Whom Does Design Really Serve?

By Fred Kent on Oct 3, 2012 | 53 Comments

Welcome to Canada's "best" new public space. You can tell people are proud of the design, because no one wants to mess it up by actually using it. / Photo: Fred Kent

Professionals are against participation because it destroys the arcane privileges of specialization, unveils the professional secret, strips bare incompetence, multiplies responsibilities and converts them from the private into the social. – Giancarlo De Carlo

On a recent trip to Toronto, I visited Sherbourne Common, a waterfront park designed by Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg. Walking around the park, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were actually passing through an elite museum’s pristine sculpture garden. Everything is placed just so, in a way that has created an environment so totally uninviting and ignorant of how human beings want to use public space that I knew, within moments of arriving, that what I was seeing was undoubtedly an “award-winning” design.

Indeed, Sherbourne Common received a National Honor Award from the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects—Canada’s highest honor for landscape design—earlier this year.

Something is desperately wrong with a system in which a place like Sherbourne Common is deemed worthy of this kind of adulation. This is a place where pieces of play equipment are separated by vast stretches of grass and pavement, siloing different modes of play and neutralizing their capacity for sparking children’s imaginations. Watching the handful of youngsters that were there trying to play on aimless gravel strips and concrete steps was almost painful. Imagine if you will a single swing poised, absurdly, alone; yards away, across swaths of pebbles and stone, some “sculptural” play equipment; and harried parents trying to keep track of their children as they dart between these far-flung art pieces.

Let's go to the park and play together...twenty yards apart! Here, two parents try to make do in Sherbourne Common's absurdly organized play area. / Photo: Fred Kent

The paths are broken up by erratically placed hedges and canals, creating unnecessary barriers. A wall of plantings provides a thorough green-wash, serving some insignificant, supposedly ecological purpose to hide the fact that the space itself is a failure at creating a joyful ecology of human activity. An “urban beach” area—something that has been done beautifully in cities like New York, Paris, Rotterdam, and Berlin—is also a missed opportunity here, falling with a dull thud thanks to overdesign.

The contrast with Dufferin Grove Park, another stop on this trip (and many trips before), is breathtaking. Dufferin features a mix of activities and types of spaces: quiet groves, bustling playgrounds, campfires, a farmer’s market, and one of the most amazing sand pits you’ll find anywhere. Unlike the visitors to Sherbourne Common, most of whom looked confused or simply lost, the people in Dufferin Grove were beaming. It’s one of the best places I’ve ever been, no question.

Dufferin Grove Park, of course, has not won any major design awards. It is not designed, in the sense that we think of that word today; but it is highly cultivated. So much thought has gone into questions like “How do people want to use this space?” and “How can visitors to the park be involved in its continuing development?” The park’s managers have gone to great lengths to make sure that their public space is welcoming and inspiring to the broadest range of people possible: young to old, quiet to rambunctious.

Friends and families sunbathe next to the market at Dufferin Grove Park / Photo: Gabriel Li via Flickr

The design professions have been given free reign to set up a wholly dysfunctional system when it comes time to promote the best and brightest, and the results are devastating our public spaces. Competition and awards juries are comprised of peers, people who have been “properly educated” to discern good design from bad. Whether the jury members actually have to use the spaces that they praise is irrelevant. They are tastemakers, not Placemakers.

As a result, so much of design today is geared toward pleasing juries of peers, rather than the people who actually determine whether a new space will become a great place: the ones who meet there, play there, and live their lives there. Bragging rights come from superlatives and high LEED ratings (which, by now, should be more a source of shame for architects who don’t achieve them rather than pride for those who do), rather than community life.

And let’s not get caught up on issues of style! Too often, attempts to start a meaningful discussion about the failure of so much of contemporary design to serve people are sidelined by architects’ and designers’ claims that what’s really happening is the attacking of “good design” and contemporary aesthetics by the uninitiated. That is not the case. Aesthetics are subjective, but use is not. The primary question that should be asked, when determining the success of a public space, is: are people using it? Are they happy, and smiling? Do they brag about how much they love it (not how many awards it’s won) to their friends in other cities?

This is the real tragedy of design today: it is so rarefied that it alienates everyday citizens and perpetuates the myth that architecture and planning are not things that they should be concerned with.

A lonely swing looks out over a missed opportunity. / Photo: jennyrotten via Flickr

Communities do not think “we need to talk to a designer” when they want a new park; they talk to each other, and to their elected officials. Architects, landscape architects, and urban planners come later (if ever), and would benefit enormously from increased public interest in what they do. Involving people in shaping public spaces not only benefits those individuals and their neighborhoods through the development of social capital, it benefits designers by making what they do an integral part of a sacred community process instead of an expensive “extra.” Designers have a great deal of knowledge that is infinitely more resonant when it is used to help everyday citizens articulate their needs and create public spaces that are responsive to the communities they serve.

I’m issuing a call to arms to designers who are tired of the current system and are ready to begin building our professions back into communities. This is a great time to grow the constituency for design by creating places that people can really use. If you know of an “award-winning” public space that needs a reality check, please share it in the comments below. I want to call out places like Sherbourne Common and offer constructive, place-centered criticism more often here on the Placemaking Blog. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6 next.

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Maíra (Brazil)

Awesome article! Sometimes I wonder if designers/planners/architects like those responsible for this Canada park even use publics spaces…
http://www.facebook.com/john.paolozzi John Paolozzi

Great piece. Yeah, I think Maira nailed it. I think most park designers would prefer it if there weren’t any messy people crowding up their designs unless they look like stock characters from Sketchup.
PMK

I’m an architect working as an urban designer for a small municipality in Canada. I couldn’t agree more with Fred’s articie. How do we change the attitudes that seem entrenched in the design professions (my experience being that LA’s “get it” more than architects).
Rowan Caister

What the author doesn’t realize is that planners made a concerted effort here to build the public realm before, rather than after, the new city precinct is built.

There’s no one there because.. there’s no one living nearby at the moment. But, as a way to enhance the value of the neighbourhood for early residents and ensure that developers are given the best environment to market their units, the park was built first.

Much better than leaving parks until the end, or not putting any effort into them at all, I think.
Natasha

I live in Toronto and completely agree with this article. Sherbourne Common is in an area of the city where everything is being built from scratch. It’s tough because there is not that much of a community that surrounds the park yet so most people have to come from further away to visit this area. Except the way it is designed, why would you? They had the opportunity to create something incredible to draw people into this new area and inspire those moments of ownership in public space, and of course what mattered most was its aesthetic. Toronto has incredible parks, like Dufferin Grove which was mentioned and Trinity Bellwoods or High Park. What makes them wonderful is how the communities are using them, to their own advantage. Unfortunately, we’re getting a lot of new spaces like Sherbourne Common that are completely void of life and usefulness. Its a shame that in the end this park granted a large cheque and fame to the architect and austerity for the people it was originally designed for.
http://twitter.com/larrylarry Laurence Lui

Being someone who lives in the neighbourhood of Sherbourne Common, who is elated to have new public spaces that bring people to our previously ignored waterfront, and who participated in some of the most engaging planning design processes ever in Toronto, this is simply an unfair article. Comparing Sherbourne Common to Dufferin Grove Park is comparing apples to oranges – one is in a brand new, mostly vacant and evolving precinct created from brownfields and the other is in a 150-year old community. People do come here – many days this past summer, Sherbourne Common and Sugar Beach were full of people – and people do love the design. You seem to have dropped by on a cloudy, dreary day – even Dufferin Grove sits empty on a day like that.
Fredkent

It is still a terrible design. It will always underperform. The shocking thing is that it got a design award. We talked to a few people trying to use it, and they were very negative as well.
Egadams

Not sure this is a fair article or that it is even taking the full range of the design intentions into account. It i s a Park and a infrastructure project for a district that has not even been built yet. Come back in 20 year and see what you think. The Park edges will front busy active streets and will shield the spaces within.
Fredkent

Try moving from one part to another. There are walls, water that blocks one from moving through. Planting and pebbles in rows that keep people apart. The separated swings where one parent was with one child and another was with the other. Absurd!
Kevin Moore

This “aesthetics vs. function” debate reminds me of the old “design vs. ecology” debate from the 1970s and 80s – with each side bashing each others approach while claiming that their way is the path to the light.
We’re just now seeing many wonderful examples of how design and ecology can coexist – through the work of some enlightened Landscape Architects, Landscape Urbanists, and those who are doing their thing on a more “grassroots” level. Hopefully, we will similarly realize that good design, (achieved with the input of an interested and informed general public), can and should coexist with functionality.
I believe it was Vitruvius said, (nearly two thousand years ago): Good design is that which is beautiful, durable and functional.
Eric S. Smith

“…neutralizing their capacity for sparking children’s imaginations…”

I think you may be under-rating children’s imaginations.
Nikos Salingaros

The geometry is dead, and this leads to a deadly effect on human use — or, in this case, non-use, and the avoidance of the place. Evidence-based design and urbanism that give us tried-and-true rules for designing urban spaces are being ignored by those who award prizes. An award for a giant sculpture is fine. But an award for an urban space has to be based on the potential for human use as a public gathering for people of all categories and all ages. It’s not enough for just the elite to see a picture of a project in some fashionable magazine.
http://twitter.com/alecz_dad alecz_dad

Lucky Ottawa. Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg design got the nod for “urban park” portion of the developer-led proposal of the Lansdowne Park fairgrounds.

You can see some of the design here: http://ow.ly/ecoJV and here http://ow.ly/ecotQ

The park will:
* be dominated by a big, flat open area – dictated by the need for a large storm-water drainage basin beneath it ;
* have various berms, hills and other landforms, used to contain soil from the rest of the site, too contaminated to economically dispose of offsite, so will be buried under 1m of clean fill (with no impermeable liner to prevent leached toxins from percolating into the nearby Rideau Canal and on into the Ottawa River);
* (not have) any toilets, kiosks or other permanent buildings requiring sewer hookups, because what management of contaminated runoff that there will be will require all remaining sewer capacity in the park area;
* have a lot of paving stones, that probably won’t last long in harsh Ottawa winters; an expensive and meaningless sculpture/beacon and surrounding reflecting pool/floating-garbage collector;
* be scattered with context-free sculptur-ish elements like “The Screen” and futur-ey-looking, over-priced lampposts;
* will get various plantings, including a “heritage orchard” the fruit of which will probably be too iffy to eat, due to the possible residual soil contamination.
(the attached pictures are in roughly the order of the points above)

Hey! They have those same stupid bowly things in the drawing for the children’s playground at Lansdowne too: http://ottawa.ca/cs/groups/content/@webottawa/documents/image/mdaw/mdc1/~edisp/cap076047.jpg
I wonder what they’re supposed to be good for? Besides being giant birdbaths, and mosquito maternity wards?

I think your comments about the children’s play area at Sherbourne Common are especially important. As a parent of two relatively-young boys, it seems to me that even at the best of times, the people who design parks and playgrounds seem to have no idea of how children actually play, or of how their parents and caregivers want to orient themselves to where the children are playing.

While the battle to prevent Lansdowne Park from being privatized & corporatized, perhaps the next area of struggle is to make sure that the high-concept designers actually build something that makes sense for kids and other park users.
Fredkent

The landscape Urbanists are the worst. Their concept of human spaces is irrational. and non-existant. We are doing another Hall of Shame article on Brooklyn Bridge park and Pier 6.
Fredkent

You must be a designer…only a designer would make those comments. Normal, intuitive people can tell you immediately what works and what doesn’t work. Rewards should never be judged by only designers. There is a serious flaw with the design profession that gives an award for something like this. What was the dialogue around the decision to give an award to something like this. I had always expected more from Canadians than from US firms, but alas, you have been co-opted too.
Gene Threndyle

The worst part is that for new parks in Toronto, award winning examples like this are being built all the time. One near me at King and Crawford has a mandatory gigantic and completely non-funtional trelli-like structure in it. Although surrounded by condo and other buildings, it is used mainly by people walking small dogs. Any attempt to offer food or snacks in it as at Dufferin Grove, would undoubtedly fill it almost any day. Yet Dufferin Grove remains the exception not the rule to be followed.
Egadams

I take it you don’t like the design. I thought we were talking about place making. I assume that the people who eventually choose to live here will be able to make informed judgements about their own personal aesthetic preferences. If anything that is “designed” is bad and anything that “indigenous” is good then I think the problem goes beyond that of the design profession.
http://twitter.com/slavitch Michael Slavitch

No they don’t, they see people as a prop for a facility, rather than the other way around.
This is what they have in common with politicians.

Eventually, Shelbourne Common will become dated, the design crowd will have some new shiny thing to chase, and the people that set down roots there will go through the painful process of community building to fix the damn park to what it should have been in the first place. Give it 20 years or so.
Fredkent

looks awful!
Fredkent

It is so easy to tell who are part of the design community by their comments.
Mlong

Fred, Maybe you should be calling out the great public spaces and not the bad spaces that have won awards in the past!!! Focus on the positive.
http://www.inukshukplanning.ca/ Ian Robertson MCIP

I have not seen this space but generally agree with Fred’s comments in general regarding what sort of projects win awards. His basic premise is accurate. I am sick and tired of seeing perfectly designed spaces from the architect/LA/planner perspective that in reality are dull, boring and so prescriptive there is little room to breathe and evolve over time. Successful placemaking evolves naturally over time as people and environment interact and evolve at their own pace. That said Laurence Lui’s comments are equally valid – sometime new places and spaces need more time to evolve and find their place in the community and neighbourhood. In this case simply going by what I see in the pictures the design does raise my eyebrows. I would like to read the jury comments and submission documentation and visit the site myself before making a final assessment
http://www.vibrantplaces.org/ a_me

We need critique and reflection of bad public spaces to learn from their mistakes. When spaces like this win awards it influences other designers, to keep designing spaces like this.
Tim Stevens

Fred and PPS would acheive much more if you would focus on demonstrating thes ideas in projects you design, rather than criticize work of others…
As a New Yorker for much of the past decade, and a designer for almost 20 years I have see you constantly rip projects apart because they don’t meet your standards that are based on the 60′s approach to public space.
You cannot compare new designs to aging iconic parks…

There is a large community of people minded of good design that will never support you of your team because of the consistency of how you automatically dismiss great design just for being great design…
Fredkent

Go to our web site and look up Great Public Spaces. There are 600 plus of them listed with reasons why they work so well.
Fredkent

I had not realized that the “Pavilion” building had also won a design award (for architecture). Read attached and look at picture (s). the language is so manufactured and misleading when experiencing in real life a building that is really just sculpture. What I can’t believe is how a developer like Hines could be so manipulated into building something so unusable.
http://news.waterfrontoronto.ca/2009/12/sherbourne-park-pavilion-honoured-for-architectural-design-excellence/
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Fredkent

We have more work in more parts of the world than we ever have. 15,000 people follow us on twitter, 12,500 on Facebook, and 41,000 get out emails. Placemaking has become an international movement. The discussion between Design-Base and Place-Based is getting more and more interest among health professionals, community development agencies, mayors and governors and a growing interest within the development community. We have major projects reactivating Downtown Detroit, guiding the development of over 50 public spaces in Nairobi, and very soon a contract to apply a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper placemaking approach to the public spaces within Harvard University. In all we are probably working on 75 projects in 50 cities around the world.
Bill

Can’t comment on Toronto’s stuff, but Winnipeg has two clear examples of design that works for communities and design that doesn’t. Central Park was redeveloped with a strong community consultation process and a design team that took community consultation seriously, believed in it. The result has been, literally, a transformed neighbourhood. Less than a km away the park in the Exchange district was redeveloped with a locally famous/infamous ‘cube’ stage, a process that had at best a nod to community consultation. The cube at first simply didn’t work for the community, and, ironically/aptly, now doesn’t work at all. It has won prizes. Yet the real gem is Central Park.
Brendan

What’s driving this article? An honest attempt at criticism, or another attempt by PPS to place what has now become pure dogma onto any unsuspecting ‘designed’ park their author happens upon. Sherbourne Common is a fine park. Please PPS, stop picking pointless fights with the design community; it’s counterproductive.
Fredkent

What do you mean by fine? Many of the leaders in the design community have lost any connection to the communities they are supposed to serve. Read the comments below. they are making the same point again and again…something is wrong with the design community as it is currently structured. We see it everywhere and that is why we get all the work we get and now people want us to take a placemaking plan through to completion including hiring the skills required to deliver a good place.
http://twitter.com/larrylarry Laurence Lui

Huh? First of all, the pavilion was not even developed by Hines. It was developed by Waterfront Toronto far before Hines became involved with the Bayside development and was designed by Teeple Architects. The key reason why the design won an award was because IT IS A WATER TREATMENT PLANT. Imagine that! The pavilion serves to treat stormwater in the district, which gets recycled through the park’s water features. Did you even read the release before you called the building “unusable”?!?

You’re reading a freakin’ press release. I would be amazed if the language didn’t sound manufactured. But misleading? Seriously?
Fredkent

No wonder. They say there is a coffee shop and a gathering place. Thanks!
http://twitter.com/mycityspot Sarah Alhage

A little harsh there – I think it’s a really cool and interesting space in a new environment. It needs time to populate and for people to even know it’s there. There is nothing wrong with a few over-designed public spaces here and there. Not every space needs to be completely natural and organically formed. That being said, I always advocate public input in any case.
Sheilaboudreau

Athough you’re right, Dufferin Grove is an incredible place, it got that way following years of public involvement and initiatives. This article makes an unfair comparison… the local residents haven’t even moved into the area… its all under construction.

We discovered the park when we visited the fabulous Sugar Beach nearby. My 3 kids ask me to take them to this park now, and they love the water features in both parks & the funky equipment. And let me tell you, it’s a rare occasion when all 3 of them ask to go to the same place! When I was there during the height of the summer tourist season, the area was filled with smiling people. The sculptural metal building is a welcomed change to the usual boring stuff we see. Come back in 10 years & then make a fair comparison.
Dean

It’s great to hear criticism which isn’t based on aesthetics but on use. I actually like many places in This new park and think the water elements are fantastic. There aren’t many people in it because no one lives in the neighborhood yet.. However I totally agree with the comments in relation to the building, it’s form and material selection. Both seem out of place and totally inappropriate for a park.
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KMc

I’m afraid you haven’t done your research. Sherbourne Common had an extensive public process, and is pivotal in that it thoroughly and creatively integrates social spaces, ecological function (the ‘greenwashing’ as you call it filters stormwater), and art, and begins to tie downtown Toronto back to its waterfront- a place that is just beginning to fill in with development. As others are eloquently saying, parks are process, and never complete….
Carren_Jao

This is a great point that’s rarely made in media. Design has become about the glitz and glamour lately and it rarely returns after the ribbon cutting to see how it’s achieved its goals. Thanks for pointing it out!
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Bill

I think it’s funny that the author thinks that Dufferin is a nice park and sets this as the standard for others to be judged by. While the photos looks really nice, most days at Dufferin are dreary. The entire park is fenced with advertising billboards perched on this fence. It does serve the neighbourhood in terms of providing a structure for a farmer’s market as well as the area’s unofficial dog park. However, it is not the standard by which other parks should be measured.
Fredkent

It is not a standard but a dramatic contrast between one “own” by the community and one done to a community. Give people a choice and where would they spend their time?
Fredkent

There is consultation and consultation. One is “design and defend” and the other is a community led process which we apply to create community destinations. We have been working on College Park for the city.
Fredkent

At what cost and who is it serving…the discipline or the community?
D.A.

I think a desire to make “slick” designs comes from something that is ingrained in the current day psyche of the Arch/L.A. professions. It may stem from the fact that we try to emulate other designers or designs rather seek inspiration from the ingredients of great places or natural processes. We look at other designed landscapes (and buildings or cities) and aspire to somehow either adopt similar elements or style. But I think we too rarely find inspiration in the unbeautiful, the mundane, and certainly not slick reality that makes up our daily lives. For some reason we seem to have a need to sterilise our world and a want to move away from our more gritty reality. The result is soulless landscapes and urban spaces, and bored kids (I design playgrounds and have a 3 year old. That playground is worthless).

And a side note, there is something conflicted in the logic of our planning system that builds places that take 10+ years to become relevant (perhaps we should think more incrementally?).I think the author’s core point is spot on.
Fredkent

Those are terrific comments. I love the insights that people have in these discussions. I think we will do an article to try to consolidate the thinking in a way that we might be further inspired. We certainly are.
http://profile.yahoo.com/46GIJCSBBK6KRN7GMYBT23THBQ michael v

PFS won the competition to do the landscape design for the “urban park” which is part of the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park, Ottawa’s old exhibition grounds – and seems to be up to many of the same tricks there.

I have corresponded with the City of Ottawa on this matter, raising some of the concerns raised in Fred’s article, and it is interesting what a strong push back I received in defense of the plan.

Most interesting was that in responding to my inquiry, with reference to Fred’s criticism of another of PFS’s projects, the City Manager included a note from PFS principal, Greg Smallenberg, esseintially denouncing Fred and this article.

FYI, I have included Smallenberg’s response below:

=====================================================================
PFS RESPONSE TO Mr. KENT’s CRITIQUE of SHERBOURNE COMMON

Mr. Kent has a reputation of unfairly criticizing design
and design professionals throughout North America and so it’s not surprising
the blog contains opinions we do not agree with. More importantly it contains
observations that seem intentionally misleading or perhaps just poorly
researched. Mr. Kent’s comments reveal a lack of understanding with respect to
the complexities and considerations of designing and building within the public
realm. For years now Mr. Kent has taken a very decided position that
well‐designed spaces are bad unless they adhere to a somewhat narrow and
prescriptive formula developed by behaviorist William Whyte in the 1970s and
1980s and adhered to by PPS ever since. If only creating beauty, joy and experience
in an urban context was that simple. Mr. Kent’s vitriol for the design
community is palpable and unrelenting. For this reason, and because of the
narrowness of his views, many in the North American design community have chosen
to simply ignore Mr. Kent and his diatribes which are consistently one‐sided
and almost always anti‐design. In fact the only reason we read his blog was
because of Mr. Vickers’s reference to it and our need to respond.

We take a very different view from that of Mr. Kent, one
where beautiful design and vibrant, functional

space are not mutually exclusive. And for the record, what
Mr. Kent fails to point out in his blog about Sherbourne Common is that the park
is located on a post industrial brownfield site in the midst of a massive redevelopment
and that a complete new community is just beginning to form around the park.
Along with an adjoining waterfront promenade and Sugar Beach, another fantastic
public space already delivered in East Bayfront, Sherbourne Common is an
example of building public amenity before private development, a proven strategy
for revitalizing cities all over the world.

Currently no one lives in the East Bayfront community
(where Sherbourne Common is centered) or

within easy walking distance of the park. So, for the next
few years, to find the park somewhat empty at certain times is not surprising. However things are
changing rapidly. A new college with a full time

student population of 3,000 directly adjacent to
Sherbourne Common has just opened this September.

Anticipating this, PFS has strategically located a large
open green directly across from the college for

informal sports and outdoor performance. The green is
lined with ample seating for hanging out with

friends or to people watch. In addition, thousands of
employees will be drawn to several new office

facilities either just completed or on the boards in East
Bayfront, and in the very near future

approximately 10,000 residents will be living in the
community. No one in the community will be further than a 5 minute walk from the park. The eastern edge of
the park will be lined with a variety of shops, cafes, a daycare and all sorts of community amenities that
will create a lively and vital component to life in Sherbourne Common. These amenities will be directly on
the park with no intervening roads.

On the south side of the park there are gardens for
passive enjoyment and an ice rink‐come‐splash pad for more active pursuits. Adjacent to the splash pad / ice
rink is a beautiful pavilion that Mr. Kent

derides in his blog, yet this pavilion houses public
washrooms, the mechanical system for the ice rink

and splash pad, the UV system that cleans the storm water
of East Bayfront and a soon‐to‐be‐leased

café within the park that will help activate the pavilion
area.

Sherbourne Common is a park and a storm water treatment
facility. In addition to the UV treatment

facility beneath the pavilion, public art that is not only
beautiful but functions as a part of the storm

water treatment train has been seamlessly incorporated
into the design, drawing attention to and

celebrating our water resource.

The children’s play area has been located on the north
side of the park to respond to the anticipated

family oriented residential buildings located north of
Queens Quay. The first of many is currently under

construction and directly adjacent to the park’s play
areas (again there is no intervening road). Once

completed, it is anticipated that the residents in this
building will be heavily utilizing the facilities in

Sherbourne Common ‐ North.

The children’s play area itself, which takes up almost 50%
of the total park area, was designed in close consultation with the City of Toronto Parks’ Department’s
play specialists. The various pieces of play equipment have been carefully placed to adhere to strict
CSA standards for fall zones. This has resulted in the pieces being somewhat separated from one another but
nonetheless successful in achieving a compliant and complete composition for active play. These
elements are interspersed with ample seating for parents who want to keep a
close eye on their children. Gravel surfacing in the play area (that Mr. Kent complains
about) responds to resiliency requirements for fall surfaces while allowing
ground water recharge, minimizing maintenance and providing contiguous planting
zones for the playground trees to thrive in. Planted areas of wispy long
grasses delineate spaces and bring children in close contact the more natural
aspects of play.

As Mr. Vickers has chosen to forward you what we consider
to be unfairly representative photograph

from Mr. Kent’s blog and purposely showing an empty park,
we felt compelled to attach a few

photographs that indicate how the park is used on a good
day and at different times of the first year

after completion. You will see in many of the photos that
the park is currently in the middle of a

construction site. Once the community is completed around
Sherbourne Common everyday will be a

good day and the park will be the social hub of East
Bayfront.

Greg Smallenberg

[And then included 4 photos of people happily using the facilities at Sherbourne Common.]
Fredkent

We stand by our comments. Nothing you said makes us reconsider our comments. Last Friday we had 50 housing developers from Toronto. We showed the images and a number of developers who were in the meeting agreed with our assessment. Some lived nearby. We have worked in over 3000 communities on public spaces for almost 40 years in over a 120 cities and 42 countries world-wide. We know a bad design when we see it.
We just spent the last two days in Istanbul shaping a placemaking program for the Global South. You would be laughed out of the room if you tried to put your design into any of the cities or slums we will be with over the next 4 years.
Guest

Fred Kent: Seriously man. GO GET LAID. I’m sick and tired of your rhetoric and attacking of anyone you seem to have a personal vendetta against. They’re either in the public spotlight more than you (something you obviously would relish), they’re mostly designers (which you’re not) or this could be as simple as you just trying to compensate for an overly small penis. At any rate, please disappear and leave well enough alone.

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