Common Grounds recognizes that limited financial resources and growing development pressures can challenge the ability of municipalities to provide adequate supplies of parks and natural areas. To help overcome these constraints, Common Grounds offers professional workshops that promotes creative, partnership-based approaches to protecting and stewarding green spaces in urban and urbanizing areas.

Developed for municipal staff (including planning, parks and recreation, engineering, finance, health and community development departments); elected officials; environmental consultants; community leaders; corporate land owners, developers and others, this project highlights effective but often underutilized tools for “getting more green.” Our experienced facilitators help participants work through the challenges they face when implementing new programs, policies, or green space protection strategies, and inspire them to develop creative, homegrown solutions.

Topics include:

Urban Green Space Planning: Meeting the Growing Demand
This session explores opportunities to protect more and better public green space. Emphasizing innovative, collaborative approaches, this workshop takes an in-depth look at successful planning tools, partnership strategies and best practices to protect and enhance public green space.

Urban Development: A Green Space Opportunity
By presenting innovative case studies from across North America, this workshop explores opportunities for green space protection at various scales, from the neighbourhood context to a regional perspective, and provides clarity about which green space planning tools work where.

Building Strong Stewardship Programs
This workshop covers the mechanics of designing and delivering community stewardship programs that build social capital and increase municipal capacity to manage public lands. The session covers issues of financing, partnership building, influencing policy, and managing environmental volunteers.

Green Space Animation: Breathe New Life into your Parks and Public Spaces
This workshop will help your community develop a plan to revitalize public open spaces. Covering the principles of great place making, and drawing on examples from across North America, the session will encourage lively discussion, innovative thinking, and collaborative approaches to green space animation.

Meeting Local Needs: A Customized Workshop
Talk to us about developing a workshop to address your community’s particular green space challenges. Tapping into Evergreen’s expertise in stakeholder consultation, strategic planning, policy development, volunteer management and environmental restoration, we can design a session that meets your needs.

We take a flexible approach to scheduling, fee structures, and workshop content. Contact us for more details, and to start planning a Nature of Cities workshop that meets your community’s green space needs.

Recent Workshops

• Healthy Green Spaces in the Town of Oakville, November 2008
  The goal of this workshop was to support, coordinate and improve the Town of Oakville’s effectiveness to protect and enhance our natural environment, as a strategic goal of Council.
  
   
• Building a Sustainable Downtown in the City of Pickering, June 2007
  Based on community consultation undertaken by Evergreen this workshop explored the contributions that healthy green spaces can make towards a sustainable downtown and opportunities to make them vibrant through creative design and programming.

Nature of Cities Regional Workshop Series

Evergreen has developed a series of workshops to municipal staff, consultants and community leaders. The aim is to promote policy and program changes and increase local partnerships to better protect and restore natural urban green space. The sessions profiled innovative partnership-based tools that have been successfully adopted by municipalities in Canada and across North America. These case studies were augmented by Evergreen’s own 14 years of experience working with municipal partners on diverse urban greening projects. Topics covered:

• green space economics –how green space can revitalize local economies and strengthen the municipal tax-base
• community naturalization – how municipalities are harnessing the energy of local residents through comprehensive community stewardship programs
• land sharing – how municipalities are expanding their networks of parks and greenways through corporate and institutional partnerships.

Workshops were delivered in the following regions:

Alberta, 2005
Sessions were held in Calgary, Lethbridge, Red Deer and Edmonton. The series was endorsed by the Alberta Association, Canadian Institute of Planners and the Canada West Foundation.

British Columbia, 2004-2006
Sessions were delivered in:

• Abbotsford
• Central Saanich
• Colwood
• Coquitlam
• Delta
• Gibsons
• Highlands
• Langford
• Mission
• Nanaimo
• North Saanich
• North Vancouver
• Richmond
• Sechelt
• Sooke
• Squamish
• Sunshine Coast Regional District
• White Rock

The series was endorsed by the Victoria Chapter of the B.C. Society for Landscape Architects. And supported by: Smart Growth B.C., Planning Institute of British Columbia.

Ontario, 2004
Sessions were held in London, Hamilton, Kingston, Ottawa, Clarington and York Region. This series was developed in partnership with the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and endorsed by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.