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Strategic Framework Park Solutions

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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Seeing the benefits of working with natural processRebuilding essential infrastructure using 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

A productive landscape in cities Productive landscapes in the city

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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

Saint Paul Boston/Cambridge Toronto Stockholm

A new generation of city building embraces great natural features

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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 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’ on Lower Manhattan and the link to BrooklynThe ‘smile’ embracing Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn

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Building on a Legacy with important precedents like Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace in Boston

Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald necklace in Boston - enduring inspiration…

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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 Torontoto 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 gradual erosion…..The buried Garrison Creek an inspiration and resource

Re-’discovery ‘and the pendulumStarts to swing back

The Discovery Walk

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David Suzuki Foundation launches Toronto’s Homegrown National Park project in Ward 19 March 6, 2013Do 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 .

A homegrown National Park

with better connections – a new bridge to Stanley Park and links to the waterfrontA new bridge to Fort York

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Fort York is revealed as a green oasis surrounded by intense redevelopment

The centre piece of an environment becoming more urban and more greenWhat if Fort York and its lands were seen as the nexus of a park network?

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A public realm initiative in Liberty Village

15 December, 2005

The Planning PartnershipGreenberg Consultants

A proposed merger of Ontario Place and Exhibition Place – the vision a 270 acre ‘Park’A potential for consolidation of the Ex and Ontario Place?

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Taking the Martin Goodman Trail out to the water’s edge

West Queen West intensifies … attempts to plan for an expanded public realmWest Queen West – open spaces along the rail corridor

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Including West Toronto Railpath with Phase 2 in the worksThe West Toronto Railpath with more to come

Liberty Village BIA looks for links beyond its boundaries

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From WPNA Public Realm Study

Directly linked in turn to Wellington Place and King/SpadinaAn endless chain the work of many hands

Community Improvement Plan for west half of King Spadina ++

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

TTommy thompson Park – aka “the Spit” 2002

The incredible restorative power of nature

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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 opportunitiesand 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