Mississauga seeks urban solution - Parkland deficiency

NRU
Nov. 11, 2015
By Leah Wong

The City of Mississauga is seeking a creative, urban solution to address its downtown parkland deficiency as the city prepares for 57,000 new residents in its core over the next 25 years. To maintain the current standard city needs at least 13.7 hectares of new parkland by 2041.

At its meeting last week Mississauga general committee endorsed a strategy for the city’s downtown growth area.

The strategy identifies how much open space is needed downtown and establishes a hierarchy of park spaces to address that need.

“We need to explore all opportunities, be creative and find these slivers [of parkland] and parkettes. That’s the way I think it needs to go in continuing to urbanize this centre,” Ward 4 councillor John Kovac told committee.

Mississauga planner Anne Farrell said challenges to meeting the minimum targets include the availability of land that the city can purchase, land value, competing development pressures and the desire of property owners to sell. To address these challenges staff are recommending a parkland system comprising various sized parks to meet the targets.

“We’re not looking for large green pieces of parkland everywhere, we’re looking for that diverse hierarchy-small spaces, medium spaces and large spaces,” said Farrell.

The city retained Planning Partnership and TCI Management consultants to develop the parkland strategy for the city’s downtown growth area-Downtown Core, Downtown Fairview, Downtown Cooksville and Downtown Hospital.

Planning Partnership consultant Ron Palmer told committee that a different planning approach is needed for urban parks, as they typically are more diverse and flexible, while the suburban park system comprises big, green spaces.

“We’re looking at an approach to parkland planning that is focused on the urban context that is evolving,” said Palmer. Residents who chose to live downtown typically do so because they want to have access to cultural amenities, job opportunities and public transit. “That is a different kind of Mississauga from 30 years ago.”

Some councillors say Mississauga is not aiming high enough when it comes to green space with parkland only comprising about 3 per cent of the land in Mississauga’s downtown. A study of existing and planned urban centres in comparable municipalities shows they average 9.6 per cent parkland. Even within Mississauga there is a differential in parkland levels between downtown-0.24 hectares per 1,000 people-and the rest of the city-1.2 hectares per 1,000 people.

“We need a couple of hundred acres [of open space] to be below average,” said Ward 7 councillor Nando Iannicca. “I want to be clear on that. We’re aspiring to be below average relative to all of these other cities.”

Farrell told committee that staff are trying to take a proactive approach to parkland, as it will become more difficult to reach parkland targets in the future.

“Land is never going to be cheaper than it is today,” said Farrell. “We don’t want to be putting this off for 20 to 25 years.”

Council has not committed any dedicated funding to implement the strategy. This will occur through annual the business plan and budget process.