Urban WIldlife Habitats
WILDWOOD PARK
- Description
Description:
Wildwood Park is surrounded on three sides by the Red River. This has been important to the history of the neighbourhood because of the ever present threat of flood waters from the Red River. This area will be discussed in greater detail later. Wildwood Park was also the first neighbourhood to be built using prefabrication techniques of construction (Reimer, 1989). Wildwood Park was created after World War II and was the first fully planned suburb in Winnipeg (Stewart, 2004).
According to Reimer (1989) Wildwood Park was built by Hubert Bird in the 1940’s and was inspired by the Radburn planned neighbourhood. According to Martin (2001) Hubert Bird also made an effort to integrate the existing landscape into his design trying to save as many trees as possible; a ?place-specific landscape conservation approach? (pg 163). The characteristic features of the Wildwood Park area that separate it from more traditional grid blocks are: homes that face the interior pedestrian green ways, lanes and parking in the rear, parks as a backbone of the neighbourhood and a series of interconnected pedestrian only paths. All of these are consistent with the Radburn Model. Pictures 3 and 4 above show examples of housing facing the interior green space and pedestrian paths in the Wildwood area. Pictures 5 and 6 on the bottom exemplify the pedestrian only routes that lead to the larger open spaces and the central park areas that are the backbone of Wildwood.
