Making Waves: An Examination of the Waterfront Toronto Revitalization Initiative
Like so many other water adjacent settlements, the story of Toronto is linked to its rivers and Lake Ontario.
The MKSK Trek Fellowship is a funded travel and research program open to MKSK professionals to explore critical issues in design, landscape, planning, and urbanism.
As shipping and industrial activity grew along the shore in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the community became cut off from this vital resource. Over time as industry declined, the waterfront became less useful for industrial purposes and a new vision was needed. Recognizing the tremendous potential to reconnect and reclaim the declining industrialized shoreline, the Government of Canada, Province of Ontario, and the City of Toronto created Waterfront Toronto in 2001 to oversee and lead a renew of Toronto’s nearly 2000-acre waterfront. To give a sense of scale, this is roughly 25% larger than the area bounded by I-70/I-71, OH-315, and I-670 in downtown Columbus, OH.
Driving this revitalization effort is a mandate to create a vibrant, connected waterfront that belongs to everyone; a care for realizing neighborhoods, parks, destinations, and infrastructure that make peoples lives better; and a recognition that for the area to thrive, its planning and design must be shaped by diverse voices and perspectives.
Expected to take 25 years to complete, Toronto’s new blue edge will create approximately 40,000 new residences and 40,000 new jobs, deliver nearly 500 acres of iconic parks and public spaces, and deploy cutting edge ecological and technological systems that will establish Waterfront Toronto as a landmark of 21st century urbanism.
The Trek was organized around three objectives:
Stewardship | Explore the forces that led to the genesis of Waterfront Toronto and define it’s organizational structure, capacity, mandate, and impact;
Advocacy | Document the strategies and processes Waterfront Toronto deploys to build community, support a complex ecosystem of stakeholders, and define a shared vision for revitalization; and
Revitalization | Investigate the journey (thus far) to actualization of the shared vision, the means and methods used to evaluate the success of Waterfront Toronto initiatives, and how the shared vision has evolved in response to changing political, environmental, economic, and cultural forces.
Donald Zellefrow, AICP, is an Associate Landscape and Urban Designer at MKSK. Donny’s work explores the power of ecology, the promise of technology, and the strength of community. He has brought his passion for the public realm to bear on a variety of complex urban projects while at MKSK including Greenville, South Carolina’s newest signature public space Unity Park, the award-winning Winthrop Family Garden in Chicago, Illinois, and a variety of downtown and district plans throughout the Southeast and Midwest. Donald holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded the Eleanore T. Widenmeyer Prize in Landscape and Urbanism, and a Bachelor of Urban Planning from the University of Cincinnati.