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Strategic Framework
Park Solutions
THE CHALLENGE – The need for parks is large and growing
• Great parks are the hallmark of a great city
• Toronto is not keeping up
• Conventional methods not meeting growing need for park space
• Both quantity and quality
• Limited ability of the City to maintain existing spaces or to create
new ones
• Cost of Land
• Budgetary limitations
• Lack of staff resources
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Not keeping pace with the huge increase in downtown population
Toronto has the most high rise buildings under construction in North America
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Also great needs in the neighbourhoods and inner suburbs
Recreational opportunities and walkability essential for public health
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Many diverse new uses and users competing for limited space in parks
The vital need for common ground in a heterogeneous city
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We are living differently in smaller spaces… means making room for the
needs of all ages – including young families and seniors
Need to understand our place in nature including the impacts of climate change
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Toronto July 8, 2013
THE OPPORTUNITIES and there are many!
• Piggybacking on other essential infrastructure – stormwater
management and floodproofing
• Integrating with city’s underlying natural systems
• Re-using and connecting existing spaces to form networks
• City becomes its own resort – ‘cottage country’
• Waterfronts, riverfronts new frontier
• integrating new parks in heart of new neighbourhoods
• Great range of hard and soft spaces
• Finding the low hanging fruit
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Rebuilding essential infrastructure usingnatural process
Seeing the benefits of working with natural process
An altered image of place includes the presence of nature
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Sherbourne Common a ‘park’ and a water treatment plant
Sherbourne Common – – a ‘park’ and a water treatment plant
Productive landscapes in the city
A productive landscape in cities
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Reclaiming neglected spaces
From Montreal rooftops....
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....to urban farming in Detroit
By simultaneously making the city denser and more green it becomes its own resort
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New waterfront parks provide public access to areas that were previously inaccessible
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New parks emerge as the central features of new neighbourhoods
The new 6 acre Regent ‘Park’ is the magnet that draws other uses and users
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER
A new generation of city building embraces great natural features
Saint Paul
Boston/Cambridge
Toronto
Stockholm
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Saint Paul on the Mississippi – the full cycle
An epiphany – the Great River Park
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A City – denser, greener,
re-connected to the
Misssissippi
The revival of a powerful regional 19th century Greenway concept
Every neighbourhood has a signature green space
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A shared vision for the whole leading to….
a program of incremental development and phased public realm investment
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Major new initiative
Next great Framework effort - whole City on the River
• Renewing the ‘compact’
• Strengthen greatest competitive advantage –
‘Great River Passage’
• Apply what has worked to the whole length
of the Mississippi
The ‘smile’ embracing Lower and the and Brooklyn
The ‘smile’ on Lower ManhattanManhattanlink to Brooklyn
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Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald necklace in Boston - enduring inspiration…
Building on a Legacy with important precedents like
Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace in Boston
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for an ongoing ‘project’ to reconnect to the Charles River basin and Boston Harbor
The ‘Big Dig” and the Crossroads initiative
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There is an enormous potential for Toronto
to develop an expanded park network
It is already surfacing in many disparate places
West of Downtown….a series of initiatives one
leading to the other but still disconnected
Never appear on one plan!
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leading to Creek an inspiration
The buried Garrison gradual erosion….. and resource
The Discovery Walk
Re-’discovery ‘and the pendulum
Starts to swing back
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A homegrown National Park
David Suzuki Foundation launches Toronto’s
Homegrown National Park project in Ward 19
March 6, 2013
Do you have great ideas and a passion for community? Do you live,
work or play in Toronto ’s Ward 19?
If you answered yes, you need to be part of Toronto’s Homegrown
National Park project!
The David Suzuki Foundation has embarked on a mission to establish a
” Homegrown National Park ” in the City of Toronto by creating a
vibrant green corridor following the former path of Garrison Creek ,
one of the city’s most important lost rivers. We’re seeking motivated
and creative individuals who will work together with the David Suzuki
Foundation and our project partners to help us grow, restore and
enhance urban green space within the Homegrown National Park .
with better connections – A new bridge to Stanley Park and links to the waterfront
a new bridge to Fort York
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Fort York is revealed as a green oasis surrounded by intense redevelopment
What if piece of and its lands were seen as the nexus of a park network?
The centreFort Yorkan environment becoming more urban and more green
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A public realm initiative in Liberty Village
A proposedA potential for consolidation of the Place – the vision Place?
merger of Ontario Place and Exhibition Ex and Ontario a 270 acre ‘Park’
15 December, 2005
The Planning Partnership
Greenberg Consultants
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Taking the Martin Goodman Trail out to the water’s edge
West Queen West intensifies – open spaces along an expanded public realm
West Queen West … attempts to plan for the rail corridor
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Including West Toronto Railpath with Phase toin the works
Railpath with more 2 come
The West
Liberty Village BIA looks for links beyond its boundaries
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Directly linked in turn to Wellington Place of King Spadina ++
Community Improvement Plan for west half and King/Spadina
An endless chain the work of many hands
From WPNA Public Realm Study
An initiative in the Entertainment District east of Spadina
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Similar set of initiatives taking shape on the
east side of downtown
The ‘world in motion’ includes key public space initiatives
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Waterfront Toronto creates series of new parks
The transformation of the mouth of the Don River
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The Toronto Harbour Commission Plan of 1912
Dredging a ‘swamp’ or removing the largest wetland on the Great Lakes?
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Lateral solutions – addressing multiple problems and working with natural process
The River mouth parks create a strong sense of place
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The natural and the urban in a new contrasting balance
The incredible restorative power of nature
TTommy thompson Park – aka “the Spit”
2002
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Tommy thompson Park – aka “the Spit”
2009
The potential for a larger network extending up river….
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The Evergreen initiative takes shape
Toronto city council’s executive committee approves plan for Pan Am Trail,
joining 80 km of bike paths.
The Toronto region has more than 1,000 km of bike trails. The trouble is they are not connected. There are
frustrating gaps, sections that can’t accommodate cyclists and pedestrians, and stretches that end abruptly.
City council’s executive committee took a welcome step last week, voting to link 80 km of cycling and walking
paths into a continuous trail from Pickering to Brampton. This east-way route, suitable for walking, running and
cycling, would be completed by 2015. It would be called the Pan Am Path .
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TOWARD A STRATEGIC PARKS FRAMEWORK FOR TORONTO
• There is enormous potential to capitalize on these assets and opportunities
and many others throughout the city
• They gain enormously in power by being connected in an overall strategy
• They point to innovative ways to greatly expand Toronto’s quantity and
quality of park space
• Park People can play a critical role in the following areas:
 Connect the dots and link proposals across the city
 Conduct research – needs assessment, resources etc.
 Inventory, map, and correlate existing and new initiatives
 Work with range of public and private stakeholders to identify POLICIES,
PROGRAMS, PLANS, PROJECTS to advance a strategic parks agenda
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