West Don Lands: Block 9 (TDSB, ?s, ?)

[Northern Light]

There simply isn’t room downtown for every school to have a baseball diamond/track and field track

There is no reason there can't be. On new build vacant land, in public ownership, we can reserve as much as we wish to public purposes.

There's also a former school site at Parliament and Shuter sitting vacant.

The idea that there isn't room is just not true. Period, Full stop.

so scheduling may have to be a thing. Lol!

Scheduling does not fix a field that is not there.

The school day did not magically get longer.

The idea that we all have to ration land in the second largest country on earth, of which 98% has no buildings on it.........is a bit much, and then some.

Think of function in a 3D and temporal sense rather than in black and white terms.

I would argue it is you who are inflexible. You want lots of concrete and lots of towers and don't care much about the environment or physical fitness. So be it. But don't defend your preference as the only reasonable choice. I would argue it isn't reasonable at all.

Anyways most of those fields are empty 22 hours a day as well as for 6 months of our very cold year.

What? That is absolutely not true and suggests you have formed an opinion without doing any research.

There are waiting lists for sports fields across the City and teams being asked to travel an hour to play. That's entirely unreasonable.

This is the third proposal for a more nuanced integration of elementary schools in mixed use buildings so we are going to be getting a lot of opportunities to get it right!

No better time than now to get it right.

This is an evolving discussion that is just beginning and the final result will probably be somewhere in the middle.

There is no middle, there is do or do not. There either is a capacity for sport or there is not. No one is talking about a 10 acre district park.

The standard for a school yard is 3-4 acres in theory, though many schools fail to achieve this

And does UTS have a full baseball diamond?

No, and so what?

More Tokyo, less Atlanta!

I don't like Tokyo, I think its one of the ugliest cities on the planet.

There is quite a bit of agreement on this point.

I wouldn't endorse Atlanta either for a host of reasons.

I decline to choose between two poor examples.

 

[rdaner]

‘Full stop!’ Lol. Hardened, out-dated attitudes based on sanctimonious provincialism never lead to progress. And Tokyo, while it isn’t Paris, is extremely successful in having built a workable, more equitable built environment than ours in a short period of time while Atlanta is unfortunately the textbook example of contemporary sprawl.

And if Berlin can put a running track and playing field on top of an aquatic centre why can’t we?! Besides, maybe the reason we don’t have enough playing fields is insistence by some that they be located on real, God-given dirt like they can in Iowa, not like that ski slope on the roof of a power station by that moron Bjarke Ingels! Damaging and unacceptable!

This has gotten far too serious and weird.

All in good fun! I do appreciate how well-read and dedicated you are!

 

[Northern Light]

‘Full stop!’ Lol. Hardened, out-dated attitudes based on sanctimonious provincialism never lead to progress.

I appreciate that you feel 2+2 is not necessarily 4 and that the law of gravity only applies when you wish;

But the full-stop was not a view or a preference, it was a statement of fact; and your disagreement with it is more than disappointing.

Your desire to make fun of facts is genuinely disturbing.

This has gotten far too serious and weird.

Obnoxious is the word I would use.

All in good fun!

It's not at all fun to me; I am deeply offended by your disrespect of facts and you conflation of your preferences with absolute truth.

As such, you are now on 'ignore' for the foreseeable future.

 

[rdaner]

Not all neighbourhoods lend themselves to athletic fields and this is one of them. Also the lack of space for a full field should not mean a school will not be provided to a community which the West Don Lands has become. A variety of facilities with different activities would be a good goal. If you can’t provide baseball then enhance your music program or you do a school focused on architecture and planning which is a thing in several large metros (New York, Hamburg and both survive without a full size baseball field.) When the opportunity arises you add another option such as with blocks 17&26. Maybe an indoor ice rink would work there and the fact that it wouldn’t be adjacent to the school won’t deter 99.9% of parents or kids. And if they are really hard pressed I will buy them a scooter! Lol

 

[maestro]

Why do we need residential on a school property?

I have a feeling baseball isn't that popular in Hamburg.. Manhattan has a ton of sports infrastructure including an entire island with dozens of baseball diamonds and football fields.

Randalls and Wards Islands - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[rdaner]

Why do we need residential on a school property?

I have a feeling baseball isn't that popular in Hamburg.. Manhattan has a ton of sports infrastructure including an entire island with dozens of baseball diamonds and football fields.

Randalls and Wards Islands - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I love the Manhattan example! It shows that facilities like that can be built in cities that aren’t adjacent to schools but are still accessible and provide utility. I think that we need more cricket pitches in the city but I am not expecting someone to put one at Yonge and Bloor. Niagara Region had available land south of but not in St Catharines and built 5 or 6 cricket pitches together and people love them and the fact that they aren’t directly opposite each players residence is not an issue.

And on using school land for housing or other uses I know that it is super political and consumes a lot of school trustees efforts. But I do know that if there is a great need for housing and land is getting scare, expecting a school to go up instead of out is not a tragedy.

 

[christiesplits]

The recently renovated École Secondaire Greenwood in the east end has a rooftop play area.

École Secondaire Greenwood | ?m | 4s | Conseil Scolaire Viamonde | Snyder Architects

Penal vibes. Metal detectors and armed guards and we're good to go. /bleh

urbantoronto.ca

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[Ward8]

I don't like Tokyo, I think its one of the ugliest cities on the planet.

Not your best take.

But, I'll admit, if Tokyo has a weakness it is in the parks department. It does have some of the most beautiful, well maintained parks I've ever been to, but they also have a lot of bad local parks that are fenced off at night and badly encumbered by anti homeless architecture.

I think its fair for anyone to have the opinion that Tokyo ugly, but one must acknowledge that this is a fringe position. In my opinion we have more lessons to learn from Tokyo than any other city on earth.

To bring it back to the thread at hand...

I'm far more concerned by how small this site is to begin with; and the absence of space for kids to play at recess or learn to play soccer.

Corktown common is not very busy during the week, especially the times when kids are at school. It's completely reasonable to have the kids play here and have smaller facilities on the rooftop for younger kids that are more controlled.