I recently read this article on a Toronto news site. It’s discussing disagreement regarding public park focus and amenities. In it a local architect is disagreeing with the premise that Toronto parks have become too child-centric and need more adult-friendly features, like benches. (There is a link to the original op-ed piece at the beginning of the article, and you can read that too for context.)

The architect says that she’s been to the parks with her children and sees them as successful parks that everyone is happy with. I suspect the fact that she is using the parks as a mother, and not for her own interests, has dramatically skewed her perceptions.

The architect goes on to say that polarizing people into groups isn’t effective. “If you start to break people into groups then you’ve got the dog people, the kid people, older people, and the people who just want to eat lunch.”

My response to that is: Yes. Exactly.

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