2022 Alberta Recreation Data, Trends & Implications (August 31, 2023)
...what planners need to know
https://arpaonline.ca/resources/research/rec-survey-page/
Vlog Overiew
This free parks and urban planning vlog is intended to share my 30+ years of parks practitioner experience married with my recently completed (2019) Phd exploring park and urban planning decision-making processes using institutional theory. The opinions expressed are mine and mine alone. They are not intended to be the definitive answers or positions, but instead suggest and hopefully encourage reflection on your own practice. For more information about my vlog, and why you should subscribe, please read the vlog entitled “The Use Case for Parks Are Like Icebergs Vlog.,” March 5, 2023.
Todays Ice Structure
2022 Alberta Recreation Data, Trends & Implications for Planners (August 31, 2023)
The Background
The following are excerpts from the Alberta Recreation and Parks Survey, because, well, nobody can say it better!
The Alberta Recreation Survey is a co-operative effort supported by a provincial task force, made up of experts, and leaders in the field of recreation, and a grant from the Alberta government. As the only activity based survey in Canada, conducted every four years since 1981, the Alberta Recreation & Parks Association (ARPA) was honoured to deliver this survey for the first time this year. Over 5000 Albertans responded in 2022 and 98% of Albertans participated in recreation in 2022!
The 2022 Alberta Recreation Survey report is designed around the goals of “The Framework for Recreation in Canada”, endorsed in 2015 by Provincial, and Territorial Ministers of Sport, Physical Activity, and Recreation. This policy acknowledges the important role recreation plays in the lives of people and communities by enhancing mental, physical, and social wellbeing; and its relative importance to building strong families and communities, helping people connect with nature, and enhancing tourism, the economy, and the quality of life for all Albertans. The Framework for Recreation in Canada focuses on the following five goals:
Active Living: foster active living through physical recreation
Inclusion and Access: increase inclusion and access to recreation for populations that face constraints
Connecting People and Nature: help people connect to nature through recreation
Supportive Environments: ensure the provision of supportive physical and social environments that encourage participation in recreation and build strong, caring communities
Recreation Capacity: ensure the continued growth and sustainability of the recreation field.
Definition of Recreation: Recreation is the experience that results from freely chosen participation in physical, social, intellectual, creative, and spiritual pursuits that enhance individual and community wellbeing.
The survey had a focus on five key areas: (a) Participation of household members and respondents (b) Favourite settings for participation; (c) Motivations and barriers to participation (d) Volunteer participation; and (d) Benefits of participation.
TOP RECREATIONAL CHOICES:
Nearly all individuals and households participate in recreation, with active living and creative/culture choices being the most common.
Top individual choices include walking for pleasure, hiking, doing a craft or hobby, and attending a fair, festival, or cultural event.
Walking and hiking, along with camping, are the most popular choices, most often done in provincial and national parks in Alberta.
Top reasons for participating include for fun (70%), to relax (53%), for physical (50%) or mental (44%) health, and to enjoy nature (40%).
BENEFITS TO PARTICIPATION:
Improving quality of life, spending time with family, and exposing youth to a variety of recreation are all viewed as equally important benefits of recreation and are very important to about two-thirds of individuals.
VOLUNTEERISM:
About one-third of individuals volunteer with sports, culture or creative organizations being the most common.
Event and program volunteers are the most common roles people participate in.
Individuals spent just under five hours a week on average volunteering over the past year.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
My professional career and my recent academic research tracked how recreation needs evolved over time. Over the past six decades outdoor and indoor soccer has grown and become a prominent relatively low cost activity, ice hockey has welcomed women and moved from largely outdoor to indoor facilities. Edmonton has gone from multiple small indoor facilities to larger agglomerated recreation centres that combines twin ice, twin soccer, aquatic, fitness centres and programmable rooms and spaces. Aquatics has expanded to include wave pools, saunas and whirlpools. Outdoor skate parks and water play features were originally small in scale, and are now much larger. We have a much more demographically and culturally diverse population base than ever before.
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
As we continue to evolve our cities and towns into more denser forms of development, our private greenspaces (i.e., backyards) and living spaces will both be smaller, meaning the demand for replacement programmable public places will grow as well. Concurrently, we are faced with significant social disorder in the form of crime, drug addictions and mental illness, all of which may be mitigated by activities in part that occur on park lands by promoting and providing positive active living opportunities and activities. This is not a new role for recreation.
Implications For Urban Planners
The unique challenge for urban planners in processing land use change applications is that they manage processes with only anecdotal understandings in how municipal park and recreation services are delivered “on the ground” once the space has been created. To ascertain a holistic view of a file in planning for future park sites or modifying or decommissioning existing park places, requires a working knowledge or the ability to acquire a working knowledge from others of the following:
What activities are we historically vested in (i.e., hockey, soccer, football, baseball, tennis, skating, gardening, etc.), and what are new emerging trends and needs (i.e., pickleball)?
How are these activities allocated and organized across an urban landscape, and why or how that happens before, during and after land use change processes? What activities and amenities are required close to home? What are travel to locations?
A myriad of considerations inform the location, size and configurations on both a site and system basis in the two points identified above. What are the physical space (i.e., building footprints, field size requirements) and buffer requirements for each type of activity? What uses can be or should be combined on site with others? What kind of infrastructure is required for each. Examples include asphalt or gravelled trails, dug outs, goalposts, park furniture, lighting, performance stages, park signage, interpretative or directional signage, (playground) equipment, utility requirements, on site or off site parking, rink boards, batting cages, artificial turf fields, spectator seating, etc. Are there unique environmental or ecological needs or requirements to be protected or managed?
What are the construction roles and responsibilities, in what order and in what timeframes? What are the triggers for each stage? Who programs sites (i.e., community halls, minor sport programs, organizes and runs festivals, etc.). Who is responsible for on-going maintenance repair and major capital refurbishment?
The design, construction, programming and operations of a park and park system is a collective and on-going effort between elected officials, landscape architects, park and eco planners, operation/maintenance staff, recreation programming facilitators, project construction managers, community NGO’s, individual community members and volunteers - both state and non-state actors. The recreational survey provides a starting point for an on-going discussion and partnership arrangements that informs park site and system design, the operationalization of parks and recreation service delivery with and for the community, and how the community and serivce partners should be engaged in land use change processes managed by land use planners.
As we continue to evolve our cities and towns into more denser forms of development, our private greenspaces (i.e., backyards) and living spaces will both be smaller, meaning the demand for replacement programmable public places will grow as well. Concurrently, we are faced with significant social disorder in the form of crime, drug addictions and mental illness, all of which may be mitigated by activities in part that occur on park lands by promoting and providing positive active living opportunities and activities. This is not a new role for recreation.
My Take
I was fortunate to spend 35+ years working or studying in the parks and recreational field. All of the findings of the 2022 general recreation survey are consistent with my operational experiences. The following six points should inform and frame the design of land use change processes.
(1) Active living and culture/creative activities are almost unanimously chosen as the most important activity and benefit of recreation.
(2) People highly value recreation and their parks, in cities and towns and in our beautiful mountain parks.
(3) Parks and recreation services connect people to one another, their community and nature.
(4) Parks and recreation services contribute to physical and mental health and wellness services and benefits.
(5) Community writ large and associated recreation needs evolve and change over time which means existing spaces should be revitalized, not surplussed for sale.
(6) Parks and recreation services rely significantly on volunteers to co-produce recreation opportunities and services, unlike any other municipal government service. I would argue that provides a privileged status in land use planning for parks…but maybe thats just me.
The good news is that elected officials and land use planners can lean on the parks institution of state and non-state actors - municipal recreation programmers, operations/maintenance staff, landscape architects and park and eco planners for information and to connect them to community members and NGO’s and volunteers for input and feedback on both process design and land use changes as we collectively evolve our existing and future land uses. A failure to effectively engage institutional social actors noted herein will unnecessarily raise tensions in our land use change processes, and inappropriate charges of NIMBYs and NIMBYism or corruption. The hard data should be the starting point for a dialogue in land use change processes related to parks.