Kitchener’s 2024 Roundup

Watch our 2024 roundup reel!

As 2024 draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to look back on how our community lived, played, worked and grew together this year. We saw improvements across the city, events and programs for all ages, and many incredible ways Kitchener residents supported our community. Let’s take a look at the year in numbers to see some of Kitchener’s highlights.

Our neighbourhoods were more vibrant than ever! In 2024, 29 community projects were approved for LoveMyHood matching grants, which support new resident-led projects across the city. That’s a 40 per cent increase over last year. This summer, local neighbourhoods also came to life with music and entertainment during Neighbours Day, with 100 concerts throughout Kitchener featuring 50 local musicians.

Kitchener got active and involved this year. 2024 welcomed five new major events to the city, from music festivals to cultural celebrations to pickleballers’ favourite new event. Kitchener residents also learned new skills this year at the Kitchener Market, with over 40 cooking classes and workshops for all ages.

At Doon and Rockway Golf Courses, over 100,000 rounds of golf were played since the courses opened in April. At the Doon driving range, approximately 500,000 golf balls were hit as players brushed up on their skills. Kitchener pools made a splash this year too, with over 1,800 summer splash swim passes sold – 15 times more than last year’s summer pass!

Across the city, we saw a lot of improvements to the spaces and infrastructure that support our community. We launched a detailed strategy for upgrading, expanding and maintaining our 834 kilometres of sanitary sewers. Our 10 kilometre downtown cycling grid was also completed to better connect our community. We kept Kitchener clean with 130 registered community clean-up events held in 110 neighbourhoods, involving 3,000 participants. Throughout the city, three new parks were opened and improvements were made at many more to meet the needs of their users. And if Kitchener looks greener to you, that’s because this year we planted 1,012 new trees!

What makes Kitchener so vibrant and connected is the active role our community plays to make this a great place to live, and 2024 was no different! Over 850 volunteers were involved in various City initiatives like programs and advisory committees, and our youth got involved too! In May, we saw 1,900 youth participate in 43 youth month events.