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