adma
Superstar
It's not just a matter of "appreciating architecture"; it's a matter of appreciating a sense of place and the richness of the world. And beyond the fact that the urban scale around Norton Place Park is different from that around High Park, the thing is--for me, it wasn't just about walking west to High Park and back; that was only a chosen example. It was also walking north to Loblaws/Towers and back, or to other such places not obviously "child-geared". And not just walking, but driving and taking transit, my looking out the window and following along--so hypothetically for you, that equivalent "development of scope" ought to have involved Norton Place Park, *and* Bramalea City Centre--and maybe even downtown Brampton or other lay-of-the-land coordinates. A window-onto-the-world perspective on Brampton and even points beyond that wasn't simply bound to the child-geared--almost like, one is never too young for a kind of gateway to "civic consciousness" and the insatiable curiosity that comes with it.It seems for whatever reason, after catching up on this discussion nearly a year later, that Adma seems to have a certain distaste for the theme park industry and entertainment destinations in particular.
To make it clear, like it or not, no one was playing in the Forum when Wonderland built Kingswood….and wouldn’t reestablishing the prime concert venue downtown be the ultimate goal which the Molson Amphitheatre clearly did?
It should have worked easily in Ontario Place’s favour, as a concert ticket meant free admission, and there was (and still to this day) no reasonable restaurants nearby, that one was captive to spend money on the grounds of Ontario Place.
You do speak of playing in the playground at High Park attended by parents, and I’ve always asked, what makes my experience so much different when my mother and I walked to Norton Place Park here in Brampton three decades ago? I’ve been trying to read your posts as others have and you seem to think that all children just magically appreciate architecture.
So it's not a distaste for "the theme park industry and entertainment destinations in particular"--it's a distaste for that as a ***single-loaded, perspective-skewing be-all and end-all***. It's tantamount to Neil Postman-style "amusing to death"--and even worse when it informs a notion of childhood as being all about entropically kid-centric "amusement". Or, the kitschification of childhood, as non-kitsch is deemed to be too adult-table "challenging".
Look at it this way: already for me, when it came to childhood trips to and from the Ontario Science Centre, "getting there was half the fun"--that is, as terrific as the Science Arcade and everything was, I engaged to and was fascinated by the process of our getting there, whether by way of Eglinton or Don Mills or Overlea or the DVP or whatever other artery, the various coordinates and cross-streets and landmarks. I was aware of it as part of "something bigger", including Edwards Gardens some distance to the north where I *also* spent a lot of childhood visits. And as part of "something bigger", *all of this* became something richer. But it wasn't just about my precocity; it's almost as if I intuited something *any* child could have--and indeed, really *might* have had back then, or at least it was something generally easier to come by in an era before "in-car entertainment" a la Disney or Nintendo served as an en-route distraction.
Whereas if for you, a childhood trip to the Science Centre (or Ontario Place) would have been as disconnective as if you were transported there by ambulance, then I'm sorry--you were a lot more deficient than I was, particularly if you're still going to fall upon that deficient perspective as a "default".
And that's how "entertainment destinations" as an end in themselves become both a crutch for the deficient, and fuel for further deficiency. Thus Great Wolf Lodge as the Thing That Ate Niagara Falls, at least as far as "family visits" go. (Then again, I speak as someone who, even in my single digit years, actually actively *preferred* to go to the Falls and back by way of the Lakeshore and Old Hwy 8 than by the QEW, engaging to the Grimsby-Beamsville-Vineland-Jordan sequence of places--because for the healthy, curious kid, it's visually interesting and stimulating. Whereas Great Wolf Lodge implicitly caters to idiot-disconnective "Are we there yet? This trip sucks!" kids, or at least to idiot parents eager to offer their kids something "better" than their own idiot-kid "Are we there yet? This trip sucks!" memories of Niagara.)