Inspiration for a small community greenspace can hide inside a massive municipal park, provided you look closely at how people actually use the grass.

Our group spent time in Windsor, Ontario recently, walking the pathways of Ford Test Track Park. It’s an enormous piece of land—vastly larger than the two-acre plot we’re working on. Yet, as we walked, we realized that the scale doesn’t matter. The way a space makes you feel, and the way it brings people together, follows the same human rhythms whether you have sixty acres or two.

In the planning world, people call this placemaking. To us, it just means turning a piece of land into a place that feels like home. It’s the practice of looking at a public square or a patch of grass and asking how it can serve the emotional, creative, and physical needs of the community. It means weaving public art, casual recreation, and local identity directly into the soil so a park becomes more than just an empty lawn.

Looking at the park on a quiet, mist-hung morning, you can see the bones of these ideas in the layout. Mature trees frame the open sports fields, a solitary picnic table sits off to the side, and a gravel trail winds its way toward a distant pavilion. Even in its quietest moments, the design shows a deliberate effort to welcome everyone—from competitive athletes to someone just looking for a peaceful morning walk.

We can’t copy a massive sports complex onto our two-acre site, but we can borrow the philosophy behind it. In fact, our smaller footprint is a massive advantage. Where a large park focuses on wide-open recreation, the smaller spaces we’re working with allows for intimacy and detail. We can use two acres to weave creativity right into the landscape. We can think about artist-designed benches instead of standard metal ones, pocket gardens that invite people to slow down, and small, shaded spots perfect for an acoustic performance or an outdoor workshop.

Our meetings in Windsor taught us a great deal about how public spaces grow and evolve. We’re already looking forward to visiting the city again soon to gather more ideas, but for now, we’re heading back to our own drawing board, ready to turn a few acres into a vibrant community anchor.