The green streets of Fredericton: Study ranks N.B. city third greenest in Canada

These Maritime cities among greenest to live: report A survey of Canadian cities with the best clean air, parks, trails and transit scored a couple of Maritime communities.

Fredericton ranks third as Canada's greenest city. According to a new study, Fredericton is pedestrian-friendly, with the index scoring its walkability as 9.06 and a bicycle score of 9.86.

"As we grow, we're being quite sensitive to providing green spaces so that we have complete neighbourhoods,” said Fredericton Mayor Kate Rogers. “We’ve seen that growth has sort of outpaced some of the amenities and the infrastructure that we've been able to build. So, this year in our budgeting, we're putting a real focus on green spaces and recreational spaces.”

New Brunswick's capital city has 21 hectares per 1,000 people, alongside 39 hiking trails, and its index scores 7.78 for community gardens and urban farms, making it a popular pedestrian-friendly city.

"When we bought our house and decided where we were going to live, we were sort of thinking we'd like to be in a place where we didn't need a car,” said Stephen May while commuting by bike through O’Dell Park. “So we bought a place downtown and I don't need a car, and when the kids were growing up, I went 23 years without a car.”

"There are a lot of nice trails but they're a little disjointed at the moment. It's getting better but there's more that could be done,” said Joss Richer, who has been biking around the capital city for 30 years.

Rogers says they're working on increasing those trail connections to make active transportation go even further.

"We're constantly making improvements in our active transportation network,” Rogers said. “I feel every time I speak about our trail network it has increased in size by kilometres and we're continuing to make strides in that regard.”

Halifax placed fifth in the ranks with the second-highest population of the top ten.

The study accounts for Halifax's 27 community gardens and urban farms, alongside 75 hiking trails. It has 13.01 hectares of green space per 1,000 people, giving it a score of 7.04 on the study's index.

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