TORONTO, December 16, 2002 -- York University cultural theorists say the battle over park space at the site of the Toronto Transit Commission’s Wychwood Avenue streetcar barns signifies an important transition in thinking about urban parks. Through lengthy community consultation, they say local views have evolved from modern to postmodern thinking about green space, public space, and parks in general.
In their 27-page study, Signs of a New Park, York cultural studies professors Jody Berland and Bob Hanke document the history and politics of the formation of a new city park in the midtown Toronto neighbourhood. "This has been a fight between the modernist concept of a park as open, landscaped green space and the postmodern belief that industrial history can be reclaimed. It is misguided to tear down industrial heritage and try to recreate nature in a highly developed urban environment," said Hanke. "It’s not a fight for buildings versus green space. There’s room for both."
Toronto city council voted last month to approve creation of a new city park at the site that integrates four of the five car barns and adapts them for use by the community as meeting space and artist studios. The authors say consensus reached in the community to create a multi-use park that integrates the car barns and promotes "green" values, represents a fundamental rethinking of parks as open, public space. Their report will be published in the next issue of the contemporary art and culture journal, Public 26 – Nature (www.yorku.ca/public).
The authors say the postmodern turn in urban thinking is reflected in "the preference for multi-use spaces that encourage urban density and interactivity, emphasize street-level contact, and discourage dependency on the automobile." They describe the plan to turn one of the buildings into a Green Barn, where residents can learn about community gardening, urban agriculture and other environment-friendly practices, as a reunification of history, architecture and nature that will generate new experiences of nature.
A small group of local residents continues to oppose the plan and is calling for demolition of the 80-year-old car-repair barns in favour of 100 per cent landscape. But as one community member quoted in the study points out, there is no memory of, or future for the site as pristine nature. "The traditional idea of a park as a green haven of grass and trees derives from an essentially romantic response to the corruption of nature brought on by industrialization," says Berland. "Thinking we can repair nature this way is an illusion and shows how early modernists continue to influence us. But we are learning to think beyond it."
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For further information, please contact:
| Prof. Bob Hanke | Prof. Jody Berland | Susan Bigelow |
| Division of Social Science | Atkinson Faculty | Media Relations |
| York University | York University | York University |
| 416-656-0291 | 416-654-1727 | 416-736-2100, ext. 22091 |
| rhanke@yorku.ca | jody.berland@sympatico.ca | sbigelow@yorku.ca |
YU/116/02
