typological examples Urban Cuts
These spaces are essentially vacant lots which have been taken off the property market and transformed into public spaces. They are immediately recognisable as cuts in the urban fabric – a sudden and conspicuous absence of building in a built-up area. They suggest a history of a building that no longer exists. The cycle of building and rebuilding is halted and a broken aspiration for land development is memorialised in the space. The space not only reveals a past failure, but also the hidden infrastructure of the city – the bare firewalls of adjacent properties, rear lanes and views to the backs of houses on adjacent streets. These parkettes peel back a layer of the city and allow us to glimpse its inner workings.
name: Dundas/Watkinson Parkette location: 2742 Dundas Street West size: 0.09 hectares rank: 165th smallest park in Toronto
elements: seating
waste bin water fountain table lighting trees and plants playground equipment
Grid Interrupted Toronto is a grid city. That said, sometimes large infrastructure projects, changes in topography and a few errant streets interrupt the grid, creating awkwardly shaped parcels of land. Because zoning by-laws, building codes and building practices are generally geared toward building on rectangular plots of land, wherever the grid is interrupted, a small piece of triangular land is often left over. While most of these leftover bits remain private and are used for patios, storage or parking, some are converted into public space. In these instances parkettes reveal the obstinacy of the grid and the cookie-cutter nature of building codes and practices. Even in places where the grid has been interrupted, the built fabric continues to be stamped out in rectilinear orthogonal forms, producing triangular orphans of open space.
name: un-named location: Dundas Street West between Clendenan Avenue and St. Johns Rd
elements: seating
waste bin lighting trees and plants
size: unknown rank: unknown
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On Site review 23
Small Things
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