Urban Streetscaping: How Landscapers Help Shape Our Communities
Planning Your Landscaping Career
Think about the outdoor spaces you pass through every day. The trees lining a neighbourhood street, the pathway leading to a condo building, the benches and planting beds in a public space, or the park where families spend a Saturday afternoon may all be part of a carefully planned landscape.
Someone has to build those spaces.
Urban streetscaping is one part of commercial landscaping that helps turn new developments and existing urban areas into places people can actually enjoy. It can involve planting trees, installing walkways, grading land, building landscape features, and creating outdoor spaces that connect homes, businesses, parks, and other community amenities.
For the landscaping crews doing the work, the finished landscape can become part of a community for years to come.
What Is Urban Streetscaping?
Urban streetscaping refers to the landscaping and constructed features that help shape streets, neighbourhoods, and other shared outdoor spaces.
Trees and planting beds are part of it, but the work can go much further. Geoscape Contracting’s streetscapes and urban landscaping projects can include street tree planting, roadside and railway buffers, stormwater management ponds, subdivision entry features, playground features, and park development.
Together, these elements can help transform a new development from a collection of buildings and roads into a place where people can walk, gather, play, and spend time outdoors.
How Does Landscaping Help Shape a Community?
Good outdoor spaces aren’t only meant to look attractive, they also affect how people experience the places where they live and work.
A pathway can connect residents with nearby amenities. Trees bring greenery to streets surrounded by pavement and buildings. Parks and playgrounds create places for neighbours to gather, exercise, and play.
Organizations such as Project for Public Spaces explore how thoughtfully designed public spaces can encourage people to connect with their communities.
Landscapers are the people who help turn these plans into physical spaces. Depending on the project, crews might prepare and grade the site, install interlock, build landscape features, plant trees, or establish the vegetation that will eventually mature alongside the neighbourhood.
What Do Landscapers Actually Build on Streetscaping Projects?
There isn’t one job involved in urban streetscaping. Commercial landscaping crews may work on:
- Street tree and shrub planting
- Soil preparation and grading
- Interlock and walkway installation
- Retaining walls and other hardscaping
- Park and playground features
- Drainage and water management
- Equipment and machinery operation
- Landscape construction and finishing work
Some of those skills are horticultural. Others are closely connected to construction.
Geoscape’s hardscape construction work, for example, includes retaining walls, decorative entry features, planting beds and medians, paths, walkways, and other built landscape features.
That variety also creates opportunities for landscaping workers to develop new skills as they gain experience.
What Does Urban Landscaping Look Like in a Real Community?
You can see the impact of commercial landscaping across very different types of developments.
At Bower Condos in Oakville, pedestrian pathways and a central courtyard encourage residents to move through and use the outdoor space. Organic planting beds help connect the modern residential buildings with the surrounding North Oakville landscape.
At The Promenade at the Preserve in Oakville, the work becomes more technical. The landscape includes an interlock bike path, shade structures, and raised planting gardens made with dimension stone. Beneath the interlocking, a continuous soil trench gives boulevard trees the soil space they need to grow successfully.
Then there are larger community projects such as St. John’s Forest in Aurora. The development includes street tree planting, entry features, stormwater management ponds, valley planting, a park, and a trailhead parkette. Its neighbourhood park also includes a playground, waterplay area, pickleball court, gazebo, and other amenities.
Three projects, three very different finished spaces, and a wide range of landscaping and construction skills behind them.
Streetscaping can be beautiful and rewarding!
Why Do Parks, Trees, and Public Spaces Matter?
The spaces landscapers build eventually become the spaces other people use every day.
The Canadian Parks and Recreation Association supports the development of parks and recreation opportunities in Canadian communities, while Tree Canada works to grow and protect urban forests across the country.
For a landscaping crew, the impact is much more immediate. A tree you plant may eventually shade a neighbourhood sidewalk. A park you help build can become the place where local kids play after school. A pathway you install may become someone’s regular walk home.
That’s a side of landscaping that isn’t always obvious when you’re looking at a job posting.
What Skills Can You Develop in Urban Landscaping?
Nobody starts a landscaping career knowing how to do everything involved in a large development.
Experience with planting can lead to a better understanding of horticulture and plant care. Site work can build knowledge of grading and drainage. Other projects can introduce workers to hardscaping, equipment operation, construction techniques, and reading landscape plans.
Over time, that variety can create opportunities to specialize or take on greater responsibility.
Geoscape supports growth from within and provides opportunities for employees to develop their skills and advance. The company also welcomes people who are new to landscaping and ready to learn, alongside experienced industry professionals.
You can learn more in What Are the Career Advancement Opportunities in Landscaping?.
Urban Streetscaping: Helping to Build the Places People Call Home!
One of the rewarding things about urban streetscaping is that the finished work doesn’t disappear when the workday ends.
Trees grow. Parks fill with families. Pathways become regular walking routes. New developments gradually start to feel like established neighbourhoods.
Years later, you may be able to drive past a park, street, or community and know that you helped build part of it.
If that sounds like the kind of work you’d like to do, explore career opportunities at Geoscape and learn how you can build practical skills while helping shape communities across the GTA.