What's more interesting is that many Torontonians think that's normal: shouldn't parks just be trees, grass and some random path? I had always thought urban parks mean something like Champs de mars or Luxemburg gardens or Buenos Retiro Park until Toronto tells me something like Trinity Bellwood or High Park also qualify. And we pretend it is "Toronto style" ("we prefer this way") instead of lack of taste.
Yes, Toronto definitely needs to put more money into parks in general, but when you make sweeping generalizations to slam all parks you shoot yourself in the foot. It's easy to point out where you're wrong, and in fact two that you mention specifically—in this post and the previous one—are prime examples of the opposite of what you are claiming. Grange Park is going through a highly designed makeover right now, and High Park has a ton of things to appreciate about it: outdoor theatre, great kids playground, gardens, sports fields, pool, Colborne Lodge, tennis courts, skating on the pond in the winter, fantastic wild areas, a zoo which is getting several-million-dollar makeover, and more. It's not perfect, but with everything it has, if you can't find anything in it that would draw you back, you're wasting your time with a negative outlook on life.
Meanwhile there are a bunch of other parks that have either been made over or opened recently like Underpass Park, Corktown Common, Sugar Beach, Cawthra Park—or are getting made over like Barbara Ann Scott Park, Berczy Park—or are coming up for that, like Harbour Square Park, the park at 11 Wellesley—new POPS spaces popping up at new developments—and finally parks for which we know there will be design competitions for in the future, like where the York Street spiral ramp is coming down.
So, enough of the mass denunciations already. If you could aim more helpful, constructive, directed criticism where it's deserved, instead of just puking up over everything, we could all have better conversations.
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