Toronto gets a new neighbourhoodin 2015

Sky-high dreams for downtown park

Changing the city throughART

Green connections across the GTA

Hopes to redevelop The Hearn Power Plant

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ReImagineTO

SHOWCASING THE WORKS AND IDEAS OF INNOVATORS AND DEVELOPERS ACROSS TORONTO

Picture a new transit hub

ANDREA PRECIADO

EVAN PANG

WILL KOBLENSKY

NINA RAYNARS

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CONTRIBUTORS

Will is an interdisciplinary journalist who listens more than he speaks. He covers every beat his lens can capture, specializing in political, human rights and mental health news. Will strives to make the world more just by shedding light and sharing stories.

Evan was born in Manitoba and spent several years work-ing in the northern low lands of Ontario before moving to Toronto to study journalism. Developing a strong sense of the written word through song-writing and story telling Evan has strong interests in travel, culture, and human rights issues.

Nina Raynars is a Zimbabwean native who immigrated to Canada in 2010. The political injustices and human rights violations in her home country inspired her to study jour-nalism. A career she hopes to use as a vehicle to highlight groundbreaking stories about politics, economy, health, social justice and the environment.

Andrea spent most of her lifetime in Colombia till she immigrated to Canada in 2007. She is passionate about humans rights and foreign cultures. Andrea has a strong interest in world religions, nature and documentaries. One day she wishes to work for the United Nations.

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Senior Editor :

Tim Doyle

Photos :

Andrea Preciado, Evan Pang, Will Koblensky, Nina Raynars, Tom

Weatherburn, TheLanewayProject, Victoria Taylor, Metro de Medellín,

Bill Wrigley, Jonathan Scott, Richard Valenzona, DundeeKilmer, Friends of

the King Highline, Park People,Helena Grdadolnik,Ivanhoe Cambridge

Editors’ NoteWelcome to ReImagineTO

The first edition of our magazine aims to be a spirited outlet that shares stories that inform you about Toronto’s public spaces.

ReImagineTO‘s defines public spaces as indispensable settings for a thriving urban society. A space that enriches the city and encourages outdoor activities, and in turn flourishes the everyday lives of its residents.

The rise of condo developments has swallowed up most of city’s public spaces. Some developments, however, have seen public spaces full of local character carved out by city policy and neighbourhood activism.

We approached the same subject from a number of different angles because public spaces are receiving a greater level of importance within our urban landscapes. We highlighted abandoned buildings, neighbourhood development, green rooftops, street art and future plans for pedestrians and cyclists.

Some of the stories covered highlight some key concerns for policy makers, professionals and residents. The common thread in our stories center around the plans, design and management of public spaces to provide Torontonians with a higher quality of life.

We are excited to present you with stories that will positively impact the way you view public spaces. As an urban society we cannot thrive without them. We believe this and hope you feel the same way.

Regards,

Andrea Preciado, Evan Pang, Nina Raynars and Will Koblensky

The old Hearn

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TABLE OF

C O N T E N T S

Next level canopy: Toronto’s green roofs and rooftop farm

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20

22

24

26

28

30

The Pan Am Games and birth of a neighbourhood

Livability part of plan for Portland

King High Line

New but uncertain future for Kodak building

The Green Line

Gondola/Cable Car Project

Westwood Theatre could be the set of down town Etobicoke06

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Developing Toronto’s laneways

Re-imagining Toronto through art

Good old Yonge Street

Developers promise an oasis in the sky at Union Station

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06 09

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“It’s a little bit like the transit situation in Toronto, there are so many different ideas but nothing ever gets done.”

(Denise Harris)

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What was once a small, 1950s movie theatre relic is now the site of dreams for a new downtown.

The one screen Westwood Theatre at Kipling Avenue and Dundas Street West, just outside the Kipling Subway Station, first opened in 1952. It’s been a vacant and decaying single-story stretch on prime real estate for 15 years. First operated by 20th Century Theatres, the Westwood was smaller than the neighbouring Humber and Queensway cinemas and even after more screens were added and Famous Players took over, the Westwood couldn’t survive.

“You feel a twinge now that it’s gone,” Denise Harris, a historian at the Etobicoke Historical Society said. “When the theatre was there, there were always some other businesses in it, like along the side there would be little stores. Driving schools, places to go and take dancing lessons...even after the theatre closed, those smaller stores still operated for a while.”

From 1998 until 2013 many plans for redevelopment including one to build a courthouse and another to put the Etobicoke City Hall on the site before amalgamation fell through. Resident Evil: Apocalypse was filmed on the theatre lands in 2004, the city used Westwood’s parking lot to dump snow in the winter and Toronto’s firefighters temporarily stored donated toys inside, but a permanent solution didn’t get underway until now.

“The city bought it quite some time ago, in the 60s, and they were intending to put a subway train yard there,” Harris said. “It’s a little bit like the transit situation in Toronto, there are so many different ideas but nothing ever gets done.”

When Peter Miczyn was elected City Councillor for Ward 5 in 2000, an area encompassing the theatre lands, pushed for redevelopment. He also supported turning the area into a pedestrian friendly, downtown-like central focus for Etobicoke. That includes tearing down the Six Points Interchange, also known as the spaghetti junction, a series of overlapping no-stop highway ramps next to the old Westwood site.

“I really think Peter Milczyn really did a terrific job of trying to move things forward. Because everything’s been thinking for quite some time that this is a wonderful opportunity for development,” Harris said. “But that interchange

WESTWOOD THEATRE COULD BE THE SET OF DOWNTOWN ETOBICOKE

The Six Points Interchange at Kipling and Dundas is being torn down, making room for ground-level accessible streets. The abandoned Westwood Theatre is supposed to turn into greenspace, mixed use housing

and what could evole into Etobicoke’s first central focus.

By: WILL KOBLENSKY

PHOTO CONTRIBUTOR

Will Koblensky

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is in the way and there were so many ideas, there was a lot of people in indecision, dragging their heels.”

The whole project to revitalize the area is run by the municipal organization Build Toronto. Called The Six Points Interchange Reconfiguration, the project knocked down the decrepit Westwood Theatre in 2013 and has begun work on turning the interchange into ground-level streets.

Milczyn stepped down as councillor in 2014 to run for MPP representing the same Etobicoke-Lakeshore area under the Liberals, he won by 6,548 votes.

In October 2014’s municipal election, Justin Di Ciano won the Ward 5 seat vacated by Milczyn. Di Ciano had lost to the now MPP Milczyn in the 2010 election by 109 vote margin.

Immediately after delivering his victory speech at his campaign party, Di Ciano told this reporter the Westwood Theatre Lands redevelopment would be his first priority.

“It’s 25 acres of city owned land. You can see there was a clear mandate from the people, we’re going to ensure that those lands do not go to residential development,” Di Ciano said. There are numerous, high-rise condominiums directly adjacent to the lands. “We’re reserving it

for community space, we’re going to transform it. We’re going to bring in the services that are needed in the area.”

Di Ciano was referring to a YMCA, green space and mixed use housing when he said “community space.”

“We’re going to bring in a supermarket, we’re going to bring in office space for new jobs,” Di Ciano said. ‘We’re going to surround a big urban park with a live work and play environment. It’s going to compliment all the growth that comes along Dundas Street.”

“Build Toronto is developing a plan to rebuild the intersections and develop the land parcels next the new road,” David Layton, the YMCA’s Vice President of Asset Development and Real Estate said. “We would hope to open in (the YMCA) in 2018”

Layton said City Hall still needed to approve many parts of the reconfiguration, but he expects it all to go through after a few adjustments.

“It’s opening up all kinds of opportunities to have people not just stop, but live.” Layton said. “Because right now the Westwood is just a vacant parking lot and the lands between the overpasses are empty”

A map depicting Toronto’s laneways courtesy of Tom Weatherburn

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Sewer drains, rodents and garbage. If you walk down Toronto’s laneways the smell of exhaust vents fill the air, cracked pavement trips the un-cautious step and most wouldn’t even dare walk down one at night.

There are people looking at these lane ways not with fright but with imagination. Michelle Senayah an architectural and urban designer is teaming up with two firms, Grounded Planning and Distl to develop an initiative dubbed The Laneway Project.

“Our population is growing so much that we need this public space,” Senayah said. “The laneway system is this giant untapped resource which could be much more developed than it is and as we do more research, we realize that there isn’t anyone or any entity working specifically on laneways.”

Over the past several months, Senayah and her team have been gathering resources and working with city departments to develop a revitalization program. Taking their knowledge of successful laneway systems around the world like Perth’s Laneway Revitalization Strategy and Chicago’s Green Alley Program, the idea is to show Toronto the potential of laneways by connecting innovators and city planners.

”There’s no laneway specific planning policy currently written,” Senayah said. “So the spaces remain in a grey zone which is reflected in the way that they are at the moment.”

In Toronto there are currently over 2,400 public lane ways stretching over 250 linear kilometers.

Kristyn Wong-Tam is a city councilor and advocate of laneway development including laneway homes and she agrees that most laneways are being underutilized.

“There’s an opportunity to turn laneways into streets that are of human scale, that foster a better environment for pedestrians,” said Wong-Tam. “We reached out to waste management and they see laneways largely as streets to facilitate garbage removal and act as loading space for delivery trucks.”

“Our population is growing and we need

this space.”(Michelle Senayah)

DEVELOPING TORONTO’S LANEWAYS

Non-profit organizations launch The Laneway Project to revitalize “secondary roads”

By: EVAN PANG

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Taylor bring her ideas to the table where residents and city planners can talk about them. Taylor has been developing a project called Public Laneway Puncture. The idea is to cut out sections of asphalt so that water can drain more efficiently but also so that plant life can flourish re-invigorating laneways from waste areas to earth friendly green spaces.

“My ideas about Public Laneway Puncture evolved from Parking Lot Puncture, a design project I did during my Masters of Landscape Architecture at U of T,” Taylor said, “I have constructed a sample puncture in my own driveway to test asphalt stability, different gravels, and to watch for seed germination.

Although the idea of Public Laneway Puncture is still being researched Senayah hopes that this will just be the first of many innovations including the possibility of laneway business similar to Melbourne’s cafes and lounges, all the way to green spaces and art projects such as gardens and lane way murals.

Wong-Tam explained the idea of leaving these laneways as secondary streets will only lead to wasted infrastructure.

“There has to a paradigm shift on how we look at the use of laneways, we have to look at them as an existing infrastructure that have multi-functional purposes,” said Wong-Tam. ”When it’s not being used for waste management can it not be used for street animation and programming?”

Public green spaces and pop-up events are among the first initiatives Senayah and her team are working on to show both the community and municipal departments the potential of the city’s laneways.

“If you want to get somewhere big it’s always best to start small,” Senayah said. ”We want to become an umbrella organization, that acts as a connector between the people and the city departments to get things done.”

Senayah and her team are already working as connectors helping people like landscape artist Victoria

PHOTO CONTRIBUTORS

Tom Weatherburn

Victora Taylor

The Laneway Project

Western Gateway Mural in the Scarborough south west’s neighborhood of Birch Cliff.

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It’s Thanksgiving week in Toronto. A painter wears his khaki green pants, a winter cap, an orange safety vest and his hair in a ponytail. His painting tools line the right side of the underpass in Birch Cliff, a neigbourhood located in the Southwest of Scarborough; a silver construction ladder lines the left.

He opens a small plastic container of celeste blue paint, grabs a medium-sized paintbrush and starts finishing the last touch-ups. Karin Eaton, executive and artistic director of Mural Routes looks at him as he is working and offers him an extra-large Tim Horton’s coffee and a package of Timbits.

“Every day is a conversation with the wall, to the point that I start yelling at the wall ‘when are you

going to let me go?’ but the wall won’t let me go until it’s ready to say ‘I am done’.” Bill Wrigley, an artist specializing in mural painting said to Eaton.

For the last six weeks, he had been working with his assistant Jill Birks on The Western Gateway Mural, a signature project of Cultural Hotspot, StArt and Mural Routes.

“This [mural] is designed to have impact. As drivers go by 60km/h or 80 km, they only have six seconds to see this painting, or maybe they might not see it at all,” Wrigley said. “ The most impactful is the two facing walls with the stripes. What I like about it is that from that point of view you can see this high impact thing, almost like saying ‘ don’t hit this wall’ and at the same time it hits the eye.”

PHOTO CONTRIBUTORS

BILL WRIGLEYANDREA PRECIADO

By: ANDREA PRECIADO

“The power that public art can have in

their neighbourhoods.”

(Mojan Jianfar)

RE-IMAGININGTORONTO THROUGHT ART

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He is getting the last details of this artistic masterpiece ready before its official unveiling. The flora and fauna that thrive in the region inspired the mural. The main emphasis is in the correlation between the Scarborough Bluffs and the migration of butterflies and birds.

“Then finally one day, it [the wall] quietly says ‘you can go’,” Wrigley said.

Just weeks ago, John Tory, new mayor of the city, agreed that Toronto art’s industry needs a financial boost. Most industrialized cities have a visual language to communicate with its residents in the different neighbourhoods. During John Tory’s mayoral campaign, he said he would focus on developing funding for the arts as well as promoting the city’s art globally.

“What the arts community needs to know in Toronto is that we are going to be there for them. We are talking about something that is vital economically to the city,” Tory told the media after a mayoral debate held at TIFF Bell Lightbox. “Creative industries are going to be attracted to a creative city.”

Eaton’s view coincides with Tory’s, as she believes there are many parts in the city that are lacking imagination. She thinks that in order to re-imagine the city it is necessary to add some creativity.

“It’s a combination in wanting to engage people in art … they need something they can understand, maybe art that relates to their community,” Eaton said. “This [art] will improve what the neighbourhood looks like.”

Mural Routes, Cultural Hot-spot, StreetArt, PATCH and Steps Initiative have been created to engage the community in the re-imagining of public spaces through artistic activities that include: dancing, singing, photography, painting etc.

“It’s the whole idea about public spaces, you don’t have to go to an gallery, you can just be outside and see a mural or a painting,” Eaton said.

Mojan Jianfar is in charge of the stakeholder relation

department at the Steps Initiative, a non-profit organization that uses art to change public spaces as well as support emerging artist and youth around the GTA.

“We’ve worked in Thorncliffe Park, Flemingdon, St. James Town, Regent Park,” Jianfar said. “Part of that process has been allowing a platform for youth to talk about some of the issues in their neighbourhood, and how we can look at public art to challenge those issues.”

In one of the projects in the summer of 2013, the Steps Initiative culminated its Steps emerging ARTivist Program with a transformation of a 32 storey social housing edifice at 200 Wellesley St. E, into a perpendicular canvas that became the world’s tallest mural. About 50 young people and hundreds of citizens were involved in the process in various ways.

“That building had a lot of negative history to it. There was a fire so we wanted to bring some sort of positive ending to it,” Jianfar said. “ This created a momentum that ended up creating a group called the Toronto emerging ARTivists (which mean artist and activist combined) and so far they’ve done several mural projects in the community.”

There are many art projects in Toronto that will be finished this year.

The city is going through a stage in which artistic imagination is transforming the every day look of public spaces by bringing light and life through murals, graffiti, sculptures, paintings, street lightning, vegetation and cultural activities to the community.

“What has resulted from all this, is that there is now a group of youth that are very aware of what’s happening in the community,” Jianfar said. ”They’re pretty much attuned of the power that public art can have in their neighbourhoods.”

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GOOD OLD YONGE STREETNew project offers more pedestrian walking space

By: ANDREA PRECIADO

Yonge Street divides the city into eastern and western sections; it is the oldest and one of the most important streets in Toronto. It is popular for being home to the city’s top restaurants and for hosting a variety of cultural activities that bring the Toronto community together.

According to some, Yonge Street running between Queen Street and College Street doesn’t fulfill the requirements of a major road in a metropolitan city despite being a famous attraction.

“You don’t see the level of street improvement or park improvement or public space improvement that you see in places like Tokyo, New York and Chicago,” said Mackenzie Keast, co-founder of Distl and organizer of NXT City Prize, a platform that engages youth across the GTA to come up with creative ideas to improve public spaces.

People complain about Yonge Street being always too busy . “The traffic is always congested,” Leona Eisenberg, a pedestrian said. “Yonge Street has so many people walking all the time.”

Even though the city makes use of street closures to accommodate special events once in a while, sidewalks cannot hold the heavy pedestrian traffic, which makes it tough for people to enjoy activities.

Transportation is another concern for pedestrians.

“Designated spots for taxis to stop are in much need

for both cab drivers and their users,” Marwia Arrieta, 24, a student from York University who works close to Dundas Square said.

The big question remains: What is being done to solve these issues?

A possible solution to this comes in the form of YONGE-REDUX.

The new project by Richard Valenzona, winner of NXT City Prize 2014, offers to expand the walking space to provide the community with more public seating and additional green space, which aims to improve the look of Toronto on Yonge Street from Queen Street to College Street.

“NXT City Prize evolved out of a number of issues and opportunities that we saw with the city right now. We recognize that this is a really phenomenal time for

growth.”(Mackenzie Keast)

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One of the goals of YONGE-REDUX is to cut the flow of cars to two lanes, however some worry that this may have a negative impact.

“I think there should be education for drivers in terms of alternatives to drive downtown. It is already chaotic,” Katherine Parra, manager investor relations at Sprott Inc. who uses the street on daily basis said.

Others believe this won’t be a complication at all.

“I would bet you that this stretch of Yonge Street experiences more pedestrian traffic than it does car traffic. And yet we’ve allocated space in the opposite direction: cars have more space than pedestrians do,” Brandon Donnelly, real estate developer, and Internet entrepreneur said. “So what this project is really about is reallocating the street, or public right-of-way, so that the dominant uses are actually prioritized through urban design.”

The implementation of YONGE-REDUX is still in process. With the help of Distl and Jennifer Keesmaat, Chief Planner of Toronto among others, Valenzona is hoping to find professionals and get the permissions needed to bring his vision to reality.

“You’d need an architect/designer, you’d need a bunch of engineers to deal with storm water management and other infrastructure items. You’d likely need a transportation or traffic consultant,” Donnelly said. “You’d also have to work closely with the city, the local councillor, and the local community.”

Many are optimistic about Toronto becoming more urban and transit oriented in the years to come, as there is a shift in Torontonians’ mindset about the importance of public spaces.

“My understanding is that this project has legs. It just has to work through the city bureaucracy at this point,” Donnelly said.

“NXT City Prize evolved out of a number of issues and opportunities that we saw with the city right now. We recognize that this is a really phenomenal time for growth,” Keast said.

According to this urban designer, the city is changing dramatically, pushing 18 to 35 years old residents to move to dense and urban downtown areas.

“Yet they’re the ones most disengaged from the planning process that helps create the city around them,” he said.

After his experience working for Yonge Business Improvement Area, Valenzona knew his entry for NXT City Prize would focus on Yonge Street.

“It was from there when it clicked that something had to be done to really utilize Yonge Street to what it should be,” Valenzona said.

Based on his university thesis and his research on shared space scheme, Valenzona came up with this innovative proposal.

“I take inspiration from everywhere I go. I grabbed the idea of pedestrians moving along the space. I observe people walking and saw that they walk in diagonal movements following straight right angle patterns,” Valenzona said. “I wanted to implement that in a simpler way in this design.”

The new venture seems to have all the trappings that can potentially transform Yonge Street between Queen Street and College Street into a more pedestrian friendly passage. It will further promote passive activities for citizen engagement.

“ There will be more room for restaurants and cafes, not only we will be able to sit and enjoy the space, but we will also have more chances to socialize,” Arrieta said.

PHOTO CONTRIBUTORS

RICHARD VALENZONA

Distl

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DEVELOPERS PROMISE AN OASIS IN THE SKY AT UNION STATION

BY: NINA RAYNARS

In the last four years Tania Jasmine, a Ryerson Business student has been commuting by GO transit

from Brampton Shoppers World to Union Station on a daily basis.

Jasmine is accustomed to the rush hour madness, rushing feet, unending chatter and the smell of bus fumes driving in and out of the Union Go bus station. Most importantly for Jasmine, the bus schedule is engraved in her head.

Although she has memorized the bus schedule, Jasmine often finds herself rushing through the streets, legging it in an attempt to catch her bus back home. Once she gets gets on the bus platform she feels relieved. However, that quickly turns to disappointment, when she sees her bus leaving on her arrival. On many failed occasions she has even tried to pursue the bus hoping it would stop for her.

“So, imagine how stressful waiting for another bus is in a crowded station especially when you have nothing else to do,” Jasmine says.

A new development coming to Union Station may offer Jasmine and other commuters alike relief during bus wait times.

Metrolinx and Ivanhoé Cambridge, a property developer have reached an agreement that will move the current GO bus terminal to the south side of the train tracks. Making way for two 48-storey office towers with an elevated “Sky Park” over the rail corridor.

“A park in the sky will be a great distraction from constantly looking at my watch and feeling like the clock is not moving. Maybe I will actually begin to appreciate those wait times,” Jasmine says.

The one-acre Sky Park promises to give Torontonians

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Vice President, Public Affairs and Media Relations of Ivanhoé Cambridge, from Montréal Sebastiane Théberge says part of their DNA as developers is to create public benefits.

“It’s not just wanting to create a public benefit, but for a lot of our tenants they are looking for transit oriented developments...They want solutions that can be good for their employees, good for their communities and good for the town experience,” said Théberge.

Ivanhoe and Cambridge expects to start construction spring of 2015.

PHOTO CONTRIBUTORS

Ivanhoe Cambridge Nina Raynars

an opportunity to escape the busy buzz to a tranquil oasis of green, with park benches and trees in the sky.

“The development is a perfect example of how Metrolinx is working to provide travellers with connected spaces….,” Robert Prichard Metrolinx Chair said. “Such a significant hub in the downtown core will greatly improve the quality of life for thousands of people who travel, work and play in this area.”

Spaces such as the proposed Sky Park are made possible through a program where the City of Toronto negotiates with developers to include Privately Owned Publicly Accessible Open Spaces (POPS) on developments. It’s an effort geared at increasing green and publicly accessible spaces.

“We have to be innovative to create new publicly accessible open space in Toronto’s high density core area - in part, that is what the City’s PoPs program is all about. This proposal to transform unused “air space” above the rail corridor into useable accessible public space is exciting,” Gregg Lintern, Director Community Planning Toronto and East York, City Planning said.

For Janet Somerville, a downtown resident, any green space in the downtown is a good thing, even if it’s in the sky.

“I think that urban green spaces will become something which corporations and small companies or families if they have any land will be increasingly proud of. It will be a feather in their cap to provide such spaces,” Somerville said.

However, Paul Young a Toronto Landscape architect and Urban designer, says that Toronto does not seem to be building enough public space to keep up with the amount of built private space.

“The proposed “Sky Park” is quite small in comparison to the towers, limiting the types of use it can support. It could be compared to a “pocket park” - typically a smaller park space for passive activities like sitting and reading,” Young said.

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THE OLD HEARN POWERPLANT

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In 1951 , Torontonians witnessed the rising of a monumental structure at 440 Unwin Avenue, just east of Cherry Beach. Dressed in red brick and a grey 70 storey smokestack, the building became one of Canada’s tallest structures.

The Hearn electrical generating station was originally fired by coal, but later converted to burning natural gas.

In the 60s during its prime, the plant employed about 600 people who alternated three shifts per day, burning 400 tonnes of coal and used up-to 36 million gallons of cooling water per hour.

In 1983, due to running costs and pollution issues, the power station closed its doors.

Today the Hearn lies quietly with rusty chairs, a leaky roof and water trickling through its walls, becoming a safe haven for birds and raccoons. It’s been lying idle for almost 31 years, only awakening to festivals like Luminato.

“The frustration is that it’s been there for a long long time without people paying attention to it,” David House of

Earth developer says.

Ontario Power Generation leases the Hearn to Studios of America until 2014. However, that hasn’t stopped the city’s movers and shakers from re-imagining what could become of the Hearn.

“I see a combination of uses, there are a number of ideas for this old building, sports facilities, soccer pitches and ice rinks. It could easily have a cultural facility like an art gallery on the westerly side… it could have food on the roof. There are companies that want to grow food on the five acre roof,” House says. “It may in my opinion have a school maybe a church, there’s a huge set of programmatic uses almost anything you can think, except residential.”

Although city developers have big ideas for the old Hearn, informal groups such as Friends of the Hearn that include Evergreen Brick Works, are advocating to make sure that developers incorporate aspects that will turn the Hearn into an urban magnet.

“We’d love to see the site applied through an urban sustainability lens, like here at Evergreen Brick Works, with lots of moving parts,” says Anthony Westenberg from the Communications Outreach department at Evergreen Brick Works. “A skating rink, a Leslie spit ‘visitor centre’, a park, an arts space, a retail shop, all those components that make it a community destination.”

Developer, David House says the Hearn is Canada’s largest building after Skydome by volume therefore, there is enough space to incorporate and make public spaces a priority.

“It’s right adjunct to the big park at Tommy Thompson and Lake Ontario park and it’s south of the shipping channel. So you could have access for people going to the park, it’s on a major cycling route. There’s a great opportunity to intercept cycling. It has five acres of open land on the west side which could easily become three FIFA soccer pitches,” House says.

“I think we’ve done a really bad job of it [developing public spaces]. l think it’s now critical and important that we put those opportunities first not just put condo development first,” House says. “So there’s huge opportunities to have common public corridors, drive through’s and parking.”

Mike Williams, the city’s economic development general manager, says the Hearn is one of Canada’s iconic buildings. As a result, he hopes to see it putting Canada on the map as it transforms into a unique place that balances work, play and entertainment.

“I would like it to be globally known as a huge community asset that is financially and environmentally sustainable. That attracts people from the local community from city region to internationally and used seven days a week,” Williams says.

Lying idle will soon become a thing of the past

By: NINA RAYNARS

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A bird’s-eye view of downtown Toronto would exhibit more than 50 shades of grey, but some of the city’s roofs are graced with a glimmer of green too.

Toronto became the first city in North America to require green roofs on newly built developments via the Toronto Green Roof Bylaw in 2009. Queen’s Quay’s RBC Waterpark Place is host to enough outdoor foliage on three separate floors to carpet more than one and a half Younge-Dundas Squares. Ryerson University has a highly productive rooftop garden and of course, the Toronto’s largest green roof open to the public wraps around the towers of City Hall.

“Green roofs are lowering the temperature in the city, if you lower the temperature you have less smog days,” Jelle Vonk, Business Manager and green roof professional at ZinCo said. Vonk explained soil and plants on roofs absorb water and that matters because “You’ll have less overflow (of sewers) going into Lake Ontario, so you’ll have less sewage going into Lake Ontario so you’ll have cleaner water.”

The company Vonk works for, ZinCo, was responsible for RBC Waterpark Place’s massive rooftop undertaking, helping to make the it Toronto’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum rated office building.

“There’s definitely an increase in green roof

construction” Vonk said. “In 2013...there was only 60,000 square metres (of green roofs) approved by the city, and for 2015 there will be around 240,000 square metres of roof approved.”

To put that into perspective, a CFL football field is 6,000 square metres.

Because of the Toronto Green Roof Bylaw, most buildings erected after January 31, 2010 which have 2,000 square metres of floor space or more must have at least between 20 to 60 per cent of its roof blanketed by vegetation. The developer and the capability of the roof itself determine what type of eco-friendly roof will be built.

“There’s an extensive green roof, which is really

NEXT LEVEL CANOPY:TORONTO’S GREEN ROOF

AND ROOFTOP FARM

By: Will KOBLENSKY

Many Torontonians aren’t aware of their city’s highest level of green space, even if they’re eating the food grown up there.

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shallow, about three to four inches in depth...it’s low maintenance and doesn’t require any irrigation.” Vonk said. “On the other side there’s more intensive...you can grow trees, steps in the lawn, you can grow vegetables if you want. We also do slope application, so so you can grown vegetation on a slope up to 45 degrees.” Vonk added all of those systems are present in the Toronto area.

The Big Smoke has around 150 leaf covered structures and with continuing development, the city’s floral canopy future is set to grow greener.

What isn’t being nearly as fertilized is the farming angle of Toronto’s highest plateaus. One of the few examples of rooftop farming in Toronto is atop Ryerson University’s Engineering Building at Church and Gerrard Streets. The Edible Rooftop Garden is run by the student initiative group, Rye’s HomeGrown.

“It’s all about closed loop,” Arlene Throness, the Urban Agriculture Coordinator at Rye’s HomeGrown said, explaining the concept behind the Farm the Roof Program. “Incorporating local resources into the design, trying not to import resources, and also taking our waste products and feeding them back into the cycle is one of the goals of an environmentally sustainable project.”

Also called “Grow to Throw”, the closed loop cycle’s intention is to create zero waste by reusing all the materials which went into creating the farm in the first place. The food grown on the Edible Rooftop Garden and Ryerson’s seven other urban farms is sold at the Gould Street farmer’s market and in the university itself.

“The other way we distribute the food is the people who come and work in the gardens leave with a bag of food every week.” Throness said.

The rooftop contribute to the 5,000 pounds of food Ryerson’s gardens grew in 2014, all of which they either sold or recycled into the soil, according to Throness.

The Edible Rooftop Garden was retrofitted from the preexisting Andrew and Valerie Pringle green roof on the Engineering Building in 2004 to become arable. Reworking an extensive roof into a farm takes many disciplines, that’s why June Komisar, a professor of Architectural Science at Ryerson and member of the Toronto Food Policy Council is involved.

“Because the roof was designed to hold soil and because there are few predators up there, like a squirrel, it seemed natural to replace the planters with an edible landscape,” Komisar said. “It’s mostly run by volunteers and the employees of Rye’s HomeGrown, which was started by two students who were in the nutrition program.”

Stephanie Nischi and Catherine Lung initiated the movement, resulting in the Edible Rooftop Garden being converted in under a year.

Komisar detailed how the university’s different faculties pitched in to Rye’s HomeGrown’s funding through Ryerson’s Centre for Food Security.

“From the sustainability aspect in the architecture program to combating obesity and malnutrition in the nutrition program,” Komisar said there was broad support from the get go.

“We’re still waiting for the real rooftop greenhouse,” Joe Nasr, Associate of Ryerson’s Centre for Studies in Food Security said. “It hasn’t happened and many other cities have it, but many of the examples, of green roofs we have here they don’t have elsewhere, so it depends how you look at it.”

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An abandoned industrial area, a resting place for some of the Americas’ finest athletes and finally, a mixed-used community for families and young professionals. Re-incarnation is the best way to describe what will be Toronto’s newest neighborhood, the Canary District.

The Canary District better known as the West Don Lands, used to be a prosperous industrial zone and provided work for many of the Irish immigrants of Corktown. The deindustrialization of the 1970s left the area abandoned and unused by the late 80s. Vacant factories and warehouses turned the area into an industrial wasteland. The land was then expropriated by the government for just under $300 million but the collapse of the housing market and global recession left Toronto with little to no investors willing to finance the construction of affordable housing units, the area was again, abandoned.

Cynthia Wilkey is a lawyer that worked on initiatives to improve the income security of low-income Ontarians, she has been Chair of the West Don Lands Committee for the past eight years.

“It was completely derelict, it had gone through many changes in the 19th century,” Wilkey said. “At night is was definitely a place where illegal activity took place; drug dealing, prostitution,

during the day you felt safer.”

In the year 2000 the government of Canada, the province of Ontario and the city of Toronto came together to form the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation. Each pledging $500 million to develop social, economic and cultural value on Toronto’s waterfront. Hope to reclaim the West Don Lands as a usable space was renewed and in 2005 after years of consultation with local and investor stakeholders a precinct plan was approved to start development.

“We faced obstacles, nothing could be developed there because the area was in the flood plain of the Don Valley River.” Tari Stork said, a manager and project communications person for TWRC,”Because of the nature of the industrial businesses in the past, the area was contaminated.”

Cleaning up the industrial contamination to the soil and building flood protection from the Don Valley River would only set back a project that would already take over a decade to complete. It wasn’t until after Toronto won it’s bid for the 2015 Pan Am Games in 2009 that the area would rise to the top of Toronto development and see a $709 million investment from the Ontario government.

The 2015 games that pushed forward developments in the West Donlands

THE PAN AM GAMES AND BIRTH OF A NEIGHBOURHOOD

By: EVAN PANG

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With the Pan Am Games coming to Toronto in less than a year, construction of the new Canary District has been going round the clock. The new buildings will be home to 10,000 athletes, coaches and Pan Am officials from over 40 countries across the Americas.

“They have retail services available to them, there will be a 24-hour dining hall, a functioning hospital, even a hair salon this will be in the full sense of the word, a village.“ said Fulvio Martinez, Pan Am Games spokesperson.

For two weeks the area will transform into a multi-cultural themed district that will reflect the values of Canadian heritage.

“If you were standing in the middle of the village during the games, you would see a collage

of different people from all the different nations,” Steven Cafferkey said, manager of operations for the athletes village. “Toronto is made of of several different neighborhoods and what we’re trying to do (with the village) is capture that cultural mosaic.”

After the games are over and all medals are won, workers will pour back into the site to complete developments with a six month deadline. The vision is that the neighbourhood will become a mixed-use community where families and residents can live, work and play.

“A community that’s pedestrian oriented, close to the waterfront, with a large park,” Wilkey said. “You intermingle residential with commercial, this is what we worked towards.”

PHOTO CONTRIBUTOR

DundeeKilmer

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LIVABILITY PART OF PLAN FOR PORTLANDS

By Will Koblensky

The nickname Hogtown comes from Toronto’s famous swine exports in the late 1800s by ship, but the port where that moniker was earned is now an underused and vastly barren area near downtown.

When planes, trains and trucking became more viable of shipping goods to the Big Smoke, the city’s port and the industrial institutions on Lake Ontario gradually declined. The current Port of Toronto occupies only a corner of the landfill it once dominated.

Most of the Port Lands have been owned by the City since the 90s, under the Toronto Port Lands Company, and in the past decade has been undergoing a transformation, one Torontonians can eventually inhabit.

“We can expect to see mixed use neighbourhoods,” Andrew Hilton, Waterfront Toronto’s Director of Marketing and Communications said about Toronto’s former industrial hub. “It’s designed for active transportation, that means walking, cycling, public transit, parks near by. It’ll have some retail and commercial in it.”

The new neighbourhood will sit on what’s, for now, called Cousin’s Quay, the north west corner of the Port Lands in between downtown and the inner harbour. The quay will be turned into an island, Villiers Island, by redirecting the water coming from the Don River flowing from the north.

“The planning process for the island, that will be created by the river...they’ve proposed different designs for Villiers Island and what it will look like, and all of those proposals have transit

routes included,” Hilton said “Some of them would connect to existing streetcar routes and some of them would connect to new streetcar routes that are still being planned.”

But none of that can happen until the Port Lands are no longer at risk of flooding.

“The naturalization of the Don Lands, through the Port Lands, is the flood protection project and also creates an increase in park land.” Hilton said. “It’s an enormous project, it’s probably the biggest project Waterfront Toronto has ever done. By flood protecting an area, it makes it developable.”

City Hall, led by then Mayor Ford, wavered in the past, proposing drastic changes to Waterfront Toronto’s work including a suggested Ferris Wheel and handing the lands almost entirely over to private interests.

Ultimately City Council and the Mayor compromised by adjusting the existing plan by reducing green space and increasing development space. But Hilton still believes Torontonians will get a bang for their investment.

“It’s going to create a lot of economic relief for the city.” Hilton said. “It’s a very important part of how Toronto continues to compete globally as a city. We’ve seen growth in the downtown area for the last ten years, this creates a brand new community downtown for people to live, park land makes it an attractive place to live.”

Right now the Toronto Port Authority keeps the Don River from flooding, running between the main land of the city and on the north side Port

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Lands through Keating Channel, by taking sludge out of the river mouth and shipping it out on barge. Waterfront Toronto is making that process natural by widening the river channel, delivering wetlands and constructing a valley system.

It creates billions of dollars for the city.” Hilton said. “It’s underused land right in the heart of the city. When you flood protect it, you basically unlock it, you bring it to life.

It’s very close to where people work. There isn’t a lot of that kind of land in Toronto.” The finished river, opening the rest of the lands for building, is supposed finish by 2022.

Heading south of the channel across the Cherry Street Strauss Trunnion Bascule Bridge mouthful, is the piece of landfill on the outer harbour including Cherry Beach, the Port of Toronto and Glenn Harrington’s Firewood Solutions.

“I was an engineer at General Motors for almost 20 years and then with the downturn in 2008, I had the firewood thing part time and decided to give it a full time shot,” Harrington said. “We sell (firewood) to restaurants and home owners mainly between September and March. I’ve also bagged ones for the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority.”

Harrington gets his wood from fallen or dying trees in the Toronto area, processes them and sells them as firewood. More recently he’s started making tables and furniture too.

“We’ve got good access to the QEW and the Don Valley, so we’re exceptionally located,” Harrington said about why he’s operating on the Port Lands.

Harrington’s landlord, the Toronto Port Lands

Company (TPLC), owns most of area including the future Villiers Island and Cherry beach.

“We get rent increases every year, inflation is 2 per cent, the rent increases are 3 per cent, but there’s not much we can do about it,” Harrington said. “Overall it’s been a positive experience.”

The TPLC is an arm’s length, publicly owned company who did not make anyone available for an interview but did give a lengthly statement.

“Through its leasing, development, brownfield reclamation and land management activities TPLC finances its own operations while funding other operations and is able to deliver a financial dividend back to the City. In 2012, TPLC provided the City of Toronto with a $40 million special dividend,” the TPLC statement read. “Currently, TPLC manages more than 100 long-term leases in a prime area providing some 80 tenants including CORUS Entertainment, Pinewood Toronto Studios and Essroc Cement Corporation,.”

Out of finished projects, Waterfront Toronto’s only achievement has been the Cherry Beach revitalization, seeing trails, landscapes, parking lots and sports fields being added. It’s a beach Christian Faussnacht has been frequenting for the past 21 years.

“The soccer pitches went up about five years ago, so that was a major revamping, but otherwise I’ve seen a rise in the number of youth teams on the pitch,” Faussnacht said. “There are a fair number of university to high school aged people there.”

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Friends of the High Line is a New York non-profit group that successfully advocated for the preservation of an abandoned rail line that was set for demolition. The group redeveloped the space into an elevated park that attracts up-to four million tourists each year.

This historic park is now known as the New York High Line, it’s a mile and a half of winding pathways and greenways. Along the pathway visitors find unique amenities such as park benches, an amphitheatre, sunbathing decks, and a variety of flowers and shrubs. The implementation of this project has since become an inspirational model for developers and public spaces advocates.

The New York High Line has enhanced economic activity of it’s hometown Manhattan. Businesses and properties near the High Line continue to witness a financial boost.

Here in Toronto, UrbanCorp and First Capital Realty Inc., partnered with local businesses and residents they attempt to build an urban bridge, inspired by the New York High Line. The parties will work together on a campaign branded as Friends of the King High Line.

“The concept was inspired by the New York High Line, thus the name King High Line. However, the New York High Line is a retrofit space that was there without purpose anymore. This initiative is quite different because it’s about creating a brand new connection which has never been there before… with the exception of part of it,” Cyndi Rottenberg-Walker, partner at Urban Strategies said.

Unlike the New York High Line, which was redeveloped on existing rail lines, the King High Line’s vision is to see an extended pedestrian bridge that will connect the neighbourhoods of

Parkdale, Liberty Village, Queen Street West, and King Street West. The bridge will come with a cycling path, pedestrian path and expanded green space.

Todd Hofley President and founder of the Liberty Village Residents Association, has lived in Liberty Village for four years, before that he lived within the connecting neighbourhoods for more than 10 years.

“Our cities are becoming denser, we need to start literally forgetting about the car… we need to make walking and cycling our priority. That’s one of the things we will do hopefully, giving us some green

space,”Hofley said.

Liberty Village is a thriving neighbourhood with a combination of retail shops, office spaces, restaurants and residences. However, that is not be the case when it come to green spaces and public spaces.

“We don’t have enough green spaces, we don’t have enough pedestrian space, we don’t have enough cycling space so we have to redesign stuff thats already been built,” Todd Hofley said.

Hofley says the planning department in the mid 90s to early 2000s dropped the bar downtown when it came to infrastructure.

“What we are having to is to retrofit our public spaces because they were not built properly to deal with the city’s density,” Hofley said.

This project aims to bring together residents and local businesses. Although the idea

KING HIGH LINEA NEW URBAN EXPERIENCE FOR TORONTO INSPIRED BY NEW YORK’S HIGH LINE

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is still in its infancy stage and there’s no timeline when construction would begin, that hasn’t stopped funding discussions.

“I expect that there will be some level of joint funding, our clients have indicated that there will be a little bit of funding to dedicate to the project,” Rottenberg-Walker said. “But, because this is intended to serve the public at large… it will be primarily be funded by the public.”

While there was no confirmation on the projected costs, Friends of the High Line are in meetings with local stakeholders, community groups, Toronto city councillors, transportation agencies and federal and provincial politicians to benchmark their level of support and funding options. First Capital Realty and Urban Corp are set to invest an estimated $1.2 million to $1.5 million in infrastructure.

“Depending on how the project will be funded the idea is to make it a fully public park, in the end it won’t matter whether its publicly owned or privately owned,”Rottenberg-Walker said. “The way it will look and feel and be designed will be as a piece of public street or public sidewalk.”

“The King High Line will be a unique urban experience with safe, open spaces for pedestrians and cyclists to enjoy.”Hofley said.

Ward 18 Davenport Councillor Ana Bailao says her main concern is whether the project is achievable.

“The issue is the feasibility to do it. Do we have enough land to do that? Where is the bridge going to land?” Bailao said. “Before we create the hype in the community it’s important to deal with these issues.”

The city is already extending a railpath that goes from Dupont to Dundas, as well as from Dundas to Fort York. What Friends of the King Line wants is to build a bridge between the West Queen West triangle of Liberty Village and attach it to the West Toronto railpath.

“The idea is there, we know the city is working on this,” Bailao said.“We are all

about connecting communities, l think it is important. We want a city that is friendly to

pedestrians and cyclists we are always looking at these opportunities.”

By: NINA RAYNARS

PHOTO CONTRIBUTOR

Friends of the King High Line

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BY WILL KOBLENSKY

The last structure on a nearly century-old factory site will finally be turned into a transit hub and a space for local businesses too, but not any time soon.

Kodak Building #9 near Black Creek Drive and Eglinton Avenue West has been out of use since 2005. Covered in graffiti it’s been known to house squatters and parties alike.

Building #9, circa 1940, was the only building not demolished by a former owner thanks to Heritage Toronto and the Mount Dennis Community Association’s intervention.

“I envision a Grand Central Station there,” Marabelle McTavish, the president of the Mount Dennis Community Association, said.

Metrolinx, the government organization managing transportation in the GTA, bought the site for $48 million and will transform the old Kodak Building #9 into the future Eglinton Crosstown LRT’s farthest west stop, Mount Dennis Station. The LRT line is supposed to start operating between 2020 and 2023. There are plans to add a GO station and 15 bus bays to the old factory grounds as well.

“The Kodak building on the property has been vacant for some time and has deteriorated quite significantly,” said Metrolinx’s media relations specialist Alex Burke said. “Funds have been allocated to restore the building’s heritage protected assets and to renovate the building to be fit for event and/or office space.”

What the additional space for businesses or the community will look like is still unclear and an issue of some contention.

Ideas for the once forgotten five story, square structure are many and possibly conflicting, especially when you ask Peter Gatt. He wants to open up Ontario’s first photography museum alongside next decade’s Mount Dennis Station. After all, Building #9 is on Photography Drive and Kodak was a historic photography company, Gatt argues. But he faces local opposition.

“We had a conversation with Metrolinx and they love the idea,” Gatt said. “We’ve had a few...little speed bumps. The Mount Dennis Community Association, and the president of that association doesn’t feel like the museum would be good for the Kodak building.”

The Mount Dennis Community Association (MDCA),

who worked with the city to save the building in the first place, would prefer more of a mixed use future.

“I think the biggest thing is training and opportunities for entrepreneurial activities,”

McTavish, the president of the MDCA said about what she wants for the top two floors of Building #9.

That said, McTavish doesn’t openly oppose Peter Gatt’s dream of opening the Photography Museum of Ontario in the Kodak building.

“My vision for a museum there would be to have display cases in the grand, central area and continually have them changing,” McTavish said.

“She’s tried to block us and she currently has the (local) councillor Frances Nunziata as well,” Gatt said about Mctavish. According to Gatt, McTavish believes the museum would “Have a negative impact on the community,” and she told him to change the name.

Gatt foresees a museum taking up four floors of the five-story, plus basement, building.

“Metrolinx is completely on board,” he said.

Metrolinx is playing its cards close to its chest.

“Metrolinx has had some discussions with a community group with interest in a museum use for the building. This is just one idea that has been brought forward.” Metrolinx’s Alex Burke said.

Gatt also asserts everyone in the MDCA, other than its president is supportive of the museum.

“We thought that certainly to recognize the history of photography in the area, in that building is important,” Judith Hayes, treasurer of the MDCA, said. “We didn’t think to use the entire building as a museum would work.” Hayes expressed concern over management, financing location and how many people the museum would really employ.

Hayes is, however, very hopeful about the future of the building.

Whatever is done with the part of the building not being used by the Crosstown LRT, many are thankful it’s happening at all.

“After Kodak decided to close down it was bought by Metrus Properties and soon after that we learned

NEW BUT UNCERTAIN FUTURE FOR KODAK BUILDING

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NEW BUT UNCERTAIN FUTURE FOR KODAK BUILDINGthat Metrus had applied for a demolition permit for all the buildings on the site.” recording secretary for the MDCA, Simon Chamberlain said. The city was close to approving the demolition and it was almost another incident of Toronto wiping away its history.

Kodak opened its photography equipment and signature film factory in the Mount Dennis neighbourhood in 1912 and the community grew around the active employment area.

“Mount Dennis was essentially a company town for Kodak,” Chamberlain said. “There’s a very strong sense of attachment to Kodak.”

After the city and Mount Dennis’ residents stopped the destruction of the last building, it lay unused and vacant for years.

“Metrus just left it sit there and it was almost a case of demolition by neglect.” Chamberlain said.

What was once neglected is now the intense focus of government development, community preservation and innovators’ endeavours. Now it seems Kodak’s legacy won’t just be a memory.

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Just north of Dupont Street off Ossington Avenue lies a small park called Geary Avenue Parkette. A large hydro tower overlooks the park where Evan Castel brings his kids to play. As he pushes his children on the swings trains rumble by passing garbage strewn on either side of the the tracks and in the park, this is just one of the concerns he has with the neglect he feels his park is facing.

Castel formed the Davenport Neighbourhood Association and is a member of Friends of the Greenline. He would like to see the city take better care of the park but also invest in giving residents in his neighbourhood access to parks closer to home.

”I think the fact that there has been some sort of mega investment in parks like Wychwood Barns and Dovercourt Park means that those are magnets for neighbourhood families to go to instead and that pulls the neighborhood away from itself,” Castel said. “It’s really frustrating because we just need some leadership and some interest to really pull it together and with that the whole neighborhood changes it becomes better for everybody. That’s where the Green Line idea came from.”

The Green Line project was created by Architect Helena Grdadolnik in 2012. The idea is to build a five kilometer linear park by using the Davenport Hydro Corridor that runs through several parking lots, fields and parkettes including the Geary Avenue Parkette.

“The vision is that it could still be a series of parks along the line but also one big park that you could use as a transportation corridor,”Grdadolnik said. “As soon as you have a long skinny park, the great thing about it is that so many more people can actually access that park compared to one big one, where only the houses around it would be close to it.”

Grdadolnik said that she would like to see parts of the line be turned into playgrounds, sports fields and places for picnics where families can take their children to play outside.

“Geary Avenue looks like a place certainly by night where people read it as a neglected part of the city where you can dump your construction waste and drive off thinking, “noone is really using the space anyway.” The more that piles up, the more it drives further neglect,” Castel said. ”We’ve certainly seen that once someone dumps a load of drywall the next night there’s some car batteries and two nights later there’s a mattress. When the city does come clean it up, it’s good for a month. That really shows that when these parks gets some attention, when they get some energy, they can hold their own and start to bloom.”

THE GREENLINE PHOTO CONTRIBUTORS

Helena Grdadolnik Park People

By: EVAN PANG

Toronto residents together on developing linear park systems to connect the city

A map of Toronto’s pedestrian paths courtesy of Park People

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In order for the Green Line to become a reality developers would need to find a solution the Green Line’s key issue, connecting the parks.

Jake Garrett is a community activist and is a part of Park People a group that lobbies for better parks across Toronto. Park People played a significant role in launching Friends of the Green Line, a group made up of urban planners, architects and residents living in the areas surrounding the hydro corridor.

“There are roadways that cut through the site, there’s also fences and a kind of patchwork quilt of different types of uses, there are parking lots that interrupt the space and there’s different lease agreements for different parcels that end at different times so it’s a bit difficult to think about how to piece together all these different things,” Garrett said. “We’ve seen some recent motion in the council over the summer where councils directed staff to look at opportunities in the future to obtain leases of land along the Green Line to start building those spaces.”

Garrett went further to explain the impact of the Green Line development, stating that it would provide access to neighbourhoods low in parkland and who need it the most.

“We have to look for these opportunities and these leftover spaces along hydro corridors and along rail corridors to really create those public spaces to link different communities together,” Garrett said.

By: ANDREA PRECIADO

Medellín’s Metrocable taking passengers to the station.

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It’s 7:30 p.m. on a summer Thursday evening in Medellín, Colombia.   It’s the first time Valeria Luna, 16, will be heading home by herself after finishing her classes.  Out of concern for her safety, her parents usually pick her up from her school situated in a poor neighbourhood.

Today, the teenaged girl walks among a gathering cluster of students and workers heading towards Santo Domingo station and pays the equivalent of C$1.22 before receiving a transfer.   Luna steps into a small white cable car along with five other people and settles into her seat.

As the cable car rises, climbing the steep mountains in the direction of Medellín’s least developed suburban districts, Luna sees a panoramic view of her hometown.

In front of the gondola, she eyes shanty towns with unfinished houses made of bricks, mortar, cardboard and plywood. Some are painted with warm colours such as yellow and orange.  To one side stand industrial and high-rise condominium

buildings, to the other, kids play on red slides, blue-seesaws and swings scattered along the various parks. At the forefront, other cable cars continue riding eastbound.

Everything Luna views from above on the Metrocable J line catches her eye- shrubs, bushes, lush palm and breadfruit trees.  Once the girl arrives at Niquía subway station, she takes an emerald green and yellow buseta to go home.

What used to be a 60-minute-commute for her parents decades ago now takes 30 minutes, thanks to the Medellín Metrocable system.

THIRD WORLD INNOVATION INSPIRES FIRST WORLD CHANGE

It’s 7:30 p.m. in Toronto, Canada.   A crowd walks towards the King Subway Station as a white and grey sky-tram arrives. Twenty people get on board once the sliding doors unlock.  The sky-tram hangs 18.288 metres in the air attached to cables and holds passengers from Yonge Street to Steeles Avenue, above the roadway traffic.

Pedestrians gazing skyward along Toronto’s longest street can view digital LED advertisements on the bottom of each tram, while the automated cable cars glide between glass buildings, moving along the city with passing vehicles below.

The Toronto Gondola Transit Commission infrastructure operates by a friction heat system, which provides for a smooth and noise free ride. Satellite driven internet is a feature people have come to expect, in addition to the freedom to charge virtual headsets, android phones and iPhones during the ride.

Inside each car has a roof-mounted screen displaying the name of the next station along with randomly selected advertisement as the sky-tram like vehicle reaches its final stop and passengers disembark, they can still see the CN Tower and Lake Ontario in the distance.

What used to be a 50-minute-commute for Torontonians decades ago now takes 25 minutes, thanks to the TGTC.

PHOTO CONTRIBUTORS

METRO DE MEDELLIN

JONATHAN SCOTT

“We’d like to envision that in the future we have a lot more gondolas all

over the city.”(Jonathan Scott)

Team Evolution’s animated vision of Gondola Project.

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The Toronto gondola project remains a dream for three Centennial College students; the Metrocable by contrast is a reality for Valeria Luna, a university student who traveled for years in the Medellín’s Metrocable to her high school.

The Toronto dream started when Jonathan Scott joined Ahsan Uddin Ahmad and Shaik Shabbir Ali to form Team Evolution back in October for an assignment.

Their group mission was to come up with futuristic ideas on how public spaces in Toronto can be re-imagined.

Using their skills, these second-year digital animation students created “The Gondola/Cable car project,” inspired by transportation systems used in others countries.

“We thought ‘ how about we do something like that but within the same limits’, ” Scott said. “You’ve seen cable cars in different cities. The U.K has something like that and, I know South America has a bunch of those.”

Initially, the Gondola/Cable car project was designed to ride northbound and southbound on Yonge Street from King Subway Station to Steeles Avenue.

“We chose Yonge Street because it’s one of the busiest. We’d like to envision that in the future we have a lot more gondolas all over the city especially in areas that have no TTC access,” Scott said.

The most attractive features within the dream cars include cozy seats, dimmed lights during night travel, relaxing music, free internet access as well as recharge stations for electronic devices. Each car

would have a maximum capacity of 20 people. We want it to make it as comfortable as possible,” Scott said.

The three students also dealt with cost and came up with an idea to fund this venture in the future. “We thought of advertisements, digital signs underneath or on the side of the gondolas. We’re sure anyone would love to have their ads above the air,” he said.

For Valeria Luna, an environmental engineering student, the Metrocable in Medellín, a cable car system similar to Team Evolution’s idea, made commuting satisfying by providing her with safe and speedy transportation during her school years.

“I used to get to school 15 minutes before classes even started. It was easier and faster to use the Metrocable than to take the bus,” Luna said.

The Metrocable is an aerial tramway mass transit system that takes people up and down to Medellín’s most difficult mountains to climb. The first cable car line was implemented in 2004. The main goal of this project was to connect and serve citizens living in

isolated and poor suburban areas to Medellín’s downtown.

“We believe the Metrocable has brought a lot of innovation to the city,” Jorge Tobón, Metrocable Administrative Manager said. “So far, two more cable car lines have been added to the subway system.”

The cable car transit idea was developed in 2001, but wasn’t put into place till three years later, with the financial help of the Colombian government and the city’s funds.

“For the creation of the first two cables the nation paid 40 per cent and the other 60 per cent is funded by the city of Medellín from the collection of oilpatch and tobacco taxes. For the last years the city has been paying 30 per cent over the actual interest rate,” said Tobón. “ In total, the Metrocable has cost about U$ 21, 00 millions. That’s including all the financial expenses for the two cable lines.”

The Metro subway along with the Metrocable system have improved the quality life of citizens ever since the safety crisis Colombia faced in the 90s with the drug cartels.

“Our past had a huge impact in the nation, we’ve put a lot of effort into this project and it’s been successful,” Tobón said. “It has become a touristic attraction for visitors who used to be concerned about their safety.”

Tobón mentioned he feels flattered by Team Evolution whose project was inspired by some aspects of the Metrocable.

“We feel proud of what has been achieved. We like how people from developed countries are able to admire our transit system as something innovative,” Tobón said.

reimagineto.com

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ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES