Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
Do you mean a garden or a yard?
Single family homes in urban neighborhoods (Brooklyn, most of London) often have a small garden, but if you have a “yard” big enough for even a child to run around in, you are probably in suburbia.
I would find a large yard pretty useless and a chore, compared to having a very good large urban park, where I can go for a several mile run or walk the dog, practically on my doorstep as I do now. Both would be fine, but if I had to pick between one and the other I would definitely choose the world class park. That’s something a lot of newer cities are also lacking.
And suburban sprawl actually creates more distance between the city and nature. Someone in central Paris is a lot closer, in time and distance, to the countryside than someone in central Chicago. The person in central Chicago has to get through a lot more sprawl, whereas urban Paris meets rural France very abruptly by American standards.
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And I think that the reaction to the hyper dense city by Corbusier and his followers does make sense and shouldn't be completely dismissed, because there's definitely something to be said about having that kind of communal green space, however, his designs do reflect that society had a bit of a lack of experience with what makes those kinds of communal spaces work.
St James Town in Toronto is actually not too bad. It has a bit of a mix of uses within it, and a lot outside it, not to mention being very dense and surrounded by density. St James Town is also quite permeable to foot traffic. As a result, the green spaces do have a fair bit of pedestrian traffic so they don't feel too "dead and spooky" and the programming of the spaces with playgrounds, basket-ball courts and schoolyards helps with that too.
However, there are still issues. I think having walkways in the middle of the greenspace is not a good approach. It doesn't take away from the walkway, but it does seem to make the greenspace feel like a no-mans land. Maybe because it's ingrained in our minds that the space between the sidewalk and the building is private (ex frontyards), even though in these tower-in-the-park developments, it's not really private (or at least won't be used as such by residents). On the other hand, if you place the walkway right next to the building, or at least very close with maybe some shrubs in between, and place the greenspace between walkways it feels much more like a park or public space.
I think The Esplanade is a great example of how they got that right by framing the park by walkways. The walkways are well used to, since they're along a fairly well used east-west street for pedestrians walking to/from downtown, and there's also a bus road along that street. I think it would've also worked well if the car traffic was redirected do a back alley, but because the street is traffic calmed pretty well it doesn't really detract from the park. I do think it's important for the park to be easily accessible to the housing, very close by and without requiring the crossing of any dangerous high traffic/high speed streets.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.64961...7i16384!8i8192
And yeah, you do want the greenspace to feel like it's accessible to the public, unless it is able to function as a truly intimate space like some European apartment courtyards.
With St James Town, I think the outdoor pools are also a poor programming choice compared to playgrounds and basketball courts, since in Canada those will only be used 3 months of the year, and they need to be fenced in for safety reasons. The pools should've either been placed on roofs or indoors imo.
St James Town also has some public realm issues like having a lot of dumpsters in plain sight right next to the public spaces and a fair bit surface parking. It seems weird to have surface parking lots in addition to having already committed to building underground parking for the majority of resident parking.
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