Third places in Convent Glen Orléans Wood

Matthieu Gagnon, Vice-President

The Pumpkin Alley organized by my fellow community association board member, Arnold van den Hoeven, made me realize two important things, our neighbours are generally awesome and we need more of these types of things. The highlight of the event to me was how casual it was. The park, on a regular Friday night, is a non-place devoid of people. That Friday night, it was a great place for kids to hang out. The key ingredient to this enjoyable event was, not to detract from Arnold’s preparation, people. 

My family generally spends our evenings by ourselves in our house like most people. While this is enjoyable most evenings, it would be nice to have more opportunities to have more evenings such as the Pumpkin Alley. My question coming out of the event was how to make them happen. Preferably with little to no effort and no cost. How do we get enough people to leave their house during their free time for a good time to happen. 

I don’t want to have to organize events, keep track of everything various community groups are planning,  or really put any meaningful thought into the logistics of getting to an event just so I can participate in my community.. I also don’t want the “feel bad “of missing out on rare events. 

After giving it more thought, I think we need to do two things to get these opportunities to happen more often, change people’s habits so that they look at opportunities to get out of the house and create places that would make people want to go out. 

Urbanists often refer to those places as third places (not residence, not work). A third place is somewhere where people from all backgrounds can meet to chat and spend time casually. A third place should be low key and easy to access without much thought. 

The current makeup of the community association board is a reflection of the value of a third place. Arnold and Rob have both been recruited through park visits where I discussed urbanism with them and my interest in making our neighbourhood a better place especially for our kids. Third places foster community bonds between people who would not normally interact. If we want to address the numerous issues that come with weak social bonds and isolation, we need to create more of these places. 

How do we create more and better third places in our neighbourhoods? There are two ways I can see it happen. The first is creating public spaces that can act as a third place and the second is fostering businesses that can host those informal gatherings of regulars. 

Most public spaces in our community are green spaces. However, those green spaces are mostly mowed lawns with the odd trees. Kids’ play structures show that it doesn’t take much to make them a third place. Setting up basic play structures for adults. I imagine a few horseshoe, dart boards, pétanque pitch, or even a community garden to allow adults to play while kids are on the play structures would be great. Even adding a few picnic tables or benches in a way that creates a convivial public space could go a long way (preferably in the shade and not next to a garbage bin full of dog poop).

It would allow parents to better interact and have more fun. It would also allow adults without kids to come to the park and interact with neighbours. It would also allow more kids to go to the park unaccompanied since the likelihood of familiar adults being present would be high. It would allow for the extroverted urbanism nerds to talk to neighbours and get a vision more grounded in reality when they meet with our councillor to talk about upcoming changes to the neighbourhood. 

For businesses, I think it would be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one, to create additional ones in areas that are currently underserved. There are a number of businesses that would fit the bill, like bars and coffee shops, on St-Joseph that are easily accessible to people living nearby. However, for those of us the other side of the 174 have few options if we just want to casually drop by. I was thinking that the main issue is density, but we have a fair amount of density especially in Orléans Wood. What we are missing are good locations to host those businesses. Commercial space is isolated from residential places making it difficult for people to just pop-in without driving. While the new zoning bylaw does encourage the creation of multi-use developments along minor corridors, it doesn’t go far enough towards enabling low-impact commercial ventures on residential streets. Small businesses like cafés, corner stores, or ice cream shops could be easily integrated in a single family home and serve as a third place for that neighbourhood but there are no plans to allow them as part of this round of zoning bylaw review (at least to the best of my knowledge but I have not gone through the draft with a fine tooth comb). 

As a board, we have the creation of third places in our strategic plan. We are working with our councillor,  Laura Dudas, to ensure that developments in our community follow the official plans. We are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve our public places with a focus on creating places that people can enjoy. We also plan on being more effective in engaging the business community to help our existing businesses thrive and help bring in new ones. We just need your ideas and your support to make it happen. Please help us by voicing your ideas to us and to our councillor.