Why the Troubling History of Public Parks Still Matters

Written by: Adam Assimakopoulos

Edited by: Sunny Bell

This past fall, Toronto’s city council has found itself at odds with a dedicated assemblage of local protestors in a neighbourhood informally known as “The Beaches.” The protests emerged as a response to a property development proposal calling for the construction of an 11-storey mixed-use building beside a local park. Community members, many of whom are members of the newly founded “Friends of the Glen Stewart Ravine” organization, have reason to believe the property development will harm the surrounding nature (Beach Metro, 2025). Indeed, as it is planned to be constructed directly at the ravine’s edge, the building is cause for concern. While the protests have been somewhat effective, they ultimately bring into question the role of local communities in park policy. At a glance, municipal public parks are gathering sites for neighbourhood residents and green spaces for wildlife. In Toronto, city parks appear to be innocently tucked between rows of houses and, in general, are associated with an innocuous locality.

In reality, this is not the case. This article shows how the public park emerged alongside neoliberal programmes for self-improvement, designed to soothe urban dwellers’ anxieties that the “city life” was destructive. The following sections consider the history of private-public conflicts in animating the city park. It examines the calculated and ever-changing dynamics among the municipal government, private investors, and private citizens. The Toronto example is a fruitful one, for protests complicate the bureaucratic dialogue that characterizes this three-way nexus. For most people, voting in elections is too infrequent an occasion to conduct “deliberate, explicit, political action” (Warf, 1991, p. 565). Thus, protests comprise a reimagination of traditional park governance.

A History of Parks

In Canada and the United States, public parks and recreation were born in the 19th century. The “twin midwives of industrial revolution and public reform” prompted the creation of many civic institutions that are now taken for granted (Gilmore, 2023, p. 32). Many of the first public park systems were run by local residents and recent immigrants, as part of a “good government reform movement” that resisted municipal politics (Foley, 1988, p. 4). Indeed, skirting public bureaucracy (which, in all fairness, is often a slow and distant process) in favour of private solutions is not new. However, this kind of private citizen complicates the duality of private-public dynamics. Motivated by community service instead of profit, the private citizen is a unique amalgamation of the two categories. A notable example is the Hull House, started in 19th-century Chicago by famed activist Jane Addams. Hull House was home to a day care center, dispensary, playground, gymnasium, concert hall, art gallery, and theatre (Foley, 1988). While not a park, Hull House is remembered as a harbinger for community activation at the local level. Situated within the American Recreation Movement (run by churches, individuals, and philanthropists), organizations like Hull House overturn traditional conceptions of public service.

Interestingly, parks and recreation emerged as private solutions to the squalor of urban life – which many believed was born out of government neglect. Indeed, limited public services often incline people toward the private sector which, while exclusive, fills a gap left by the city. The contested role of privatization is ongoing. Before the end of the 19th century, a lobby was formed for the "provision of grounds for walking” that would be accessible to workers (Gilmore, 2023, p. 33). It was believed by many reformers that play and recreation would make the city more inhabitable, preserve cultural heritage, and improve delinquent behaviour. Thus, the genesis of public parks owes to a culture of social engineering, whereby discipline and surveillance develop the ideal public body (Gilmore, 2023). Eventually the Recreation movement died, however, municipal governments swept in to take over public recreation by the 1930s (Foley, 1988).

A Theory of Public Park Governance

To advance an understanding of what this means for park governance, a theory of public park governance must be taken into account. The scholarship surrounding public parks is intertwined with geography, political science, and studies of power in shaping government services. Power is understood to be “the capacity to bring about nontrivial consequences, and subsumes related notions of influence, authority, coercion, manipulation, compulsion, obligation, and force” (Warf, 1991, p. 564). Power within politics is often exercised by and toward the government. Property owners adjacent to public parks are often the most invested in its happenings. They are said to “enforce their de facto interests by exerting their political influence; if their political influence falls short of blocking undesired development, as is often the case, the owners cannot assert any cognizable de jure property interest in the park's preservation in court” (Bell, 2003, p. 5). In other words, adjacent property owners’ relationship to parks is superficial in the eyes of the law. This is unfortunate as private citizens often contribute to the spirit of public parks most saliently.

This reveals a key problem with how public parks are governed. The lively neighbourhood zeal that is expected out of public parks is dismissed with the proposal of property developments. Owing to a widely held belief that public services should be “free from politics,” local residents are often frowned upon for mobilizing against the destruction of public parks. I surmise that this is born out of a domestication of local politics, cheerfully measured by the “perfect” family unit. Such is the case with the Toronto Ravine development, which justifies the degradation of a public park under the guise of housing ninety-nine families. There exists a pervasive notion that the planning of public schools, public parks, or, conversely, private homes or private schools, should benefit families more than anyone else. Not only does this justification aim to socially engineer a certain lifestyle, but it causes local politics to often be met with disdain. There is an underlying implication that political ideology should be reserved for municipal, provincial, and federal elections, and not for matters pertaining to city council.

It must be stressed that park-making has historically run parallel to the expansion of private capital. Not until national industry adopted land enclosure as an official strategy did universal access to parks become contested (Gilmore, 2023). Moreover, public services have taken on an increasingly private character, where governments begin to see communities as markets:

Marketing involves identifying consumer needs and desires; responding to those wants with appropriate services; and pricing, promoting, and distributing those services effectively. A consumer becomes a ‘recipient’ of service. The agency develops a service and the consumer decides whether he or she wishes to become a recipient. (Foley, 1988, p. 40)

Conclusion

Local politics govern a person’s everyday reality. The social and environmental benefits of public parks are mutually reinforcing, yet, this article reveals an embedded private character to many local services. The relationship between private citizens, private corporations, and local governments is complicated at best, and problematic at worst. Governments must work toward a public park model that is based on a public imperative (meaning for all), so as to limit the authority of property developers as arbiters of the ideal community.

References

Beach Metro News. (2025, November 10). Toronto Council to decide city’s next steps regarding proposal for 11-storey building beside Glen Stewart Ravine. Beach Metro Community News.

Bell, Abraham, & Parchomovsky, Gideon. (2003). Of property and antiproperty. Michigan Law Review, 102(1), 1-70.

Foley, J., & Benest, F. (1988). People Power for Parks and Recreation. World Leisure & Recreation, 29(1), 38–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/10261133.1988.10558984

Gilmore, A. (2023). The Political Economy of Contemporary Public Parks. In: Culture, Participation and Policy in the Municipal Public Park. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44277-3_6

Warf, B. (1991). POWER, POLITICS, AND LOCALITY. Urban Geography, 12(6), 563–569. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.12.6.563