Engage and Play: Shaping Public Recreation in Edmonton is a project to develop a plan for the future of sports and recreation in our city.

This project will inform short, medium and long-term priorities for sport and active recreation programming, including capital projects and budget planning and will include:

• A jurisdictional scan of other municipalities in Canada that will enable the City to critically examine how its programs and service levels compare
• A review of the current state of sporting activities in Edmonton, as well as provincially and nationally, to gain a deeper understanding of the growth and trending of various sports to inform both current and future programming and infrastructure needs
• Community engagement, with a variety of options to connect with communities and seek feedback including in-person, online and telephone

This project will validate and assess individual preferences and social benefits of active recreation services received, and barriers to use. It will go beyond the programs and services the City currently offers and seek input on the demand for new service offerings.

With Edmonton’s population on track to reach two million people, we need to be prepared to meet the recreation needs of our growing and changing community. It's important for the City of Edmonton to hear from Edmontonians from across the city with different perspectives to make sure that people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds have accessible, equitable and inclusive recreational opportunities. Even if you don’t participate in sport or recreation activities in your community, we still want to hear from you.

We'll gather information from Edmontonians, research, and talking to other cities. We'll use this information to make plans for sports and recreation in Edmonton, both for now and the future. We'll make sure these plans are realistic and give everyone a fair chance to use our programs and services.

• Active recreational activity is any activity that an individual freely chooses to do for fun, social interaction, fitness or relaxation, and requires them to be physically active.
• Districts are groupings of neighbourhoods. There are over 300 neighbourhoods in Edmonton and they have been grouped into 15 districts based on where they are located. Districts make it easier to plan for how Edmonton needs to change and grow
• Jurisdictional Scan: Learning from others by looking at what other cities across Canada are doing well to see what we can learn.
• Sport is any competitive active recreation activity – competitive includes a contest between two or more people to determine a winner – whether for fun, or organized by a sport organization or league, includes observation of formal rules and regulations, participated in either individually or as a team, and may or may not include a coaching and / or officiating/judging component.
• State of Sport Research: Checking the trends by studying what sports are popular now and what might be popular in the future, both in Edmonton and across the country. This helps us plan for the facilities and programs you'll need.