Let’s do better with our parks

Re: Capital Wishlist — Stop Planning for the 1950s, June 30.

It was refreshing to hear from architect Barry Hobin on your editorial pages. It reminds me of how different city parkland has been integrated in our older neighbour, Montreal Island, where two- or three-storey housing dominates in a way that is denser than typical Ottawa neighbourhoods. There are lots of attractive parks. There are also not so many high condos.

More people in downtown Ottawa means the city should provide attractive parks to balance the density and the need by residents for places to enjoy the outdoors. In Montreal, areas such as Mile End, Jean Talon Market, Le Plateau, Outremont and elsewhere feature many parks with benches, fountains, play areas and lots of trees for those hot summer days. They are truly busy local gathering places for area residents.

If we are to embrace densification in this city, the planning needs to move away from the dominance of the peripheral parkland approach of the NCC, and provide for more scattered attractive parks in every neighbourhood. Small token areas with benches and a few plants are hardly an acceptable neighbourhood trade-off for allowing developers to add another three or four storeys to a proposed condo. The city needs to be more proactive as it reels in the increased taxes from multiple dwellings, and doubles or triples, taxes of recreational clubs or other existing structures close to the LRT.

Let’s not let lost opportunities — such as the Sisters of the Visitation site in Westboro — happen again. We need visionary planning.

Tim Cutts, Ottawa