Assessing Recreational and Leisure Needs Part II (February 23, 2024) - Free Vlog

"All change is not growth, and all movement is not forward." (American Novelist Ellen Glasgow)

VLOG Overview

The "Parks Are Like Icebergs" vlog is a comprehensive exploration of urban parks, including urban parks planning, design, construction, programming and maintenance. The vlog marries the creator's extensive experience as a parks practitioner for over 30 years with their recently completed PhD in parks planning decision-making using institutional theory. The vlog's intended audience is quite diverse and includes elected officials, planning professionals, landscape architects, community engagement practitioners, recreationists, academics, and community social actors. Please feel free to subscribe to review 35+ past vlogs and each new one as they arrive!

The vlog shares underlying park planning and park service operationalization factors whose visibility is seen (e.g., park furniture, playgrounds), obscured or opaque. Visibility can be limited by accident, by circumstance or by design for well intended reasons or ill intended purposes by administrators, elected officials or the community.

Finally, my reflections are not neutral, and most often take a community focussed perspective (vs economic development focus). Any practitioner who tells you they are truly agnostic are consciously or unconsciously misleading themselves or others. My vlog strategy is to contextualize the perspectives of my own and others. Also, I like to have fun… hence my inclusion of memes and doggo pictures! Happy reading!!!

Todays Ice Sculpture: Recreational and Leisure Needs Part II

Part I describes the depth and nuance you need to provide to understand the contribution of parks, recreation and leisure in sustainable city development. Part II describes the nuts and bolts of undertaking such analysis. Need assessments are a collection of data matching of community, physical social and cultural characteristics with their leisure needs, asset access, asset maintenance status, and leisure trends. Need assessments are based on cyclical timing - the past, the present and the future.

A. Data Collection

A “Visual” Site Description

Site Description includes location, activities, buildings, parking, landscaping, park furniture, etc.

Following my previous vlogs, this information is the portion of the iceberg above the water. What do you see? You are likely to see a relatively flat rectangular site with housing on one or two rows of housing that back on to the park. There may be one or two schools, and possibly a community hall with one or more playgrounds. There will be trees and shrubs, lighting, walkways, signage and park furniture located such that they support the activities supported on site designed to maximize use of the site. Below is a graphic of the Blue Quill School and Park site.

Property Information

Property Ownership is found on the land title(s) associated with the park site. It may include singular or multiple oddly shaped lots, and may include land owned by a school board. These titles registered with the Alberta Government Land Titles Office. Property titles provide the owner unique rights and obligations. Below is an example of the Blue Quill School and Park site.

Liscense or leased areas. Portions of a park site may be leased or liscensed to qualifying not-for-profit organizations (i.e., community leagues, sports organizations). The portions leased or licenced uses must be consistent with teh MGA and the zoning bylaw. These organizations pay for capital and operational/maintenance costs of the area and building contained therein (if applicable). Agreements are renewed on a set schedule, and are legal agreements outlining roles and responsibilities, and may be modified as needs change.

Zoning. Each activity that occurs in a park site must be consistent with the zoning bylaw approved by Council. Bylaw designations are unique to each municipality, can be modified periodically, and are typically provided on the web site of the municipality.

This type of information shapes the use and legal obligations of the site, by site partner, while pointing to groups and organizations that should be consulted in park or land use change. All three are legal documents, often written in legalese or planner speak.

Policy Considerations

Park Type by Park Classification. What activities are currently provided and what might change through your review process. If so, are those activities permitted on the site. This information is identified in a parks master plan. Edmontons current plan is Breathe. The previous plan was called the Edmonton 2006-2016 Parks Management Plan.

Like roads and utilities, parks are planned on a system basis in area planning processes, not a site or title basis. Each park site is policy-wise located in a park system with specific activities accommodated, roles and responsibilities. A change in uses should be consistent with the parks classification system, or understand why, and the implications of such change. Two examples (among others) demonstrate this issue. Constructing an additional playground on a park site may be beyond the operational capacity of the municipality and require a maintenance agreement with the proponents. Removing a sports field for a community garden or housing complex will eliminate a recreation service already provided and used by the community.

Program Standards

Amount of land defined by program. Most municipalities assemble land based on program need, allocated across an urban landscape approved in an area plan. The Program examples may include natural areas, school lands, active park space, passive park space, trails, indoor recreation facilities, etc. There are sub-categories of each one (i.e., neighbourhood, district, city, region, school by grades, etc). . Combined, these programs combine into quantitative standards or guidelines.

Quantitative standards are useful when establishing new area plans using the 10% reserve dedication for parks, in areas where the park network have not been yet established. Unfortunately, new area plans a paper plans for the future, absent any real understanding of the characteristics of future populations or recreational needs of the future. To see an example of such quantitative standards, review the appendicies of Edmontons 2006-2016 Urban Parks Management Plan appendices, or consult with your local municipality.

In practice, acquisition standards provide a point of departure to assess recreation needs anchored in legislation. In Edmonton you will see older parts of the city near the downtown (mature areas) that are less affluent tend to have less park and school lands (i.e., less than 10% of the GDA). Suburban areas with park lands assembled in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s have more land than the 10% normally dedicated to parks, and suburban areas since then have relied on the 10% reserve dedication for school and parks, and have now included natural areas within them. These variations are artifacts of the legislation of the day. Regardless of the area, need assessments should focus on met or unmet community needs, that then can be translated into a land area need. Program drives design!

People Considerations

Demographics include total population, as well as who lives here in terms of age, culture, language, income, renters vs owners, tenure, and education? How do those proportions compare to city wide numbers?

Special Need Populations. Are there any group settings that are housed or located in the neighbourhood, particularly those that are adjacent to or in close proximity to the park? These populations could include senior, low income, disabled, at-risk youth centres, mental health housing or community service centres. These populations should influence park amenity options and also offer programming opportunities.

Comparison with city wide averages can help you to ensure public input activities engage with populations with unique needs. For example, a greater proportion of existing or planned seniors would suggest more passive than active opportunities including park furniture and shade. Two income families may require childcare in community halls. Disabled populations may require unique amenities, such as special walkways or playground surfaces. Neurodiverse populations may require the similar programs as neurotypical children but at special programming, delivery of opportunities at different times, or unique settings (i.e., quiet). Low income populations may require low or no cost programs in community halls. At risk youth may require more and diverse planned programs to hold their interests. Greater proportions of a particular culture may point to the opportunity to provide specific recreational or cultural events.

Site Use and Users

Site Use. There are two kinds of community: geographical communities and community of interest (i.e., minor sports, schools, community gardens, etc.). Community of interests include field sport communities, community hall users, and schools. Communities of interest may be populated by people who live outside the neighbourhood, and as such are impacted by park or land use change. A collection of data likely exists in the records of the municipality (i.e., field booking data), the school boards (i.e., program, school attendance figures) and community league records (i.e., hall rentals, special events, etc.) or other community organizations (i.e., minor sports, culture groups, etc).

Actual Site Observations. Data collection on municipal parks, similar to those collected on our other large form of public lands - roadways, rarely occurs. Such studies should be done on a seasonal basis to see what populations are served by what amenities or opportunities. Short semi-structured interviews would collect use and need data live while they use the site. Special events could be used as an opportunity to collect data as well. Either or both the latter two could be used to probe where the respondents reside and why they prefer to use this site, or others.

Community needs evolve over time. Not unlike roadways and utilities, on-going monitoring of site use and users is required to understand how well amenities are serving the community. This is not simply counting the number of users, hence the semi-structured interviews. Community needs identified in the original area plans approved decades earlier must be re-evaluated whenever a park or land use change is contemplated.

Maintenance and Operations

Maintenance Assessment. Most municipalities have a structured approach to both operational maintenance (i.e., mowing cycles, furniture repairs, playground inspections, tree trimming, etc) and a system that tracks amenity age and repair status for capital replacement. The former is captured in an operating budget, the latter in a capital budget. When park land amenity change is proposed, an assessment may have already been done, and should be updated for a specific change. A maintenance assessment requires specific technical and professional knowledge that typically resides in your municipal government operations (i.e., programmers/recreationists, turf, park furniture, horticultural operations staff and landscape designers.

Poorly maintained fields, playgrounds, walkways, tennis courts, etc will impair use and give a potentially false conclusions about community need. A flooded playground impairs use and may point to underlying drainage issues. A weedy sports field may not be booked by sports groups out of concern for user safety. A metal slide on a playground may not meet todays safety standards. An icy walkway caused by poor drainage patterns may be unusable for those with mobility challenges. Deteriorating park furniture may cause injury to users. Tree roots pushing through hard surfaces or old surfaces more generally will be a tripping or biking hazard. Aging or diseased trees are a safety hazard for nearby users. Site or walkway lighting if not operational will not providing users the safe walking environment they were intended to provide, particularly in the winter. Winter sport activities (i.e., skating rinks or trails) may cause the underlying turf to be rough, trippy, and unsafe for use in the spring winter or fall.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Social Disorder/Crime

Police statistics track both the type of crimes and locations, particularly in and around parks and are readily available. Homeless populations have taken up temporary residence in parks and other public spaces. Interventions to address this issue is on-going, and while not a parks issue per se, a much broader solution is required to address the root causes (i.e., income, addictions, mental health, etc).

A park that is deemed unsafe, irrespective of the actual data, will be under utilized. Sight lines can be modified (i.e., trees trimmed) to improve visibility into and out of the site. One of the best interventions to improve park safety is to program the space more frequently, driving nefarious actors away. Partnerships with protective services or social service groups could see more patrols or deliberate site monitoring.

Trends

What activities are growing or declining in interest, what new or different programs or policies are being pursued? Changing needs should impact what activities are supported or not supported in our parks and school sites.

In recent years there has been significiant growth in some sports (i.e., pickleball), indoor gymnasium/field houses). Ice sports has evolved such that female participation has exploded in hockey, which has both propped up the ice hockey numbers and may require physical changes to dressing rooms and washrooms. Edmonton and other northern cities have pushed winter city programs to take advantage of our existing green spaces, which may impact or even replace summer uses. As our population culturally diversifies new or different recreation needs will be expressed (i.e., cricket). School delivery has changed to accommodate additional special purpose or charter schools (sports, culture, language, pedagogy), meaning more vehicular traffic from across the city into a neighbourhood. Activities previously outdoor (i.e., soccer) are now year round sports accommodated in recreation centres. Community gardens on parks have exploded in Edmonton, contributing to both community cohesion and food security. Naturalization of spaces for environments could replace some of manicured spaces to both reduce maintenance costs or add to the contribution of land to the ecological goods and services provided by park. This is not an exhaustive description…they are too numerous to catalogue here.

B. Collective Data Synthesis and Analysis

In previous vlogs I have said that need assessment is part art, and part science. The above is a relatively exhaustive data collection to give a sense of a proposed land use or park land activity change. A need assessment should be scaled to the proposed or potential change.

A loss of park lands should engender a more full throated comprehensive analysis developed with and for the community to see how the loss impact, irrespective of the benefit of another use. Only then could the two uses be compared.

At the other end of the spectrum is a a replacement of an existing asset with the same would be less, except to verify that the existing type of asset is still desired.

A more common change is an existing park use replaced with another. For example, a community garden is proposed to replace a sports field, a pickleball court is proposed to replace a tennis court, a grassed passive space used for suntanning, picnicing, unstructured play (i.e. catch) etc is proposed to be naturalized.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Approach these exercises like putting together a puzzle. The information is both qualitative and quantitative, with an emphasis on the former. There is no single right or wrong answer. You need to put together the pieces together with professional expertise and community volunteers sharing insights and perspectives, then have it vetted by the broader community of users on a site by site basis. Each park site is unique in its role within the broader park system and its users, local or otherwise. All impacted users must be consulted, not limited to public notice of outcomes of process. Time is of the essence, but don’t confuse speed with precision. That only works politically.

C. Key Takeaways

We live inside a labyrinth of tensions like a complex venn diagram with you stuck in the vulnerable middle. Things are moving too fast, too many demands, growing levels of income disparity, rising inflation, evolving cultural diversity, sometimes on top of feelings of existential dread about our climate, nuclear threats or world wars. All of this…fanned by social media hysteria inflated by political “leaders” for their own personal gain. Personal vulnerability can be expressed as islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, mental illness, rising rates of obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, and homelessness. Our sense of the collective has deteriorated. The good news is that our parks, public spaces and river valleys have never been more important and relevant. Public spaces are an Rx, or “the” Rx, for an ill citizenry and ill climate, and support economic outcomes as well.

Stop…slow down…look…listen… be Taschia!

My poem in Part I of this vlog provides insight into the nuances of understanding community needs, as well as the benefits and outcomes. It was intended to demonstrate how multiple benefits fuse to improve individual health and wellness. We need to understand the micro to scale up to the macro setting (i.e., individual →local neighbd→community of interest→district→city→region), then back down to the micro. This means we must ask the right questions to the right people at the right time, sharing accurate knowledge and perspectives. We need to connect to nature, our friends, neighbours, co-workers and friends not yet made. Short cuts to accommodate socially constructed reviews timelines (i.e., legislation, processes, policy) preclude or eliminate understanding of community needs. (This is particularly true when using only quantitative measures of open space to measure need…but I digress).

All change is not growth, and all movement is not forward.

Ellen Glasgow

Slow down, collect data from the community, share perspectives with professionals and collectively develop strategies to make positive change on a site by site basis. Rushing land use change processes without this level of “need” understanding will result in well-intended initiatives aimed at combating the larger social ills of society on parks and elsewhere be mis-directed, limited or frustrated. Moreover, they will continue to erode trust in government.