At first glance Rowntree Mills Park seems like a fantastic green space in the Humber River Valley between Kipling and Islington Aves., just south of the Vaughan-Toronto border. The paved trail here meanders all the way to Lake Ontario along the river.

It should be an active hub, but in 2009 the local city councillor, Giorgio Mammoliti, had the park gates closed to cars, due to criminal activity and loud, rowdy parties where people would trash the park.

Closing Rowntree to cars has turned a once-busy place into a nearly deserted expanse of grass and forests. In the midday sun, the empty parking lots and unused picnic tables have a spooky, too-quiet feeling, though many people live nearby.

Postwar homes, many with incredible vegetable gardens — evidence of the large Italian population here — lie to the east. Known as Humber Summit, this neighbourhood also has a large South Asian population, with many shops along Islington. On the west side of the river highrise apartment and condo buildings on Kipling run along the top of the ravine edge, with access to the park down a few forested paths with bridges that cross the Humber where cottages stood until swept away by Hurricane Hazel in 1954.

Rowntree can still be reached on foot or bicycle, but in order to bring a car in a special permit is needed. It’s a big park and lugging barbecue supplies and coolers can be an ordeal.

We’re still a car city in many ways, especially here where distances are much greater than downtown. Cars facilitate the hundreds of weekend summer picnics that happen in parks across the city.

A group of youth from the nearby Delta Family Resource Centre’s SWAG (Students Working Together as a Group) environment club are hoping that policy toward this park changes.

“Bambi’s family lives down here,” says Aman Nahan, 16, on a walk we took through the park, alluding the wildlife that has moved in due to the absence of people. It’s perhaps one of the few benefits of the closure.

On a solo bike ride I came within a few dozen metres of a grazing deer that seemed only partially interested in my presence, not far from those high rises. Posted signs also alert passersby to a coyote presence.

Nahan and his fellow club members have lived by the park most of their lives and recently organized a cleanup, as illegal dumping has become a problem. Sana Hefez, a program worker at Delta, says that despite the ban crime still exists in the park.

“It’s more dangerous now because nobody is there,” she says, echoing urban theorist Jane Jacob’s famous “eyes on the street” concept, where more people equals more safety.

The students, while acknowledging the park’s previous troubles, think a better solution than simply closing the park to cars can be found, suggesting more police patrols, paid parking that requires monitoring, or even security cameras. Until more people start using the park, they too stay away from it.

“It could really be a ‘city in a park,’ like the Toronto signs say,” says club member Eileen Santos. “But I wouldn’t come here alone now.”

I emailed Mammoliti’s office, and was promised a response, but hadn’t heard back by press time.

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Rowntree’s problems are people problems, which we have in abundance across Toronto, but shutting down the city isn’t an option in most places, and these kids don’t think it’s the solution to Rowntree’s problems either.