Why Richmond Hill Needs Places People Can Actually Experience.
Every winter, Richmond Hill’s Winter Carnival arrives with good intentions: skating, games, community booths, and a chance to shake off the cold with neighbours. On paper, it’s exactly the kind of community-building event municipalities should champion — family-friendly, local, and civic-minded.
But if you walk the grounds — or scroll local conversations afterward — a more complicated picture emerges.
For many residents, especially younger people, the carnival barely registers. Awareness is limited. Some find activity or food charges high compared to free, sponsor-funded festivals in neighbouring cities. Others feel the opposite — that too many corporate logos turn public celebrations into branded marketing spaces rather than authentic community gatherings.
Programming debates surface too. Some want live music. Others want more children’s activities. To their credit, organizers have responded — even requiring community groups to offer interactive experiences at their booths instead of passive displays. It’s a thoughtful policy shift. But the Winter Carnival, valuable as it is, reveals a deeper structural issue:
Richmond Hill doesn’t just lack events. It lacks places designed for community life.
The Third-Place Deficit
Urban planners call them third places — the social environments outside home and work: cafés, plazas, pubs, cultural strips, music venues, and public squares.
- They are where people linger.
- Where culture grows.
- Where local businesses thrive.
Richmond Hill has parks and arenas. It has shopping plazas. But it lacks a critical mass of vibrant, walkable, programmed gathering spaces — places that feel alive beyond errands and appointments. And that absence shapes behaviour. Residents don’t stay. They travel. To Vaughan for attractions and nightlife. To Markham for cultural programming and dining.
To Toronto for festivals and arts. And when they go, their spending goes with them.
The Windshield Problem
But the issue isn’t only where people go. It’s how they experience cities. Walkable entertainment districts succeed because they allow people to slow down — to pause, browse, and discover. You notice the jazz trio playing inside a restaurant. You peek into a dessert café. You join a patio crowd because the energy pulls you in. These are spontaneous economic moments — impossible to replicate at 60 km/h behind a windshield. In car-oriented event design, people arrive, park, attend, and leave. There is no lingering.
No spillover spending. No discovery. Just throughput. And throughput doesn’t build culture — or local economies.
When Events End in Traffic
You can see this dynamic clearly during Richmond Hill’s Canada Day celebrations. The fireworks end… and the experience collapses into congestion. Families funnel into parking lots. Cars idle in long queues.
Frustration replaces festivity.
Instead of post-event energy — grabbing food, strolling lit streets, listening to music — the dominant memory becomes traffic. Compare that to walkable festival districts where streets remain animated after the main event. People disperse slowly. Restaurants fill. Buskers perform. The night continues.
The difference isn’t the fireworks. It’s the urban design around them.
Cities where you don’t need your car before or after an event are cities where events generate lasting economic and social value.
Designing for Staying Power
This is where Richmond Hill’s opportunity lies.
Creating destinations isn’t just about programming — it’s about walkable context.
Entertainment succeeds where people can:
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Arrive without relying entirely on cars
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Move easily between venues
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Discover offerings on foot
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Extend their stay organically
When leisure is embedded in walkable environments, every event becomes a multiplier.
Dinner becomes dessert.
Dessert becomes drinks.
Drinks become live music.
Time — and money — stay local.
Learning from Markham’s Playbook
Neighbouring Markham has leaned into this model.
Through initiatives like Destination Markham, the city actively cultivates experiential districts rather than isolated events.
Programs like Jazzilicious, pairing live jazz with local restaurants, work precisely because they unfold in environments where people can walk, explore, and venue-hop. The music draws you in. The street keeps you there.
It’s not just programming. It’s programming plus place. So again, the question surfaces:
Is Richmond Hill building destinations — or simply hosting events inside car-dependent spaces?
From Festivals to Ecosystems
The Winter Carnival proves the city can organize large gatherings. But one seasonal event — however well-intentioned — cannot carry a municipality’s leisure identity.
What’s needed is an ecosystem:
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Recurring live music nights
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Night markets
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Cultural and food festivals
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Restaurant crawl programs
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Arts walks
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Youth hangout venues
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Winterized public squares
And crucially — these must exist in places designed for strolling, not just parking.
Participation Over Pass-Through
Requiring community booths to offer activities was a step toward participation.
Now imagine applying that philosophy to entire districts.
Streets where:
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Performers animate sidewalks
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Patios spill into plazas
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Lights and installations invite evening wandering
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Youth spaces create reasons to stay
That’s how cities build emotional attachment — not just attendance counts.
The Cost of Being a Pass-Through City
When residents must drive elsewhere for leisure, Richmond Hill exports:
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Entertainment spending
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Restaurant revenue
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Cultural capital
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Youth engagement
It also imports traffic — as residents drive out and back for experiences they couldn’t find locally.
Building walkable leisure destinations reverses that flow.
Money circulates locally.
Businesses cluster.
Identity forms.
From Carnival to Civic Strategy
The Winter Carnival should be seen as a starting signal — not the finish line.
It reveals appetite for gathering.
It surfaces programming gaps.
It exposes tensions around sponsorship and cost.
And it highlights something even more fundamental:
People don’t just want events.
They want places to experience those events — on foot, at human speed, in environments that invite lingering rather than exiting.
A Choice About the City’s Future
Imagine a Richmond Hill where, after a festival:
You stroll, not queue in traffic.
You discover cafés, not parking exits.
You extend the night instead of ending it.
That future isn’t accidental.
It’s planned.
Zoned.
Programmed.
Designed for walkability and third-place vitality.
So the civic question isn’t whether Richmond Hill can host events.
It’s whether it will build the kinds of places where events translate into lasting culture, economic energy, and community life.
Because cities experienced through windshields will always struggle to compete with cities experienced on foot.
And right now, Richmond Hill must decide:
Will it remain a place people drive away from for entertainment —
Or become one they can finally slow down and enjoy?