Quote:
Originally Posted by Muta
I see nothing wrong with having kids play in a park; people in cities all over the world do it. In fact, they get more usage than a backyard does and takes up ALOT less space (per person).
Backyards are a big contributing factor to urban sprawl. Always have been.
|
This is why I'm completely unconvinced by the argument that people "need" a backyard for their kids, given the size of most yards in suburban Calgary. You
could make that argument if you were talking about backyards similar to the one shown in my image of suburban Saint John (which is precisely why my parents moved to the suburbs when my sister and I were kids), but zoning residential lots of that size is completely unsustainable in a large metropolitan area.
The typical Calgary backyard isn't big enough to accomodate play for children older than say, 4 or 5 years. After that, they need to go to the community park/schoolyard anyway. It's absolutely true that kids need space to play, but the only spaces large enough in Calgary are found in community parks, whether the parks are in the suburbs or in the core.