🪦 As urban centres in Ontario expand, real-estate markets surge, and remote-work trends encourage people to move to smaller municipalities, more cemetery land will be needed to accommodate the dead. I asked cemetery operators and an environmental planner about capacity. [1/10] 
https://twitter.com/TheAgenda/status/1380258990102343687
.@OntarioPlanners member @cemeteryurbani says that as part of their COVID-19 recovery, municipalities should assess the impact of COVID-19 on cemeteries, local interment capacity, and land use. [2/ 10] bit.ly/3dNIOJT
In #HamOnt and Niagara Falls, municipal-cemetery operators agree that planning ahead is important, and say that they’re creating and following plans to develop their cemetery land, densify where possible, and adapt to changing consumer tastes. [3/10]
Kara Bunn, Hamilton’s manager of parks and cemeteries, says that the city operates and maintains 69 cemeteries, maybe the most of any municipality in Ontario. In 2015, it commissioned a strategy and land-needs assessment: bit.ly/31VqAkp. [4/10]
The assessment found that the then-67 city-owned cemeteries contained nearly 200 acres of undeveloped land, which, when fully developed, would give most areas of Hamilton more than 50 years’ capacity. (Stoney Creek & Dundas would have 44 years and 15 years, respectively.) [5/10]
In response, #HamOnt is opening a new cemetery in Dundas this year (bit.ly/39Um0ay) and looking to expand one in Stoney Creek.
In 2016, Hanson told TVO.org that the GTA was at risk of running out of cemetery land within 10 to 20 years. [6/10]
In 2016, Hanson told TVO.org that the GTA was at risk of running out of cemetery land within 10 to 20 years. [6/10]
What this meant, she said, was more people were looking to bury their dead in the outskirts of the GTA, where cemeteries had more capacity and more affordable prices. That trend has continued, Hanson says, and now people are looking further afield. [7/10]
According to Bunn, Hamilton’s cemetery capacity is not a significant concern right now, nor is an influx of out-of-town burials, given the availability of land. She notes than in addition to developing new cemetery land, Hamilton has other options. [8/10]
Bunn, and Mark Richardson, who manages cemetery services in Niagara Falls, both say infilling, building columbaria and using green burials (see this piece by @RockneCorrigan: bit.ly/3d1v0wf) are ways to improve capacity. (There's more on that in my article.) [9/10]
Cemetery capacity, Hanson says, also relates to a concept she calls death equity. In part, that means being able to die in one’s own community. To ensure that possibility, she says, municipalities need to keep looking ahead.
More here: tvo.org/article/gravey… [10/10]
More here: tvo.org/article/gravey… [10/10]
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