海角社区官网

Not all that long ago, people routinely complained that the Gardiner Expressway “cut the city off from the lake.” Around the turn of the millennium, walking from Front Street to Queens Quay involved traversing wide swaths of vacant lots and vast railway lands, a giant urban dead zone in what should have been the heart of downtown. People blamed the highway. Today, the highway is still there, but those vacant lots and much of the rail lands have buildings on them, many of which house people or offices, many of which are built right up to the sidewalk next to the elevated highway.聽

The Gardiner is still there, and people (including often me) still complain about its presence, but it isn’t the streetscape killer it once was. And since the Bentway park opened in 2018 (kick-started by the ideas of urban designer Ken Greenburg and a $25-million donation by Judy Matthews), walking under it can even be a joy. The park constructed in dead space under the overpass features plants and benches and lights, it hosts a rink that offers ice skating in the winter and roller-skating in the summer, holds “dinosaur runs,” yoga sessions, art exhibits and stages fun events like the domino thing last weekend.聽

The surrounding neighbourhood desperately needs more park and recreational spaces. (The city of 海角社区官网notes that 100,000 people live within a 10-minute walk of the Bentway’s proposed expansion.)

And the city desperately needs more spaces like this too: ones that feel surprising when you encounter them because they’re tucked away in a space that would otherwise be dishwater-dull. In Toronto, think of north of Queen West, or the Sculpture Garden near St. Lawrence Market, or the dear, departed ”” that, until 2016, provided playground-style fun in the narrow space between two buildings near Queen and Spadina. Or, in a similar vein to the Bentway, the playground constructed beneath the off-ramps of the Don Valley Parkway near Richmond and Adelaide.聽

It’s like a playroom nook built under a stairwell or a kids clubhouse up in a tree or in a loft above a garage: spaces that feel like secret knowledge because of their unexpected location, adding an extra thrill to the activities you do there.聽

New York City’s most celebrated attraction of the last decade or so, the above the roads of the midtown east side of Manhattan, is maybe the most world famous of these, a perfect example of urban playfulness constructed in the gaps created by urban infrastructure.

So perhaps we should celebrate that Field Operations, the design firm that led the High Line project in New York, will be designing the expansion of the Bentway. That expansion will cover three vast traffic islands between Spadina and Dan Leckie Way, just south of the City Place condo neighbourhood in an area where the Gardiner offers a high ceiling in the spaces it defines. Field Operations will be partnered with local design firm聽Brook McIlroy on figuring out how to make the space something special.聽

We’re a ways off from seeing results, of course. Design concepts won’t be unveiled until next year, and construction will follow, the Bentway’s announcement says, “the multi-year rehabilitation of the Expressway planned for the area.” Plenty of the funding still has to be secured under the organization’s model of combining government and philanthropic backers.聽

But it is something to look forward to. More places to have fun, and more ways to do it, in a city where too often fun is considered a frill. In an increasingly crowded downtown, you’ve got to wedge these places in wherever you find a gap that can fit them. And sometimes when you do that, the surprising nature of the space becomes part of the fun.