Park People’s Executive Director, Erika Nikolai, has been honoured with the Distinguished Individual Award from World Urban Parks—an international recognition that celebrates her leadership and the growing national movement Park People has helped build here in Canada.
Why are events in parks important? How do grants fit into Park People’s larger goals for creating change in city parks?
The emerging stream of the Park People Nature Connect Fund provides up to $5,000 to grassroots and registered organizations across Canada that connect people with nature, foster ecological stewardship, and restore urban parks and green spaces.
The scaling stream of the Park People Nature Connect Fund offers up to $20,000 to registered organizations across Canada that connect people with nature while fostering ecological stewardship and restoring urban parks.
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.
A reflection on the BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC Survey Report, exploring how Black communities experience parks and public spaces, and what fosters joy and belonging.
How do we build a healthier, greener, more joyful Toronto? We start at the park. Discover how communities across the city have transformed their green spaces over the past fifteen years. Then roll up your sleeves and help shape what comes next.
By donating to Park People, you’ll support vibrant parks for everyone.
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.
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
In June 2023, the District of Saanich introduced a new dog park strategy, redefining the ways that public spaces will be shared among people and pets.
Work on the strategy began in 2021, driven by changing needs in a growing municipality. Alongside Saanich’s population growth has come increased conflict between park goers, rooted in differing expectations of how park spaces should be used.
Recognizing the divisive nature of the issue, community engagement became the anchor of the dog park strategy, involving a wide spectrum of stakeholders and community members. Through the engagement activities, Saanich city staff sought to identify shared values and challenges that transcended different stakeholders’ individual positions.
The engagement process kicked off with public surveys designed to capture a broad cross-section of perspectives in the community. The surveys were complemented by deeper methods, including park pop-ups and community dialogue sessions, providing a platform for residents to voice their concerns, share their perspectives, and connect with fellow community members. An important goal of the sessions was to foster empathy and understanding among participants, helping to find common ground.
Open houses served as a forum for collaboration. Residents, pet owners, wildlife advocates, and environmentalists came together to discuss their visions for Saanich’s parks. Through hearing from one another directly, these diverse stakeholders began to identify common values despite their different perspectives.
A shared love for the municipality’s natural environment, an appreciation of public spaces, and a desire for accessible, safe, and enjoyable parks emerged as common threads. These conversations allowed the focus to shift from conflicting interests to the shared aspiration of fostering a vibrant, sustainable community that accommodates everyone’s needs.
The engagements also uncovered common challenges. Residents collectively acknowledged the need to protect the environment, maintain the safety and well-being of pets and people, and address the increasing demand for public spaces on Vancouver Island’s largest municipality as the population of Saanich continues to grow.
Out of these learnings, the People, Pets, and Parks Strategy took shape with a list of six shared community values at its core. These values were determined through consultations, and each recommendation in the strategy is linked to one or more of the values, transparently rooting each action in the strategy to the goals outlined by the community. The city went further to prioritize transparency with residents by publishing a detailed FAQ page explaining the motivation behind each decision.
The strategy is paired with a commitment to the development of new, dedicated off-leash dog parks. These areas are strategically located to balance the needs of pet owners and other park users. This approach exemplifies the commitment to create parks that are safe, enjoyable, and environmentally sustainable, addressing both common values and challenges.
More on this topic:
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…
In our survey, 60% of cities said that developing non-profit partnerships to co-manage parks is a high or medium priority in the next year. This strong interest is perhaps unsurprising given the benefits collaborative governance models offer, from deepening community engagement to enhancing stewardship at a time when municipal maintenance resources are strained.
Yet, the nuts and bolts of these arrangements are often opaque. Roles and responsibilities, funding sources, decision-making processes, and community involvement structures are just some of the variables that define the distinct ways these partnerships play out.
In Saskatoon, Meewasin Valley Authority offers an example of how collaborative governance can operate in a large-scale urban park. At approximately 6700 hectares, Meewasin Valley is a treasure within Saskatoon that includes land on both sides of the South Saskatchewan River, 60 kilometres of trail networks, and extensive biodiversity.
It is a rarity not only for its size, but also its unique governance structure. Meewasin Valley is managed by three core partners: the City of Saskatoon, the University of Saskatchewan and the Province of Saskatchewan.
The Meewasin Valley Authority, a non-profit organization, is the mechanism that allows the three partners to work together in managing the park. The organization was created in 1979 after the completion of a 100-year concept plan, which outlined a vision for collaborative governance to allow integrated decision-making. This is important given the park’s complicated landscape, consisting of land owned privately, and by universities, First Nations, the federal government, provincial government and multiple municipalities.
Today, the non-profit consists of a team of staff who carry out day-to-day management of the park, park programming, community engagement and park stewardship, and a Board of Directors composed of four representatives from each of the core partners. The Board focuses on policy across five committees: Development Review, Conservation Advisory, Design Advisory, Education Advisory, and Fund Development.
Establishing clearly defined roles and responsibilities through memoranda of understanding has been key to Meewasin’s success, as has refining elements of the partnership over time. The funding model, for example, has evolved over Meewasin’s history to reflect the reality of increased demands on public funds. To supplement core funding, Meewasin has expanded revenue sources through fundraising, grants, contract work within mandate areas, an endowment, paid programming and capital campaigns for larger projects.
Looking to the future, Meewasin is broadening its engagement with partners across the country and deepening its relationships with First Nations. Meewasin is currently engaging with Parks Canada in a pre-feasibility study to explore its potential as a National Urban Park. It is also part of Park People’s Cornerstone Parks network, a national community of practice that allows representatives from large urban parks with complex governance structures to exchange challenges, learnings, and engage in collective problem-solving.
Further reading:
More cities across Canada are prioritizing the naturalization of existing parkland. Converting manicured parkland into natural meadows has multiple benefits including increasing climate resilience, biodiversity, and nature connection for residents.
However, these projects have also proven controversial. For example, Vancouver’s “no-mow” pilot project, which naturalized certain sections of parks, was met with opposition by some residents who viewed the spaces as unkempt–a challenge that many other cities in Canada have reported facing.
Karley Cianchino thinks a lot about park naturalization. As City of Brampton Environmental Project Specialist, Cianchino’s job is to plan parks collaboratively with communities through the lens of nature.
Brampton prioritizes naturalization projects using its unique Eco Park Strategy–a citywide strategy that contains principles for conserving and enhancing both natural and cultural heritage. The strategy includes a helpful tool in understanding how to plan spaces, situating them on a scale from highly naturalized systems to high functioning social systems, recognizing that most places are a blend.
“If a park has a low environmental score, then we’ll look for opportunities to bring some restoration work forward.”
Karley Cianchino, City of Brampton Environmental Project Specialist
No matter how good they are, strategies have a habit of sitting on a shelf gathering dust. To ensure that doesn’t happen, Cianchino said that she does a lot of internal coordination, including a bi-monthly Eco Park meeting, as well as “casual conversations” with colleagues about new projects and discussing how to incorporate the Eco Park objectives. For example, if a park is undergoing upgrades, perhaps that’s an opportunity to incorporate naturalization work. This approach not only minimizes redundant community engagement and resource allocation but also enhances synergy between projects.
Not all of these projects go off without a hitch, however. Recently the city naturalized a large section of Dearbourne Park–the first time the city had brought its naturalization program to a busy neighbourhood park. It wasn’t received well, Cianchino said, with residents pointing out they had lost park space they used for other activities.
The city held a community meeting with residents who selected a smaller 10,000 square foot space in the park to be a programmed pollinator habitat, which would be stewarded by the community group Cianchino created with ongoing support from the city. In the future Cianchino said she wants to implement a QR code system in locations identified for potential naturalization asking residents to let the city know how they currently use the space.
Supporting community stewards will be a key part of the project’s ongoing success. Working with volunteers, Cianchino led the group’s first “bio blitz,” where residents measure the number of pollinators before the planting of native species this fall. Cianchino also works with the group to discuss what people can do in their own yards to support naturalization efforts. The core of the Eco Park Strategy, she said, is a series of linked habitats and green corridors,
“and you can’t just do that through public land. It’s critical that we educate landowners and help them build capacity to naturalize their spaces in a manner that works for them.”
Further Reading:
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.
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.
Parks are vibrant spaces where we can connect to nature, ecology, and sustainability—right within Canada’s urban centres.
Parks are also delicate ecosystems. As visitors, we all have a role to play in protecting plants and wildlife and ensuring that we leave no waste behind.
We’ve prepared this planning guide to help you plan a fabulous zero-waste event that leaves your park just as healthy as you found it.
Each community has different opportunities and challenges when it comes to reducing its waste at park events. For example, some parks may have fewer garbage cans and recycling facilities for people to use, while others may have residents who feel more comfortable using single-serve packaging when at public events.
Before you start planning your event, ask yourself:
Once you’ve determined what information or resources your community might need to support your zero-waste goal, it’s time to make a plan!
The exact details of your zero-waste plan will be different depending on your community’s needs, but the following checklist provides a handy template for you to start with.
To go the extra mile, combine your zero-waste event with engaging and informative waste education activities. For example, at Park People’s end-of-season potluck celebration, we invited participants to decide whether common household waste items should be put into the garbage, recycling, or food waste bins.You might choose to host eco-friendly workshops on topics like upcycling, gardening, or composting demonstrations, or incorporate nature-focused activities like guided walks or clean-ups.Your goal is to show how fun, easy, and accessible zero-waste activities can be!