Background
Winnipeg’s recreation and parks services and infrastructure contribute to the enjoyment and quality of life for residents and visitors. They improve our health and wellbeing, strengthen our communities, protect nature, and make our city a more attractive place to live and work.
Today, we are facing some difficult challenges in maintaining aging infrastructure and making new investments to meet future needs. As Winnipeg continues to grow and change, the need to make strategic, forward-thinking decisions to ensure we can deliver high-quality recreation and parks services is essential.
The Winnipeg Recreation & Parks Strategies will provide long-term vision and will present 25-year frameworks to help guide recreation and parks programs, services, policies, standards and procedures, and future investment in existing and new infrastructure.
This long-term vision is important, as the City faces some difficult challenges in maintaining its aging infrastructure and making new investments to meet future needs. Much of Winnipeg’s existing recreation and parks infrastructure is at or near the end of its useful lifecycle, and we need to find out where Winnipeggers want to see future investment.
Some factors we’ve considered in developing the draft Parks Strategy include: population growth; changing neighbourhoods and demographics; evolving needs and expectations of Winnipeggers; changing trends in leisure and recreation; limited and declining resources; expanding neighbourhoods; and, aging infrastructure.
Parks & Open Space
Winnipeg’s parks and open space encourages and promotes healthy lifestyles, cleaner environments, civic pride and urban beautification. There is currently no formal plan guiding the future growth and development of Winnipeg’s parks network. As Winnipeg grows and changes, the Parks Strategy will guide long-term planning for new parks, park expansions, and improved access to existing parks.
In association with the development of the Parks Strategy, a Regional Parks Investment Strategy will be developed to define short and long-term capital investment needs for large parks in Winnipeg like Kildonan Park, King’s Park and St. Vital Park.
Recreation
The majority of City recreation facilities pre-date the early 1970’s and are now at or near the end of their useful lifecycle. Existing facilities are not distributed equally across the city, leading to a wide variety of service levels by neighbourhood. Considerable growth in new areas of the city is creating demand for new recreation facilities and services. Recreation infrastructure must also be updated to support current and future changes in demographics, accessibility requirements, and newer recreation use trends.
