, spokesperson for the group. But the project isn’t just about moving from A to B, he said, it’s “the experience that you have along the way.”
Land in the public right-of-way, such as streets, is increasingly being viewed as a resource for temporary and permanent public space creation. New designs that employ low curbs and special paving allow streets to be used more flexibly. Toronto calls this design approach “parks plus.” As Nasr explained: “If you think of it as an equation, parks plus streets equals an amazing public realm.”
However, it’s Montreal that has been a pioneer with 15 shared/pedestrian streets developed in the last five years adding to the 50 already in existence. The city’s Shared and Pedestrian Streets Program (“Le Programme de rues piétonnes et partagées”), which has developed an inspirational catalogue, supports the implementation of projects that reflect the culture of a neighbourhood, including a participatory design process.
While street reallocations have been happening for years, the practice accelerated during COVID-19. Starting in April, cities across Canada including Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, began turning over car lanes to pedestrians to create temporary public space to help with physical distancing. Advocates and urbanists have since deepened that conversation. For example, placemaker Jay Pitter highlighted the “spatial inequities” that underscore the limits of such reallocations and which populations they serve. She has called for the need to centre discussions around racial and socioeconomic inequities, and specifically anti-Black racism, as cities expand public space—a call that other writers have echoed. Rising incidents of anti-Asian racism in public spaces, for example, have also been reported in Canada during the pandemic.
Over a third of cities we surveyed reporting increasing demand for privately-owned public space development (POPS). POPS are built and maintained by private property owners, with city agreements to ensure public access. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver already have many POPS, while Mississauga, Richmond Hill, and Waterloo said they were contemplating their use.
“I think being clear about [POPS’] role and function is really important,” said Nasr. In Toronto, POPS have been used to create a more connected public realm, like a landscaped walkway or small gathering space in the front of a building, but not to replace requirements for parks. They can also help take some pressure off parks in dense areas, Nasr said.However, the “publicness” of POPS have been called into question with disputes over access and encroachment from businesses. And since they’re privately owned, these spaces could be redeveloped over time, as has happened in Vancouver. In a bid to raise awareness and promote better design and visibility, Toronto mapped POPS and produced design guidelines and a signage strategy to clarify that POPS were public spaces.
Weighing the cost and benefits of expanding parkland versus improving the parkland you have should be part of the discussion, said Chris Hardwick, Principal at 02 Planning + Design, who has worked on park plans in Edmonton, Halifax, Toronto, and Winnipeg.
In cases where land is expensive and scarce, the best strategy may be to deploy resources to improve parkland to ensure it’s performing its best, Hardwick argued. However, it’s critical for cities to get ahead of development by targeting land acquisition in areas that are slated for growth, as opposed to playing catch up later.
Different challenges exist in different urban contexts, depending on growth and demographic change, he said. Some cities are dealing with a lack of park space, while others are dealing with too much or the wrong kind of spaces. For example, Prince George reported turning underused baseball diamonds into dog parks.
Other cities are in between. They’re shifting from a more suburban style of development to higher density development, necessitating shifts in policies, financial tools, and planning to ensure new neighbourhoods have the parks they need as they grow. For example, Surrey reported land banking in growth areas to prepare for future development.
Toronto’s Nasr said that suburban malls are becoming another focus of new park development, with some malls slated to be transformed into the centres of new, dense neighbourhoods. “They’re big blocks of land in which parks become an organizing element to inform those transformations,” said Nasr.Toronto has three major mall redevelopments underway that contain new anchor parks, including Cloverdale, Yorkdale, and Agincourt. In neighbouring Mississauga, the redevelopment of Square One Mall will include 37 towers and new parks.
If you want to see a park staffer cringe, just mention dog parks. There’s hardly a park amenity more controversial than setting aside space for dogs to run off-leash in green space.But off-leash dog areas are also increasingly in demand, as 85% of cities noted in our survey, and they can provide important social benefits. However, cities are challenged to find suitable land and deal with community concerns. The COVID-19 crisis further complicates the issue as many Canadian cities including Edmonton, Ottawa, Calgary, and Toronto restricted, or closed, off-leash parks to encourage physical distancing. In May, Edmonton opened up off-leash parks as part of its first phase of re-opening. However, longer-term physical distancing requirements may challenge cities already struggling to provide enough off-leash space.
As cities grow, so does our population of four-legged friends. Many cities are under pressure to create more space for dogs, while juggling demand for other park uses, which leads to conflicts.
In 2011, Waterloo dropped a pilot to create six off-leash areas due to lack of public support and is now looking to expand their one off-leash area to three. Guelph city council nearly closed the city’s only fenced-in leash-free park due to community complaints, before reversing course. The animosity can quickly reach ridiculous heights. In Toronto, someone locked up an off-leash dog area and a resident played recordings of barking out a window to rile up the dogs.
Conflict with natural areas is another area of concern, with the potential for off-leash dogs to trample sensitive plantings and disturb wildlife. Ron Buchan, Parks Community Strategist for the City of Calgary, said that the city has turned down community requests for new off-leash areas adjacent to natural areas. However, of the city’s 152 off-leash areas, only 11 are fenced, meaning that in parks where existing off-leash areas abut natural spaces, there is nothing physically stopping dogs from heading into sensitive habitats. To address this, Calgary is working on initiatives that include a park ranger program targeted to high user conflict areas, education on habitat restoration and dog etiquette, and an adopt-a-park program to encourage stewardship.
The number of off-leash areas varies widely between cities and many appear to have been planned in an ad hoc manner. Finding appropriate sites to locate off-leash areas is difficult, especially in cities already dealing with park deficiencies.
“There are many areas in Hamilton that are parkland deficient,” Hamilton city staff said. “There is a bit of a tug of war between folks who want land for people and those that want it for dogs.” In an indication of how challenging space constraints have become, the last two off-leash areas the city created were approved by council direction even though they didn’t conform to the city’s policies on size.
A citywide strategy for managing and expanding off-leash areas can go a long way to alleviating concerns—both from dog owners and others, said Eric Code, founder of the 2,000 member Toronto Dog Park Community Group. “If you’re going to walk across a tight-wire, you need a pole,” he said. “That’s what policy is.”
We found one third of cities have off-leash strategies that include planning and design criteria for establishing and managing areas citywide. In Calgary, Buchan said the city’s decade old management plan helped “tremendously” by providing a clear decision-making framework for where and how to expand off-leash areas and clarity in responding to residents. In Ottawa, the city uses a point system to designate off-leash areas. The city allows dogs off-leash in 175 parks and in 62 others only in certain areas or at certain times, with nine of these areas fenced-in.
For Eric Code, the benefits of the dog park go far beyond being a place for his dog to play—they create a sense of community, providing a “third space” between work and home where he connects with others.
Taking your dog to the park makes it easier to start up a conversation with a stranger, Code said. You wouldn’t necessarily go up to people throwing a ball around and start chatting, Code said. But you can easily meet new people at the dog park.
“In today’s world, especially in Toronto, where life can be a bit cold, there’s a small town feeling in dog parks that you just can’t get elsewhere,” he said. The importance of dog parks for social connection is backed up by research. One study found having dogs increased the likelihood of people meeting others in their community, acting as an ice-breaker, while another study found that dogs help reduce feelings of social isolation and increase the chance of building social support networks. Dog parks have also been shown to increase perceptions of safety as dog owners use parks in the “off hours” of early morning or evening.
Some Canadian cities rely on, or are developing, programs that involve community members to fundraise for and manage dog parks—a response to both budgetary pressures and desires for greater community engagement.
After noting the city’s “limited resources,” Edmonton is studying the creation of community-operated off-leash areas to help expand offerings. Montreal’s Club d’Agilite de Montreal is run by a community non-profit that provides space for dog agility training. And in Gatineau the 1,200 member Aylmer Canine Club has an agreement with the city to run an off-leash area in Paul Pelletier Park.
But it’s Mississauga that has the most developed community-run off-leash arrangement out of the cities we surveyed. In 1997, a city by-law created off-leash zones in parks, but also placed the costs and management on a non-profit called Leash-Free Mississauga; however, in 2016 due to funding challenges as demand grew, the city stepped in with financial support.
In Calgary, where the city runs a volunteer program called P.U.P.P.Y (Pick Up Pooch’s Poo Yourself), Buchan said that dog park community groups help reduce complaints as people take on a stewardship role.
Eric Code noted that programs to get residents more involved in dog parks can be a way to harness people’s frustrations for good. It can help build a sense of responsibility, reducing incidents of dog owners not respecting the rules.
“If you make people volunteers, and give them the ability to make the dog park better, they’re going to take that much more care and pride in it.” Code said.