Lower Don Lands
Toronto
Ken Greenberg is the lead Urban Designer in a team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. selected through an international competition by Waterfront Toronto for the Lower Don Lands. The winning design represents a bold innovative approach to naturalizing the mouth of the Don River and transforming a long neglected area into sustainable new parks and communities. It will provide a naturalized mouth and iconic identity for the Don River and creating a comprehensive plan for addressing urban design, transportation, naturalization, sustainability and other ecological issues. The area is a critical link between the new waterfront communities that are emerging in the East Bayfront, the West Don Lands and the Port Lands. The Lower Don Lands will be transformed into a sustainable "green" city, a new destination where city, lake, and river interact in a dynamic and balanced relationship - an urban estuary. By moving the river's mouth from the Keating Channel to Lake Ontario, the scheme reasserts the rivers presence in the city and makes the river an iconic identity for the Lower Don Lands. The mouth of the Don River is the centerpiece of a cluster of new mixed-use neighbourhoods. This major city-building initiative is supported by the federal, provincial and city governments which together established Waterfront Toronto to oversee and lead the renewal of Toronto's central waterfront. The work in now in the final stages of an Environmental Assessment process and proceeding into implementation phases. It has won many awards and has been selected as one 16 founding projects for The Climate Positive Development Program, a project of former U.S. President Bill Clinton's Climate Initiative and the U.S. Green Building Council, a global initiative to demonstrate a model for sustainable urban growth. As part of the Clinton initiative, Waterfront Toronto and the other participating partners will seek to reduce the net greenhouse gas emissions of their projects to below zero by working collaboratively on specific areas of activity. This includes implementing economically viable innovations in construction, the generation of clean energy, and innovative approaches to waste management, water management and transportation. In addition to the Lower Don Lands, the founding projects include initiatives in Victoria, British Columbia and in cities in Australia, Brazil, India, Panama, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. When the initial 16 projects are completed, nearly one million people will live and work in climate positive communities.