Opinion: Vancouver cannot keep growing without investing in parks and recreation | Daily Hive

Kerrisdale Indoor Pool. (Kerrisdale Community Centre)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Spencer van Vloten, who is a nationally published writer, community advocate, a recipient of the B.C. Medal of Good Citizenship, and a Vancouver Park Board candidate with the Green Party of Vancouver.

Picture Vancouver back in 1888, when the city’s Park Board was first established to oversee the new Stanley Park.

Instead of towers, traffic, and paved streets, there were horses and wagons travelling muddy roads, wooden storefronts lining a young city, and vast stretches of today’s neighbourhoods still covered by trees.

It was a different Vancouver in almost every imaginable way. The population was smaller and younger, the city far less dense, and people lived and spent their leisure time differently.

Accessibility as we understand it today was barely considered, and many of the demands we now place on public space did not exist.

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Not all of Vancouver’s parks and recreation spaces date back that far, but much of the system we rely on today was built over generations for the needs of a very different city.

The challenge now is to modernize for the Vancouver we have become.

Over the past few months, I have been visiting parks, beaches, community centres, and pools across Vancouver, and the more of the system I see, the clearer the challenge becomes.

Infrastructure inherited from a smaller, younger and less densely populated city is being asked to serve a population that is growing, aging, and increasingly dependent on public space.

Vancouver was home to about 100,000 residents in 1911, 246,000 in 1931, and 414,000 in 1981. Today, more than 700,000 people call Vancouver home, and that number could approach one million by 2050.

As the population grows, more Vancouverites are living in apartments, condominiums, and other higher-density housing without private yards or gardens, with the neighbourhood park effectively becoming their backyard.

Yet the infrastructure serving this growing population is showing its age, with 72 per cent of community centres, pools, and indoor rinks in poor or very poor condition, alongside an estimated annual infrastructure funding gap of approximately $33 million.

To give just a few examples, Hastings and Kerrisdale community centres date to the 1950s, Renfrew has struggled to keep pace with neighbourhood growth, and major complexes such as Britannia face pressing maintenance and renewal needs.

The people relying on that infrastructure are changing too.

More than one million British Columbians are now 65 or older, representing roughly 20 per cent of the population. Yet while older adults make up a growing share of our population, the City’s own park-use research has found them underrepresented in many of the parks studied.

The explanation is not that they value parks less. But a park is only useful if you can comfortably use it, and barriers have been identified in public spaces throughout the city — uneven paths, inaccessible washrooms, a lack of accessible parking, and more.

Removing these barriers doesn’t just make parks more accessible; it brings more people into public life. That matters in a city where social isolation remains stubbornly common and participation in community life has declined.

So, what will it take to effectively serve a modern Vancouver – with its greater capacity demands?

For one, a more supportive city.

Under Mayor Ken Sim, City of Vancouver funding now accounts for one of the lowest shares of the Vancouver Park Board’s operating budget in decades, leaving the system increasingly reliant on charging fees and collecting other revenues to fund its services.

For another, park infrastructure needs to grow alongside Vancouver. That requires bolder decision-making and planning for growth before communities feel the strain. New housing and population growth should trigger investments in nearby parks, community centres, pools and playing fields, so recreation capacity keeps pace with the communities it serves.

We should be proud of what previous generations built. But respecting that legacy does not mean preserving it unchanged. It means doing for the next generation what previous generations did for us: looking at the city around us and building public spaces capable of meeting its needs.

Vancouver’s parks have served generations remarkably well; now we need to make sure they are ready for years to come.

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