Crossing the East River by way of the Queensboro bridge, it’s easy to elude the city’s one true heterotopia. Even in winter, Roosevelt Island’s Octagon Park Community Garden breeds dense patches of bamboo, haunted by the island’s flock of stray cats. A few cherry blossoms bloom, and the grass grows lush but foreboding under an abnormally warm January sun.
A tree busts through centuries of wall-to-wall-to-floor cobblestone in Brussels’ The Marolles district.
Minutes from the outer ring’s of Toronto’s sprawl, 90 acres of former farmland mark the site of depression-era agricultural misdemeanours. Reiterated as a geological wonder, the exposed shale is now the focus of conservation efforts — attempts to prevent erosion due to growing visitor traffic in the area.
Slip through a fence off of Rue de Gaspe in Montreal and you’ll find yourself in the self-governing Field of Possibilities, open to use as organic as its flora and fauna.
Across the city, a similar development looms over the other river that traces the old city borders. The Humber Arboretum glows below.
Ghosts of grandiose visions of cultural prosperity haunt Montreal’s Parc Jean-Drapeau.
Monolithic high-rises loom over the Don Valley, intensified by a brewing thunderstorm
When I was a kid and saw signs for “Downtown/Centre-ville” on the 401, I thought Centreville was the place to be. Now I know the best time to go is early in the mornings, before the rides click into motion and while the water is still.
This marimo was on display at Tokyo 101, a festival devoted to exploring the links between Icelandic and Japanese culture at Reykjavik’s Nordic House in 2009. Marimo are self-sustaining colonies of algae formed into balls, endemic only to Scotland, Iceland, Japan, and Estonia.
When mega-events infringe on green space
Beyond these windcatchers lies a compact human-made wharf called NDSM, across the IJ from mainland Amsterdam. In the same way that much of the country was reclaimed and made ripe for industry from natural marshland, the wharf was transformed from a former shipyard into a breeding ground for the arts.
In the south of Sweden, there appears to be a tradition of manicuring hedges into shapes that echo houses. Somehow their proliferation seems to animate the otherwise strictly ordered lawns of Malmö.
In August, I learned from Ivy that a few steps in the right direction along the tracks running over the Rosedale ravine will launch you 40 feet down into a little urban river valley of decadent serenity.
All along Gottingen Street in Halifax, lush greenery pushes through the blanket left behind by the great blizzard of January 2009.
