National Urban Parks: Lessons for Policy, Connection, and Community

(29 July 2026)

Read the report here

The Centre for Cities has released a new report: National Urban Parks: Lessons for Policy, Connection, and Community.

In 2021, Parks Canada announced the creation of a new network of national urban parks with three objectives: advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, connecting people to nature, and protecting nature in Canada’s cities. Fifteen national parks in Canadian cities were to be opened by 2030. While — if measured by the lack of park openings — progress has been slow, the focus on creating national parks in cities was identified as a core element of the federal government’s 2026 Force of Nature strategy, and both start-up and operational funding was committed in the 2025 budget for Windsor Ontario’s park as the second national urban park in Canada.

Creating national parks in cities marks a departure for Parks Canada, whose large parks have historically been designated some distance from urban areas (where the majority of Canada’s population now lives) and been primarily accessible by car. The national urban park program was heralded as a way to improve connection to nature by bringing Parks Canada’s investment in parks into cities. It also responds to the agency’s challenging history of dispossession and exclusion in the creation of national parks by purporting to make access to parks more equitable for all.

This report of the Centre for Cities (C4C) explores a foundational question: “what does it mean to build a national park in a city?”. The interdisciplinary C4C team brings experience and expertise to this question, in areas including municipal law and policy, urban design and architecture, planning, community engagement, biology and environmental studies, GIS and mapping, arts and culture, and political science. The report is grounded in two years of community engagement and participant-observer research on the development of the national urban park in Windsor, conducted as part of the University of Windsor National Urban Park Hub (NUPH) and funded by Parks Canada.

The report has three parts. First, it reports and reflects on community engagement conducted on behalf of NUPH which explored and encouraged urban residents’ connections to nature and sought to understand barriers to building meaningful relationships with nature in the city — including the Ojibway Prairie Complex (the proposed National Urban Park site). Second, it provides suggestions of wise practice for inclusive community engagement tied to national urban parks and other similar projects, based on the experience of this NUPH engagement. Lastly, the report makes several policy recommendations for a re-framing of Parks Canada’s approach, to help guide the continued development of a network of national urban parks in Canada.

These recommendations distinguish between the foundational decisions that must be made before any city is selected for a National Urban Park, and the steps to implementation that should follow once a candidate city is chosen. Recommendations 1 and 2 establish the essential preconditions for the National Urban Park program: a clear national and local value proposition and a transparent, rigorous federal selection framework. Together, they urge a process to define what National Urban Parks are, what they deliver, and how sites are chosen in a fair, accountable, and outcomes-driven manner. These steps should be completed by Parks Canada before inviting or evaluating future National Urban Park candidate cities. Recommendations 3, 4, and 5 address process and implementation after a site city is selected: prioritizing addressing Indigenous land claims, the duty to consult, and rights and governance structures; formalizing municipal and city planning agreements; and establishing and nurturing strategic local partnerships to support long-term stewardship and learning.

Report design by Hambly Woolley