As Dave Harvey retires from his co-leadership position at Park People, he reflects on the incredible journey since founding the organization in 2011.
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Explore inspiring community-led events funded by our microgrants program, from land-based learning to nature walks and skill-sharing workshops.
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This case study is part of the 2023 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.
It’s provincial legislation that amends the Planning Act, which governs how parkland is conveyed to municipalities, and the Development Charges Act, which governs how growth-related parkland and park facilities are funded. The bill has reduced the amount of parkland that municipalities will see conveyed, as well as the amount of funding to develop park amenities. It will also impact what types of parkland are acceptable in the future, subject to future regulations, including encumbered land and POPS (privately owned public space).
I think the province was hearing a lot of consternation from the development industry on different fees that are charged to build housing. There was a lot of advocacy from the housing industry showing how much these fees added to the cost of new housing. And also how certain municipalities were not spending their parkland reserves. I think that those two things together, combined with the provincial government’s desire to provide more housing quickly, is what led to those changes.
On the short term side, a lot of municipalities are looking at their capital plan and trying to figure out whether they can still afford those things. In the long-term, I would say that communities built post-Bill 23 will have less parkland than pre-Bill 23 communities, so there is likely to be a bit of an inequity over time.
It was mostly about knowledge-sharing and helping each other understand how we were anticipating advocating. Whether different municipalities were looking to advocate themselves or whether they were looking to advocate by way of other groups, like professional parks associations. There are now 12 participating municipalities represented by managers or senior park planners. People read things differently, so it was good to see how other people were understanding it and what they had heard from their sources.
We were focusing on council briefing notes and advocating messages through the Association of Municipalities in Ontario, Ontario Landscape Association, and the Ontario Professional Planners Institute who seemed to have a bit more of the ear of the government. There wasn’t much of a push to do a public campaign because the deadlines were just so quick.
They didn’t make changes to the reduced amount of parkland that municipalities will see conveyed or provided as cash-in-lieu, but they did claw back on developers providing encumbered land or POPS. That is now subject to future regulation, which hopefully will come with criteria such as land within walking distance of the site. And the proposal that developers would be able to suggest lands that are off site to be conveyed–that’s subject to future regulation as well. Those were some pretty good changes.
We also continue to hold monthly virtual forums when participants have questions or issues. Additionally, we email each other with issues that arise where we can learn from each other.
I think what makes progress is when a number of different groups with credibility on a specific matter are on the same message. So figure out the groups that are aligned with your position and then emphasize the same key messages and concerns. If you can get a sense of which groups are being listened to by the provincial government, then you have a chance of your message being heard a little bit louder than if you go it alone. Sometimes you’ll be successful and sometimes you won’t. But every small gain on the things we’re dealing with–the places where people play–is a gain that is useful.
Public washrooms are a park necessity. Indeed, in our public survey, year-round public washrooms were the top amenity respondents said they would like to see more of in parks. They are also an essential part of a human rights approach to park design—an increasingly important lens as many cities continue to grapple with a houselessness crisis.
But ensuring washrooms are accessible, safe, and well-maintained is a challenge for many cities.
In Edmonton, the city is tackling these challenges head-on through experimenting with creative approaches to enhance washroom provision, safety, and upkeep.
One of the city’s most successful initiatives is the washroom attendant program, which sees staff hired to monitor and maintain public washrooms in locations with significant safety concerns. Staff are hired in partnership with Hiregood, a local social enterprise that provides employment opportunities to those who have lived experience of houselessness and poverty and may face barriers in the job market.
First launched as a 3-month pilot in December 2019, the program has since expanded from 3 to 12 sites, employing approximately 100 full-time and part-time staff. While the first locations were in parks and public spaces, the attendant program now operates in select Edmonton libraries and transit stations as well.
“We had some washrooms that you’d be scared to go and use. But now, because you have folks monitoring and supervising the washroom, there’s been a remarkable improvement in terms of safety and cleanliness.”
Samson Awopeju, Program Manager of the Public Washrooms Strategy at the City of Edmonton.
In addition to washroom maintenance, attendants are trained in de-escalation and equipped with harm reduction supplies. There have been fewer overdoses at sites with attendants, Awopeju noted, and in some locations the overall improvement in safety has been so marked that there is reduced police presence in the area.
Another unexpected benefit of the program was that Edmonton was able to keep its washrooms open during the early days of the pandemic, when many cities were shutting their doors.
These benefits have inspired Calgary to launch its own version modeled after Edmonton’s, with washroom attendants currently being piloted in two downtown parks.
In addition to making existing washrooms more inviting through the attendant program, the city is also testing creative approaches to expand washroom access across the city.
This year, Edmonton launched a new granting program for non-profits and businesses to expand washroom access. The $5000 grants, many of which were awarded to community leagues that operate park programming, can be used to install portable toilets or cover increased maintenance costs for businesses that open their washrooms to the broader public beyond paying customers.
“It’s just financially not possible to put washrooms everywhere. And in such locations, that’s where we want to encourage businesses or community organizations to help.”
All of these initiatives feed into the city’s forthcoming Public Washroom Strategy, set to be released in early 2024. The strategy will include demographic mapping to help identify areas in the city where washroom investments should be prioritized.
The goal, as Awopeju puts it, is “to make sure that everybody has access to washrooms, regardless of who you are.”
The Don River, which runs north-south through Toronto and ends at Lake Ontario, has a long and complicated history. As The Globe and Mail points out, the river has provided transportation and food for Indigenous Peoples, been a boon to beekeepers, used as an industrial and human waste dump, was once perfumed for a royal visit, caught on fire twice, and finally was partially filled in and straightened in the early late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the words of Jennifer Bonnell, York University professor and author of Reclaiming the Don: the Don is the “most-messed-with-river” in Canada.
Toronto isn’t alone in mistreating its waterways. Many Canadian cities went on a similar crusade of burying, channelizing or filling in streams, rivers, and marshes to make way for urban development. Nature was often viewed as a thing to be tamed, rather than a force to be understood and respected.
Our survey found that 17% of cities have projects, planned or completed, to “daylight” buried rivers by restoring them to the surface, such as Vancouver’s Tatlow and Volunteer Park Stream Restoration project. Other projects approach daylighting through public art, as in the case of Toronto’s Garrison Creek, including murals that celebrate the importance of water to Indigenous Peoples.
Toronto is currently deep into a years-long, billion dollar project to “un-mess” the Don River. Led by Waterfront Toronto in coordination with the City of Toronto, the Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Protection project, aims to restore natural habitat and safeguard adjacent areas from flooding at the same time.
Waterfront Toronto is designing with natural forces rather than against them in the Don Mouth Naturalization project. By re-introducing the river’s meandering path as it meets the lake, the project will slow the flow of water, while new riverbanks are designed specifically to flood, protecting new neighbourhoods that will be built up around them. In a major storm–more common due to climate change–the Don River could see “water equivalent to two-thirds of Niagara Falls” flow down its length.
As Waterfront Toronto Parks and Public Realm Project Director Shannon Baker told Park People in 2021, the goal is not to block water or prevent it from rising and ebbing, but “to accept it and just be resilient to it in the same way that a natural system would be.” For example, vegetation was carefully selected for species that “can bend and flex and allow water to move through.” The riverbank is divided up into different sections from upland forest at the top of bank down to submergent (underwater) marsh, each with their own planting palette.
The task is gargantuan–the largest urban construction project in the country. It has involved moving and cleaning tons of earth, shaping and stabilizing riverbanks using techniques like wood anchors and shale rock, and plantings to support a new river ecology and habitats. Finally park spaces will be created along the edges with various programming, including new trails, beaches, and areas for boat launches to allow for more interaction with the lake.
In the end, by placing the rivermouth back in its natural state, the hope is that all of this engineering will be invisible to anyone enjoying the newly created spaces. While the scale of this project is enormous, it still offers lessons for other cities looking to renaturalize and daylight formerly buried and channeled waterways, reconfiguring their relationship to water from one of control to one of mutual respect.
Canadian municipalities are feeling squeezed on parks. Years of tight operating budgets require parks departments to stretch already thin dollars further as pressures grow from higher use, while land has become much more expensive to acquire—if you can even find a suitable parcel anymore.
One tempting tool in the face of these challenges is privately-owned public spaces, more commonly known as POPS. These spaces are built through private development and remain privately owned and maintained—seemingly a win-win for cities finding it difficult to provide public space and pay for upkeep.
For years there has been pressure by developers for municipalities to accept POPS as satisfying parkland dedication requirements required for new developments—a policy that some municipalities have resisted.
One park planning manager pointed out that while POPS have their role in providing open space, they are not equivalent to public parkland and it’s important for cities to push developers for the conveyance of land for public parks.
To better guide the role of POPS, Toronto mapped over 170 locations and created POPS design guidelines and a signage strategy to ensure spaces were inviting and clearly labeled as public. Vancouver also mapped POPS locations in relation to downtown parks and public plazas as part of their Downtown Public Space Strategy. The Strategy contains actions including developing a policy framework for acquiring new POPS and ensuring spaces “are designed and programmed to be publicly-accessible and welcoming to all users.”
Some cities like Newmarket, Brampton and Vaughan allow for some level of credit for POPS towards parkland dedication. Vaughan, which recently concluded a study exploring parkland dedication policies, ultimately approved a by-law change to allow for 100% credit for POPS, subject to council approval.
Park managers are, however, cautious regarding POPS. If public space is about the creation of accessible, democratic and open spaces, one park manager argued, then privatizing space seems to be contradictory as it comes with “tangible or intangible restrictions” such as limitations on uses, active surveillance, and likely commercial intentions. Where they can be helpful and critical, he said, is in the creation of pedestrian connectivity through private developments or supporting, but not replacing, a publicly owned open space network.
In Brampton, the city allows a 50% credit for POPS.
“In dense areas, you’re not going to get a community or neighbourhood park, so you need a more collaborative approach with the owners of the land and the city.”
Jaskiran Kaur Bajwa, Brampton Park Planning Supervisor
But the city is still cautious about their use and is working on POPS guidelines. “POPS need to contribute to the community,” Brampton’s former Manager of Park Planning and Development Werner Kuemmling said.
They can’t just be an open space or thoroughfare. They have to be functionally used.” Some developers propose POPS as the leftover sites in their developments “and that’s not okay.
Werner Kuemmling, Brampton’s former Manager of Park Planning and Development
This webinar features a wide range of partnership models used in city parks across Canada. From community groups to conservancies, we explore the context underpinning each model and highlight its strengths and limitations. We also take a look at the differences between Canadian and American park partnership models.
Rooted in Park People’s Canadian City Parks Report and a decade of work on park governance, we share the latest opportunities and challenges emerging in Canada’s park partnerships.
The webinar is held in English; French subtitles are available.
Dave has decades of experience working in government on municipal and environmental issues. He excels at bringing partners together and…
Jake Tobin Garrett (he/him) is a writer, illustrator and public space policy and research consultant. He was previously Park People’s…
The Vancouver Park Board is now four years into their 25-year parks and recreation master plan, VanPlay. With a focus on equity, population growth, and evolving demographics, this strategy sets the stage for investments in green spaces and ensures the city keeps up with emerging needs.
While the city now boasts more parks than it did 25 years ago, rapid densification has resulted in a one-third decrease in park space per person. To tackle this challenge, the master plan offers a toolkit for efficient decision-making, accommodating diverse needs and user groups.
What sets this strategy apart is its integration of equity principles, including examinations of intersectionality, privilege, and oppression. At the heart of VanPlay is the goal of rectifying historical inequities in park access and quality across different neighbourhoods. VanPlay positions the City of Vancouver as a leader in this area.
VanPlay employs geospatial data to identify underserved areas that require increased park investments. These areas, known as Initiative Zones, are identified through an analysis of three key factors: park access gaps, demand for low barrier recreation, and tree canopy coverage. With the option to layer additional factors over time, such as income, community engagement, capital investments, and demographic data, the Park Board can gain a deeper understanding of nuanced needs and can effectively target key policy areas.
A significant priority of VanPlay is its water strategy. Vancouver, a city renowned for its connection to the waterfront and beaches, has unfortunately buried 91% of its urban streams. VanPlay enhances biodiversity and rainfall management by revitalizing these streams and bringing them back to the surface. This initiative simultaneously creates more natural spaces in the city, provides new amenities for residents, and helps manage rainwater during storms. It is a significant win for biodiversity and climate resilience.
When it comes to public space, streets play a crucial role. In Vancouver, streets occupy 32% of the city’s land area, compared to 11% for parks. Recognizing this untapped potential, VanPlay encourages the transformation of streets into public spaces. Collaborating with Planning and Engineering, the master plan suggests the creation of parklets, street closures, laneway activations, and more to meet the growing demand for public space.
Connectivity is another key focus of VanPlay. Vancouver already boasts the world’s longest continuous waterfront trail, the iconic 28 km seawall. Building on this success, VanPlay aims to expand the city’s network of bike lanes and pedestrian pathways. The master plan also introduces “network enhancers,” such as bike repair stations, wayfinding signage, lighting, and seating. These elements not only improve connectivity but also enhance safety, utility, and overall enjoyment between destinations.
Further Reading:
As cities struggle to find and pay for new park space to meet growth needs, some argue that a shift towards focusing on quality is part of the solution.
Having enough park space is critical, but the quality of park space can greatly determine its use. Quality can be about the amenities present (or missing), but it can also be about whether a space feels welcoming or safe to people.
“We have to realize that we are transitioning to a state in which securing parkland through development will incrementally become more challenging, effectively leading to a reduction in parkland per capita over time in the absence of alternative parkland acquisition tools,” said one park manager in an Ontario municipality, citing changes to provincial legislation in Ontario that affect the amount of parkland cities receive through development.
“Which means we need to look at quality and use of space rather than quantity much more effectively.”
Park Manager
This park manager noted their city is already seeing a reduction of parkland area in development applications—in some medium to high density new growth areas, the city is seeing up to a 60% reduction in the ability of securing future parks. The reduction is much more acute in high density neighbourhoods where more and more people are required to share fewer public spaces.
While quick to point out that this change is detrimental, this manager also sees a potential positive in pushing cities to look more closely at existing assets and how best to use them.
So, what does a focus on quality look like?
It might look like ensuring park spaces have amenities that a nearby community needs and that those amenities are in good repair. It might also lie in understanding the socio-cultural dimensions of a park and whether the facilities, programming, and overall design are relevant for surrounding communities.
These seem like basic measures, and yet just 43% of cities said they measure park quality at all. Even fewer collect socio-demographic data on park use to understand whether the park is meeting diverse community needs. At the same time, 100% of cities reported aging infrastructure and asset management as a challenge.
For one park manager, part of the answer lies in rethinking the intensity of use of parkland and ensuring that we’re maximizing the potential of land and amenities.
For example, the manager noted that one of the challenges that growing cities are facing is designing for large format sports facilities like soccer and baseball, which are land intensive while limited to a single use. If cities are going to need more of these facilities to meet demand, the question is then how to increase the intensity of use in existing assets for longer periods of time, rather than simply thinking about where to build new ones, this person said.
One idea might be looking at seasonal doming of sports fields so they can be used all-year regardless of weather conditions. Other cities, like North Vancouver, are turning disused infrastructure into amenities that meet current demands, like transforming an old swimming pool into a skatepark. Other cities have split uses between warmer and colder months, allowing for once single-use facilities, like tennis courts, to be used for other purposes, like off-leash dog areas in the winter months.
All show the potential of rethinking existing spaces to ensure they’re performing well and meeting current community needs.
Park People is excited to launch the 2024 Canadian City Parks Report, our sixth annual edition highlighting the most significant trends, issues, and practices shaping Canada’s city parks.
Watch our special launch webinar to explore our findings:
The webinar features an engaging discussion on the future of city parks, with guest speakers from the City of Victoria and Greenspace Alliance. They share opportunities and challenges in their work around collaborations and partnerships, across city departments, communities, non-profits, and more.
Adri Stark is specialized in research and policy at Park People, and co-author of the annual Canadian City Parks Report.…
Joy is the Manager of Research and Partnerships at Park People and facilitates national research and network engagement that supports…
Julia is the Food Systems Coordinator for the City of Victoria. She comes to the role after over 15 years…
Nicole DesRoches, born in Ottawa and living in Chelsea Québec, part of the National Capital Region, therefore living within the…
Today Park People launches the sixth Canadian City Parks Report–and the final iteration of this report in its current form: Bridging the Gap: How the park sector can meet today’s complex challenges through partnerships and collaboration.
Last year, we dove deep into the minds of park managers across the country, interviewing over 44 senior parks staff across 30 municipalities about the trends and challenges in the industry. One of the key insights from that process was a need to find collaboration sweet spots to achieve our many collective parks goals.
This year’s report expands on that insight by showcasing collaborative examples from across the country and through collecting data from 35 Canadian municipalities, over 2,500 residents of Canadian cities, as well as interviews with park staff and professionals.
Through that process we found six key insights related to collaborations and partnerships:
In this report you’ll find:
How does the City of Victoria’s Get Growing Victoria program take a food justice approach to provide gardening supplies to communities at risk of food insecurity, including those experiencing houselessness, Indigenous and racialized communities, seniors, and youth.
How Toronto is transforming future park spaces into temporary public areas through partnerships, letting residents enjoy them now while planning for long-term park development.
How partnerships across city departments and with local community groups helped the City of Charlottetown recover from Hurricane Fiona’s devastating winds.
How Mississauga is expanding parkland in a growing neighborhood to meet future demand through a cooperative, long-term property purchase plan.
How an agreement between the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Metro Vancouver Regional Parks provides a path for shared cultural planning.
How can municipalities move from awareness to action? A conversation with Jay Pitter about Black people’s experiences in parks and public spaces.
How Waterfront Toronto is raising the bar on inclusivity through their Waterfront Accessibility Design Guidelines.
How Nature Canada is building a web of partners at all scales to help Canada achieve its biodiversity conservation goals.
Park People launches the fifth annual Canadian City Parks Report: Surfacing Solutions: How Addressing Conflict and Reframing Challenges as Opportunities Can Create More Equitable and Sustainable Parks.
Over the past five years of the Canadian City Parks Report, our goal has always been to tell a story—the story of where city parks are going and where they need to go.
This year, we took an even deeper approach to gathering these stories. We sat down for interviews with 44 senior parks staff across 30 municipalities, who generously shared with us the challenges they are facing, the projects and people inspiring them, and their vision for the future of city parks.
In the report, we weave together the themes we heard from those conversations with the data we gathered from our surveys of 35 municipalities and over 2000 residents of Canadian cities.
Dive into the pdf to read about our key insights on trends and challenges in city parks:
Discover Vancouver’s ambitious parks and recreation master plan, using innovative mapping to guide equity-led parkland investment.
Brampton leads the way with its Eco Park Strategy, a citywide initiative focused on naturalization projects that preserve and enhance natural and cultural heritage.
How the City of North Vancouver is working to better engage equity-deserving groups in its longstanding Park Stewards program, including people who are underhoused, newcomers, and at-risk youth.
The Montreal’s Darlington Ecological Corridor bridges urban and natural spaces while addressing both ecological restoration and social needs through meaningful partnerships.
A look into the logistics of collaborative governance in a large urban park with Meewasin Valley Authority in Saskatoon.
Learn more about the District of Saanich’s collaborative approach to tackling conflict over off-leash dog parks.
How cities are navigating the benefits and challenges of privately owned public spaces (POPS) through creative policies and guidelines on design, stewardship, and public programming.
Restoring the Don River’s natural flow, Toronto’s renaturalization project enhances biodiversity, mitigates flooding, and reconnects the city with its waterways.
Public washrooms are a park necessity.. Discover Edmonton’s approach to creating safe, inclusive public washrooms.
Bill 23: A conversation with Michelle Dobbie, Manager Park and Natural Heritage Planning, City of Richmond Hill.
Happy reading!