[URBAN NOTE] "Blending public and private space at Winchester Park"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's Jake Tobin Garrett takes a look, with abundant photos, of the way Toronto's Winchester Park in the neighbourhood of Cabbagetown combines both public and private space.

There is a lot of blending between the two, to the point where sometimes you have no idea whether the space you are using is public or private. (This has led to a few instances where a security guard materializes from somewhere to tell me no, you can’t lie down on that lovely stone bench and read your book, you bum.)

The several small parks that make up the block where Winchester Park is located in Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighbourhood (Ward 28) creates that same feeling of blended public and private spaces. It consists of four (I think) public parks set amidst several housing complexes that also have their own (private) spaces that are all connected by various internal walkways that are (I think) private.

One of the two small parkettes that make up Winchester Square Park (south of the bigger park) contains some raised bed gardens and is very clearly a public park. But the second space is a less defined green space that seems more like a private yard for the adjacent apartment building, whose towering blank face rises above the park, begging to have a mural painted on it. There’s even a small garden that borders the park with a green picket fence, but is (I think) a private garden of the building.