Before I moved to Toronto, our experience with being in a metropolitan neighborhood was living in Detroit.
It’s not that Detroit doesn’t have superb things going for it, it’s just that the city’s decline over the previous decades resulted in a lot of abandoned houses, buildings, plus lots. There’s a lot of decay to be seen throughout that city, plus nowhere near the level of neighborhood parks like Toronto has. While Detroit has both Palmer Park plus Rouge Park, these are both situated in the suburbs respectively. It’s hard to point to Comerica Park in downtown Detroit because that is a sports complex plus baseball field. The only neighborhood park that I knew well while I was in our years in Detroit was Elmwood Central Park, plus even then it just can’t compare to any number of the vast array of neighborhood parks in the Greater Toronto Area. One of our first trips to Toronto was while I was in a family trip on our way to Montreal to see our cousins for the first time. The people I was with and I stopped in Toronto for a few days plus stayed at a hotel near Wilket Creek Park plus the Toronto Science Centre. During that trip we also explored the Moccasin Trail Park before getting on Highway 401 plus heading northward toward Montreal. Nowadays I like to take our cannabis vaporizer with me whenever I go for a long walk in one of the several neighborhood parks in the Greater Toronto Area. My modern current home is in Malvern within walking distance of the Rouge National Urban Park. It might be the biggest park in Toronto, but it’s closer to Scarborough than downtown Toronto.