Creating Healthy, Age-Friendly Communities in Rural Canada-Grey County

Written by Kim Perrotta

Tucked under the scenic southern shore of Georgian Bay in Ontario, Grey County is home to nearly 100,000 people who live in dispersed housing across 4,500 square kilometres of rural areas and small urban centres. Owen Sound, with a population of 22,000 people, is the County’s largest urban centre. 

“About 10 years ago, the Health Unit began cultivating relationships with our municipal partners, in particular the Planning Departments in Grey and Bruce Counties, because our counties have high rates of obesity and chronic disease. For example, the rate of cardiovascular disease deaths is 27% higher in Grey and Bruce Counties than the provincial average,” said Jason Weppler, Program Manager, Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention, Grey Bruce Health Unit. “To some extent, these health statistics reflect the fact that both rural counties have older populations.” 

About 24% of the people in Grey and Bruce Counties are over 65 compared with 17% of Ontarians. And that difference is not expected to change over the next 20 years. But other factors also contribute to higher rates of chronic disease. 

“With no transit, dispersed housing, and small urban centres that were not developed with “walkability” in mind, people in these counties have had fewer opportunities to maintain the levels of physical activity needed for good health. These are issues that can only be addressed by looking at how we design and develop our communities,” Weppler said.

In light of these trends, the County and Health Unit have been collaborating to create healthy, age-friendly communities. In the early years, the planners and public health professionals worked to understand one another’s goals and processes. More recently, they have cultivated relationships with engineers and developers in the County, particularly around issues related to transportation systems.  

“As Planners, we don’t necessarily have training in the social and environmental indicators of health so we didn’t understand how community design might influence physical and mental health in our communities. It has been helpful to work with the health unit to understand their goals and to get their help shaping our policies,” offers Scott Taylor, Manager of Planning Services, Grey County. “It has been particularly useful that these conversations are also happening at all levels of staff in our organizations and at the Board of Health where the Medical Officer of Health has been working to educate the mayors and deputy mayors about the links between community design and public health.” 

Grey County’s new Official Plan, approved by the Province in 2019, reflects the inter-sectoral collaboration that has occurred in Grey County. It includes a number of over-arching policies, and many very specific policies, that aim to encourage the development of age-friendly, healthy communities. It identifies the need to promote active transportation infrastructure including pedestrian furniture, safe and accessible public open spaces, access to green space, access to healthy affordable local foods, and development for all ages and abilities, and residential intensification, while limiting exposure to environmental hazards. 

To achieve these goals, the Official Plan commits the County to considering a wide variety of transportation modes when designing its roads. It indicates, for example, that the County will consider paved shoulders for all County roads to support cyclists and other alternate modes of travel. It also considers the connection of existing and future trails, sidewalks, and paved shoulders throughout the County, acknowledging the health benefits of a connected active transportation network.

Wanting to see these recommendations implemented in each new build, the two Counties and the Health Unit provide a Healthy Development Checklist to developers at the front end of the development process so they can integrate healthy community designs into their projects. It recommends supporting mixed land use by integrating a variety of residential development within 800 metres of retail, recreational centres, parks and public spaces; preserving urban forests and dedicating no less than 5% of the total proposed land area to outdoor public spaces; and designing neighbourhood blocks that are less than 250 meters in length.

One result of the County’s focus on transportation is that infrastructure will be dramatically expanded in the coming decades. A new Cycling and Trails Master Plan was created in 2020 to complement the Official Plan and recommends developing 733 km of cycling and trail facilities over 20 years with 120 km in paved shoulders and 249 km in signed routes to be developed over the first 10 years. 

In partnership with students from the Urban and Rural Planning program at the University of Guelph, Grey County also developed Healthy Community and Residential Guidelines to encourage planning and development stakeholders to create connected, pedestrian-friendly, healthy communities that support physical activity. For example, it recommends a 400 metre walking radius to parks.   

“The years of education and collaboration are paying off,” notes Scott. “We have seen a change in the attitudes of elected representatives. When projects are proposed now, they are consistently asking important questions such as: ‘where are the parks? Where are the trails/sidewalks?’. There is a feeling across the County now that we are all working towards similar goals.”

Increasing Vegetation to Improve Health in Low-Income Neighbourhoods in Montreal

Written by Kim Perrotta

For six years, the Local Interventions in Environment and Urban Planning (ILEAU) program has been working to green the east side of Montreal.

“Many of the residents in the east end of Montreal are disadvantaged populations; they are people with lower incomes or newcomers to the country for example,” said Nilson Zepeda, Campaign Coordinator for ILEAU. “They have a life expectancy that is 10 years shorter than the average for the city.  This makes them more vulnerable to extreme events such as heat waves. In addition, these neighbourhoods get hotter and stay hotter longer than other neighbourhoods in Montreal because there are fewer trees, less vegetation and more pavement and concrete.” 

The ILEAU program is run by the non-profit organization, Montreal Regional Environmental Council (CRE-Montréal). Since it began in 2015, it has received $1.2 million from the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) which it uses to employ 2.5 staff and support a wide range of interventions by collaborating with local and regional organizations.

“We are interested in funding projects that address the health and social needs of our partners as well as our green objectives”, explained Béatrice Viens Côté, the Communications and Marketing Officer for ILEAU. “For example, we funded a project at a housing co-op that involved lifting pavement, planting trees, and creating a space where residents can meet and socialize.  This intervention promises to foster social engagement and a sense of community which can improve the mental and physical health of the residents, while also providing shade and reducing the temperature in and around the buildings.”

One initiative ILEAU funded aims to create two major links between the St. Lawrence River and the Rivière des Prairies to provide both an ecological corridor that can strengthen biological diversity and an active mobility corridor that increases neighbourhood resiliency and access to green space. Another project aims to develop safe and user-friendly bus stops and transportation access points by organizing participatory urban planning activities such as exploratory walks and community workshops. ILEAU is also supporting the development of cycling infrastructure to provide an alternate transportation option where residents are poorly served by public transit.

Evaluating a project such as ILEAU is difficult because it may take many years to see the full impact of planted trees and connected nature corridors on the physical environment, local ecosystems, and the health of local residents. However, the benefits of these actions will be felt for decades. In the short-term, ILEAU has documented its impact with measurable actions. Over the last six years, its staff have:

  •  Convened 450 meetings with stakeholders
  •  Cultivated 60 local and regional partners
  • Collaborated on projects with 26 schools and daycares, 71 companies, and 200 property owners
  • Completed 202 field projects
  • Removed 3,058 square meters of asphalt
  • Planted 31,840 trees and other plants
  • Engaged 206 citizens in seven citizen campaigns
  • Leveraged almost $1.2 in cash and in-kind contributions from partners and owners
  • Organized 15 exploratory walks (foot + bicycle) in collaboration with local stakeholders around public transport hubs, health establishments and greenspaces
  • Co-produced and launched the Guide “Reinventing the wait for the bus” with the University of Montreal and Concordia University
  • Produced 50 newsletters, 40 press releases, and generated 150 media reports (television, radio, newspapers, etc.)

“With all of the projects funded, we have worked closely with our partners who know their needs better than us, to find interventions that meet their needs as well as ours.  We are particularly interested in interventions that address social inequities that contribute to poor health in these neighbourhoods” noted Nilson. “With this collaborative approach, we have also been able to match our funding with $1.4 million in cash, and some in-kind funding, from our partners over the last six years.” 

All photos courtesy of ILEAU.