Creative parks cost money, and they’re worth it: Hume http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/10/13/creative_parks_cost_mone...

News / GTA Creative parks cost money, and they’re worth it: Hume A city park can be innovative, imaginative and carry cultural weight. In , we’re only starting to try, writes Christopher Hume.

TANNIS TOOHEY / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO The fountains were out of commission for months at because the city failed to clean them, Christopher Hume explains.

By: Christopher Hume Urban Issues, Published on Mon Oct 13 2014

How deep is our love? Torontonians like to think they care deeply about their parks — and they do. But consider this: in 2013, a New York financier gave $100 million (US) to Central Park. One half is going to capital improvements; the other to the park’s $144-million (US) endowment fund.

Private money covers 85 per cent of maintenance costs.

Toronto isn’t the Big Apple, of course, the rich here are rarely so generous, and if they are, their money doesn’t go to parks. Besides, we have no equivalent of Central Park, nothing that defines this city the way Central Park defines Manhattan.

Toronto can claim a number of what Charles Birnbaum would call “cultural landscapes” — , , Queen’s Park — but green space here tends to be left over real estate unusable for commercial purposes. Birnbaum, founder and president of the Washington-based Cultural Landscapes Foundation, wants to help Torontonians feel the love.

“Park maintenance here is bare-bones, the city’s tree canopy is in decline and parks lack biodiversity,” he says of Toronto, the self-described “City in a Park.” “The parks all feel the same. Trees and lawns are not enough. I fear we’re going to fill in these spaces with stuff. Even at Allan Gardens everything is plopped down. Parks here are like parks in America in the 1980s.”

It’s hard to disagree; Toronto has always taken a utilitarian approach to green space. They are places to walk the dog, play soccer, throw a Frisbee . . . We are new to the idea of the park as a “cultural” artifact, every bit as revealing of who we are as the buildings we erect.

1 of 2 2015-02-05 3:47 PM Creative parks cost money, and they’re worth it: Hume http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/10/13/creative_parks_cost_mone...

Intended or not; parks are us. And as the Star’s Top Ten Big Ideas project made clear, Torontonians value their parks enormously and are hungry for more.

As Birnbaum points out, however, a much more interesting narrative is taking shape on the waterfront. Here, for the first time, new neighbourhoods are being organized around parks, not the other way around. These new amenities, which include , Sugar Beach, HTO and Sherbourne Common, have revealed yet again just how deeply we feel the landscape. These few projects have changed how Torontonians see their long neglected lakeside precincts. Suddenly, the area has become so desirable, people want to live there.

Before we get better parks, Birnbaum argues, we need “equity of knowledge.” That means being aware of our park history, physical setting, designers, not taking them for granted.

This process has started. Torontonians are engaged in their parks as never before. Park People, formed in 2011 by Dave Harvey, has become an important advocate for local parks. When it received a $5-million grant from the Weston Foundation last year, the organization finally had some money to put where its mouth is.

Birnbaum is also putting together a conference to be held here in May 2015, that will create an “action plan” for Toronto’s parks. Though there will be much discussion about the means of landscape architecture, the underlying intention is to m