University Avenue - Toronto's Grand Avenue?

[Lenser]

I think that if you can dish it, you're obligated to take it. And if you can't take it, then don't dish it. Simple.

It's an internet forum. Tragicomic misunderstandings and trite little tiffs are to be expected. Better to move on and discuss fresh outrages disguised as informed opinions, no?

 

[RC8]

Unlike Central Park, which was inserted into the street grid in the 1850s ( the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 omitted to include parkland for Manhattan - oops! ), High Park was a privately owned estate, with two ravines running through it, purchased by John Howard in 1836, transferred to the City in 1873 and subsequently expanded. A third of it is in a natural state, as befits a city with a defining ravine system. Yet it also contains landscaped ornamental gardens and other such frippery.

I know many people who quite clearly suffer nature-deficit disorder and are unable to appreciate nature in its wild (and most balanced) form. To see things like the Oak Savannah at High Park and assume that 'someone just planted some trees around' is cartoonishly sad.

Not being able to tell mostly undisturbed old-growth forest from a shady park is typical of some of my friends from cities like Seoul and Shanghai. Mind you the average suburban white guy at a Jays' game would too struggle with the task.

Sadly, there world has some people leading their lives in places filled with nature, and some people leading their life primarily as pedestrians, but very rarely both. People in nature-filled places usually live in their cars, and pedestrians live in city centres harassed by materialist impulses.

My only issue with High Park is the noisy highway nearby. Other than that it's an absolute gem from a biological and social perspective.

 

[Lenser]

Agreed. An intricately designed, highly manicured park is not to everyone's taste. Many citizens are just happy to see a horizon bulging with trees and acres of restful lawn - with ponds, footpaths, woodland creatures and the like. It's a welcome respite from the right angles and hard edges that comprise much of city life. It is possible to strike a fair balance between high design and a natural retreat.

 

[junctionist]

High Park also has manicured areas like the terraced water gardens and formal fountains that are pleasant spaces. They're on the western side, sloping down to Grenadier Pond near the iconic flower maple leaf. I wonder who the landscape architects were.

 

[adma]

Come to think of it, I've run into other non-UT forum circumstances where troll-ish serial posters have begged "please comment on the opinions/please address the issue". They're a little like rejected suitors who don't understand that "no" means "no", yet who keep persisting...

 

[kkgg7]

Agreed. An intricately designed, highly manicured park is not to everyone's taste. Many citizens are just happy to see a horizon bulging with trees and acres of restful lawn - with ponds, footpaths, woodland creatures and the like. It's a welcome respite from the right angles and hard edges that comprise much of city life. It is possible to strike a fair balance between high design and a natural retreat.

I fully agree with you. People have different taste. Luxembourg Garden is not for everyone.
But for those who do like intricately design, highly manicured parks in Toronto, where can they find them?

 

[Lenser]

Does every city need them? More specifically, do you need them to be in Toronto? I don't. A highly ornamental park is over the top for me personally - very little natural about it. But I wouldn't object to one if I stumbled across one either.

When you come down to it, is the presence (or absence) of intricately designed, highly manicured parks the ultimate litmus test for what makes a great city? Or is it simply, rather, one possible factor amidst a large range of factors - the sum of which no one can agree on anyway?

i suspect the greatest cities the world has ever known still harboured many individuals who thrived on bickering incessantly about how great, and how terrible, their cities were.

 

[LordWanker]

I fully agree with you. People have different taste. Luxembourg Garden is not for everyone.
But for those who do like intricately design, highly manicured parks in Toronto, where can they find them?

At least try to be respectful of other people's differences instead of being this pompous arrogant TROLL. The truth hurts non?
Try Edwards Gardens ( Toronto Botanical Gardens ) or if that is too suburban for you try Allen Gardens then. Just be careful where you walk.

 

[Urban Shocker]

The Victorians installed formal gardens here and there in Toronto, and I think they did it to express the way in which civilised, cultural values were being introduced to the city. But it was done in relation to the great, untamed, reality that the ravine system presented them with, much as our relentless street grid is an expression of the taming of nature. But even there, they couldn't pave over large expanses of valley and ravine such as the Don and Humber.

For a bit of manicured, old world charm - and unique history - there's the section of iron railing that Wren designed in 1714 for St. Paul's, which Howard had his brother in law buy and ship over here, that was installed near his tomb in High Park in 1875.

 

[Tewder]

This debate starts to sound remarkably similar to the 'shabby streetscape' debate wherein what some defend as Toronto's charming style others condemn as disregard and disrepair. I don't know that there will ever be a reconciliation of these viewpoints.

Regardless, I'm not sure I understand the harsh criticism of High Park, though you could probably toss me into the 'could do with more design/care' camp. In my experience even the most successful urban 'wild' spaces actually have a high degree of design to them. In other words, the moment you add a path you are adding design. It's just that some of us expect more from these elements in an urban facility such as High Park than we would from a conservation area in Milton for example...

and isn't it more or less the same issue with the waterfront? If you are defending/promoting a shabby undesigned aesthetic for city parks and public spaces, why would you expect haute design at the water's edge or anywhere else for that matter? Why the difference? Why not grassy banks if you prefer Toronto's style au naturel?

From my perspective we need a framework of design for our 'wild' spaces including the waterfront, the ravine system and High Park. At the end of the day these are urban spaces not national conservation areas. I don't think they need to be overly designed but they do require a certain integration with the city and a certain mise en valeur in their own right. I think Stanley Park is a good example.

Beyond that, where's the harm in some formal spaces? Somebody already mentioned Allen Gardens but there are other excellent underdeveloped possibilities such as Grange Park, Victoria Park and Clarence Square, all of which are enormously urban green spaces that could support high design... and there is precedence too when you consider areas such as Queen's Park, University Avenue or St. James Park. It's just that none of them are particularly 'excellent' for what they aim to be, which is sort of what brings us back to the intial 'disregard and disrepair' complaint.

 

[Urban Shocker]

The waterfront's an interesting example of the haute/rural design mashup: wooden wavedecks designed by a Dutch design firm, invoking lakefront Muskoka ( the chairs at Ht0 do that, too ... ), thus a foreigner's imposition of the Ontario rural theme to define Canada's biggest urban centre. And, to further highlight such contradictions, when some speak up for maintaining genuinely local "woodsman"-like touches such as keeping our traditional wooden utility poles, much animosity to the idea surfaces.

 

[Tewder]

It is a bickery place indeed, Toronto!

 

[Urban Shocker]

From my perspective we need a framework of design for our 'wild' spaces including the waterfront, the ravine system and High Park. At the end of the day these are urban spaces not national conservation areas. I don't think they need to be overly designed but they do require a certain integration with the city and a certain mise en valeur in their own right. I think Stanley Park is a good example.

I think that a comfort level with the rural/urban balance has existed for some time. The interventions, leading down into the ravine system, consist of paths and a certain level of vehicular access, washrooms and wooden picnic benches, pavilions and drinking fountains, and new wilderness planting ( "Bring Back The Don" ) in such places as Riverdale Park, within defined and expected limits. And brand new places such as the Common next to George Brown and Corus steal a certain sense of the ravine system. There's a general aesthetic to our parks that's based on that comfortably laid-back approach, and the more manicured and traditionally parterred and planted parks, and the contemporary art parks, stand out as exceptions.

 

[Lenser]

Tewder: I wouldn't object to the implementation of so-called "high design" in some of our more prominent parks, but the ravine system? Leave it as is, please. Although you contend that, at the end of the day, they are urban spaces, in actuality they remain what they've long been first and foremost - important ecosystems sheltering all manner of life. Try to bring more human-imposed "order" to that and you need a small army of greens staff and path and stair construction crews... I just don't see it the city being able to justify the additional expense for these places that are somewhat difficult to enter compared to a place like High Park or Alan Gardens. And I'm betting those owners of those hundreds of homes perched along the tops of those ravines probably like it the way it is, too - low profile, great for joggers, cyclists and dog walkers, but not too noisy, not overcrowded. Like a sleeper of an attraction, a great little Toronto secret.

I guess I'm in the camp that believes in less design for our parks, not more. I like being out on the Leslie Street Spit - not that it's creation was at all natural, mind you - but one thing it isn't is manicured - and that's what works for me. It's glorious out there... you're in the city yet you're not. That's a great sensation and too few places in our city enable that vibe.

 

[Tewder]

I guess I'm in the camp that believes in less design for our parks, not more. I like being out on the Leslie Street Spit - not that it's creation was at all natural, mind you [...]

... which sort of proves my point that in urban settings what appears to be 'wild' can in fact be very artificially created, or at the very least designed in such a way that allows urban strollers to accept the artifice of 'wildness'... and I don't mean 'artifice' in a bad way, on the contrary. There is nothing more planned and deliberate than a messy English garden or the 'wild' English style of landscaping, for example, as opposed to the formal French style which to the naked eye might seem more planned even though it isn't. The techniques and aesthetic are different but the level of design simply isn't.

Again, where we differ is the notion that untouched wilderness can or should exist in the city. I'm not so sure. As you mentioned, very expensive mansions have already intruded, for starters. Maybe it's preferable to gain control of it now before more is lost, to make it accessible in parts (where possible and where appropriate), and to integrate it with the city rather than keeping it separate and 'secret', as it erodes away over time. Again, I'm not suggesting the whole thing be over-designed (souvenir shops and funiculars etc) but part of grand design is vision, and I think there could be a little more of this for what are truly very undervalued assets in Toronto.

To my mind the Niagara Parkway seems to strike a pretty nice balance between stepping in and keeping out in just the right measure when it comes to beautifying the river gorge in parts, preserving wild 'untouched' areas, providing access, and promoting/validating the entire overall asset. Again, I think Stanley Park does it well too.

... and Lenser, I do understand your point about eco-systems and so on, and I do agree that a good design plan for such an asset as the ravine system must take those things into consideration!