Toronto park space isn't keeping up with immigration-driven population growth

From the Toronto Star (Growing city lacks enough green areas, especially for new housing projects by Jim Byers, May 9, 2007):

Toronto is growing every year, but the city has failed to invest in the parks that residents need, a city council committee was told yesterday.

[Hyphenated_Canadian: Toronto is growing because Canada takes in 250,000+ immigrants a year. We have the highest rate of immigration per capita in the world. There's no need for it. Immigration is a political choice.]

A final report on what's called the Toronto Parks Renaissance Strategy won't be ready for a few months, but the company working on the concept says the growing city needs to invest more in parks and open space.

"There are issues with maintenance and a lack of repairs, but we also need new parks for new neighbourhoods," said Pino Di Mascio, a consultant with Urban Strategies Inc. "But there's no stable or predictable funding base" for the city's green spaces.

Another problem is simple geography: "We're not making any new land."

[Hyphenated_Canadian: That's what I've been saying all along. The government keeps on packing in more people in a limited amount of space. Canada is a huge country, but most of the country isn't inhabitable. The vast majority of immigrants end up in Toronto, Vancouver and to a lesser extent, Montreal. Other Canadian cities also receive immigrants but not at the same rate.]

[. . .]

Di Mascio told the Star that Toronto has a little less than 3.24 hectares of parkland per 1,000 residents, compared with 8 in Ottawa – though better than Montreal, which has just 1.2 hectares per 1,000 residents.

Those ratios do depend somewhat "on what each city defines as a formal park," he said. "Montreal might have a lot of open space, but it isn't within the parks department. The situation varies from city to city, but I think the numbers are generally pretty comparable."

[. . .]

Read all of Jim Byers' article.

See also:

Toronto is running out of space, but immigrants keep pouring in. Enough already! It's time to end this madness

Bad immigration policy is hurting our quality of life

Daniel Stoffman on the consequences of unchecked immigration

Urban sprawl: another problem that could be solved by a moratorium on immigration