Is This the Future of Urban Resilience?

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Is This the Future of Urban Resilience?
Affordable housing. Flood-proofing. Rewilding. A massive project to reroute Toronto’s Don River is pushing the boundaries of green infrastructure.

ByDanielle Bochove
July 27, 2022 at 8:00 AM EDT


(Bloomberg CityLab) What began as a defensive measure to protect Canada’s largest city from extreme flooding has evolved into one of the most ambitious urban resilience projects in the world.

Toronto’s Port Lands district — about 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) southeast of the financial district — has languished for decades, an industrial wasteland jutting into Lake Ontario. But now, as part of the Port Lands Flood Protection Project, 600 acres are being reshaped, creating 64 acres of parks, 75 acres of wildlife habitat, a new 1.5-kilometer meandering river course and — eventually — housing to accommodate some 20,000 residents.

The project’s scope is vast — not just in terms of its physical footprint, but in its vision of what urban living could be.



“We’re really using it as a catalyst for city building,” says Christopher Glaisek, chief planning and design officer for Waterfront Toronto, the tri-government body overseeing the project. “We’re building something that’s very natural and environmental, but its location and its plan are integrated completely with the urban renewal plans for the area.”

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Moving a River

On a glorious late spring day in June, the area is an endless expanse of diggers and dust. Hundreds of acres of scraped, sunbaked earth, dotted with futuristic bridges reaching across dry, newly excavated riverbed, underscore the colossal scale of engineering.

More than 20 separate projects are underway at the site. In addition to shifting the river and elevating the land around it, new roads and basic infrastructure must be laid; the neighborhood, and its light-rail transportation system, will follow later as funding is secured. Roughly 1.3 million cubic meters of earth have been shifted since construction began in 2017. Along with earlier flood-protection work completed to the north of the site in 2021, this phase of the master plan has a budget of C$1.25 billion ($969 million). ............(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-07-27/is-toronto-s-port-lands-flood-protection-project-the-future-of-urban-resilience?srnd=premium