Price Tags has never had much nice to say about Yaletown Park – found here.
It’s a stretch to call it a park. There’s hardly a living plant in the place. The surface is either concrete or granite block, right up to the slender trunks of a handful of trees. And just in case you miss the point, they’ve added blocks of stone that aren’t too far removed from Jersey barriers.
On the whole, not what I would consider a successful public space, not for the cost.
There was a qualification: “perhaps the park will seem more inviting as the trees mature.”
And it’s true that hard-edged environments always benefit of some maturing landscape. But the change in Yaletown Park wasn’t what I expected: it wasn’t the trees that greened up so much as the granite pavers beneath.
There’s enough of a grass carpet so that even the desire lines are apparent – those pathways created by people walking where they want across the landscape, regardless of where the designers intended.
Maybe this outcome is what the designers intended – a different kind of park for the urban environment, but still welcoming enough to attract children.
It takes patience for a place to mature, something landscape architects know better than their clients and the public.
