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Centre For Local Research into Public Space (CELOS)

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CELOS has received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation:

and the Metcalf Foundation:

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See also About CELOS, including our mandate

The Centre for Local Research into Public Space (Toronto)

From the Research Library main page

Current research projects

Elinor Ostrom

Governance

Ostrom workbook

posted August 01, 2010

In 2009, Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on the governance of "common pool resources" -- water, grazing lands, trees, fish, cyberspace. Her book Governing the Commons has prompted us to try applying her list of principles to eight specific park issues in Toronto. This application is being documented in an Ostrom Workbook. The question addressed in our workbook is: if park users (including on-site staff) collaborate day-to-day with municipal management in shaping local parks, can park governance in Toronto improve?

Legal and Regulatory

The New CELOS Regulatory Research Database

June 1, 2010

Toronto has a new community resource, the CELOS Regulatory Research Database.

After years of accumulation of data on parks and public spaces, CELOS has embarked on a program to establish key parts of this data in a format that is as readily accessible to the public as possible: this is the Regulatory Research Database. Moreover the database sets the stage for collaboration with others. It's a shared resource.

wading pool at Dufferin Park

Operations

City Parks

See the city parks main page for accumulating themes, including:

Parks, Forestry and Recreation Bureaucracy Project

PFR Money Watch

Finances

Recreational Infrastructure Canada (RInC) Program: PLAYGROUND PROJECTS in Toronto.

Twenty-four playgrounds in Toronto parks are getting $100,000 make-overs, with Stimulus funds. Some are obviously in need of better equipment. Others are a puzzle -- why remove good, solid equipment and replace it with new structures? Beyond that, most of the refurbished playgrounds still lack shade and washrooms, and therefore, they miss the chance of becoming community social spaces.

Here is an inventory of these Stimulus-funded playgrounds, including their maintenance history (often incomplete, since "freedom of information" requests turned up scant information). Also, here is a link to some specific problems relating to the Stimulus Funds applications and how they are carried out.

brand new: no shade, no washrooms, no water, no kids

"out with the old" -- to be removed?

Operations

making the cob courtyard
Dufferin Grove Park

Neighbourhoods

We have learned over the years that things are often not what they appear. Deeper reality offers insight, lessons, even intrigue. There is no better way to learn about public space than involvement in neighbourhoods, and CELOS has in its background relations with many communities.

An example of community dynamics is in the neighbourhood of Dufferin Grove Park. Fortunately much of the tapestry of the park has been chronicled in a monthly newsletter. This newsletter has been published in an almost unbroken stream for 11 years, in hundreds of editions, and thousands of pages of stories.

The Dufferin Grove Park newsletter is now in its 12th year. Every month there are seven pages of events and editorials about a fourteen-acre downtown park and its immediate neighbourhood. The latest newsletter can be seen on the dufferinpark.ca main Newsletter Page, and the meandering tale of urban public space is can be found in the newsletter archives back to the year 2000.