In many cities around the world, policymakers, planners, and developers are envisioning the waterfront as a space of promise and a prime location for massive investments. Currently, the waterfront is being marketed as a crucial territorial wedge for economic ascendancy in globally competitive areas.
Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront (University of Toronto Press) analyzes how and why problem spaces on the waterfront have become opportunities. Contributors with diverse areas of expertise illuminate processes of development and provide fresh analyses of the intermingling of nature and society as they appear in both physical forms and institutional arrangements, which define and produce change.
How do you envision a friendly, accessible waterfront?
Send your answer to kerry (at) watercanada (dot) net, comment below, or tweet your answer to @CanadianWater and be entered to win a copy of Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront. Contest closes Friday, February 24 at 5:00 p.m.
The Toronto waterfront should turn away from the monolithic hardscaping approach and integrate pockets of vegetation, sandy areas, and arrangements of undressed stone in strategically placed mini-parks that encourage social interaction, and in particular, provide opportunities for play for children. As funding permits, public-art installations or “features” (fountains, informative displays, childrens’s paddling pools) will provide further interest and distinctivness to the different areas of the waterfront. The seaside development of Vuosaari in Helsinki, Finland, provides an excellent example of this kind of development.
The Toronto waterfront should turn away from the monolithic hardscaping approach and integrate pockets of vegetation, sandy areas, and arrangements of undressed stone in strategically placed mini-parks that encourage social interaction, and in particular, provide opportunities for play for children. As funding permits, public-art installations or “features” (fountains, informative displays, childrens’s paddling pools) will provide further interest and distinctivness to the different areas of the waterfront. The seaside development of Vuosaari in Helsinki, Finland, provides an excellent example of this kind of development.