Darlene Pearson
On a trip to Plateau Montreal this past fall, I discovered new additions to one of my favourite haunts: a vibrant small city park that serves many purposes.
Place des Fleurs-de-Macadam offers a beautiful combination of trees, public seating, rock fountains that provide cooling mist, public art, and innovative plantings. This park was also primarily designed to be a “sponge park.”
What is that, you may ask? A sponge park is designed to help absorb rainwater naturally. Inner-city neighbourhoods such as Centretown have a lot of impermeable asphalt and concrete surfaces. When it rains, water runs off these hard surfaces into storm drains. When rainfall amounts are more than our stormwater systems can handle, we get the street and basement flooding that Ottawa has experienced in recent years.
Sponge parks are an additional tool to help divert some of that water from overburdened infrastructure. Montreal is also installing “sponge sidewalks” for a similar purpose, and I saw many examples on my walks in the Plateau Montreal. In that case, concrete or pavement along city streets is replaced by areas of plants and shrubs.
Montreal has embraced the idea of sponge parks and sidewalks. By 2025, it will add an additional 30 sponge parks and 400 sponge sidewalks.
Sponge parks and sidewalks are part of a suite of options known as nature-based solutions (NBS). They include actions ranging from wetland restoration and tree planting to community gardens and green roofs.
Cities in Canada and around the world are using NBS to help mitigate the effects of climate change. One appealing aspect for cash-strapped cities is that natural assets are often more economical than engineered solutions, and are a more sustainable way forward. Cities are using NBS to address climate risks, create more liveable cities, and decrease the need for engineered assets that have higher acquisition, maintenance, and replacement costs.
Local initiatives
So, what is Ottawa doing?
The city’s free Trees in Trust program and the mayor’s pledge to plant more trees are all examples of NBS. The many benefits of trees are well known: shade from heat, water absorption, cleansing the air of pollutants, species habitat, and increased mental health, not to mention their aesthetic value.
As well, the city’s Rain Ready Ottawa program supports and encourages residents to take action on their properties to address rainwater runoff. Actions include building rain gardens and installing permeable driveways. This pilot program is so popular that it is oversubscribed in the priority areas to which it is currently restricted. There have been numerous calls by residents to expand the program.
We can do more in Centretown
I predict we will hear a lot more about NBS in the months to come. The concept is easy to understand, and working with nature provides an appealing hands-on experience that shows demonstrable results. On a city level, NBS offers potential cost savings, and allows nature to help overburdened infrastructure, while providing an aesthetic advantage to boot.
When I see the Montreal example, I wonder why more cannot be done here in Centretown. We need city managers and employees who know and understand the opportunities and benefits of NBS.
We also need a supportive mayor and council that will implement their 2023-2026 strategic priority to make Ottawa “a city that is green and resilient.”
As citizens, we too can push for more action to protect us from the predicted effects of climate change and ask for more visually pleasant places to walk that provide relief from too much concrete and asphalt on those hot summer days. The pictures say it all.