Parks, open spaces top priority for City of Kitchener

The City of Kitchener is prioritizing parks, and open spaces throughout the city. It comes as the city is rolling out a new initiative called 'Spaces and Places' which focuses on how it should respond to placing these parks in the community.

The city's director of parks and cemeteries discussed if this meant redeveloping our current parks to accommodate people or if it was about looking for opportunities to get new parks.

“I am very pleased to add in a continued growth we see in the new development happening in the city. There are lots of parks being embedded in them,” said Niall Lobley.

With new developments popping up in Kitchener, the city wants to have parks embedded into the development. Lobley also said the older neighbourhoods are facing intensification with condo development and redevelopment of the older communities.

“Those are the areas where we see older people coming in. They see increased pressure on the park's spaces that they are in those areas there is a difference in the accessibility of those parklands depending on where you live in Kitchener,” said Lobley.

“Parks and open spaces are the things that build community build a sense of place and help people feel connected to each other and connected to a place. So really, parks and open spaces remain a high priority for the City of Kitchener.” stressed Lobely.

With that, the initiative does have two parts, a park focus, and an open space focus. The city will begin with an emphasis on open spaces. Lobley said there would be public and stakeholder engagement during the fall, and they hope to have the report to the council in the first half of 2022.

The places aspect of the initiative focuses on what people want to see in parks and open spaces across the city. That document will take much longer to develop. They want it to be community-led, which means having a lot of engagement with the community over the next year. That document will come forward in the first half of 2023.