Want to know what a people oriented city looks like? Watch this film and find out. Here is a quote: “In a country where the average income is higher than that of the United States many citizens have chosen the bicycle as their means of transportation because they live better that way.”

A year ago I was invited to New York to take part in a discussion about the future redevelopment of Governors Island. If you have never heard of it don't be surprised-most New Yorkers don't know it exists either despite the fact it is just 500 metres or so from Manhattan. Well it turns out that a decision was made yesterday to enlist Toronto's Waterfront redesign team "West 8" to work on the redesign of Governors Island. The selected vision is much the same as the one I described last year.



After my visit to Governors Island, I wrote this opinion piece for the New York Society of Urban Designers—I hope it influenced in some small way the choice of West 8's scheme:

When the Dutch came to Governors Island, they saw a land green with promise. To them, America’s pristine forests breathed opportunity. We wonder though, has Governors Island lost its symbolic promise of a better life based on the natural richness of the land? Has America? The pilgrims moved on to Manhattan but the island’s strategic location at the mouth of New York’s harbor made it an ideal military stronghold.

The Coast Guard left Governors Island in 1996. Their move ended a string of military stewardships going back to before the British. In fact, the island helped save George Washington and his revolution. The old military buildings here smell of history. They became a national monument in 2001. In 2003, ownership of the Island transferred to the people of the State of New York. It awaits its next great purpose.

A few hundred yards away, alone in an occasional drifting fog, stands the Statue of Liberty. Governor Island’s old flint battlements guard this symbolic gateway to America where the poor of the world came in search of opportunity.

Instead of a gateway to a land green with promise, the island archipelago of New York now risks becoming a gateway to a nation in environmental decline. Even oil barons know we are at a turning point. The American continent that once nutured dreams of prosperity is in peril. Cities and their users have to change - and they know it.

Can we start again – here, where we began? Can we build a sustainable America?

The island could be for urban sustainability what Silicon Valley is for high technology – a center where the best and brightest gather to solve complex problems. Imagine the whole of Governors Island as a 21st century laboratory for the development of sustainable cities (and, of course, a sustainable New York). It would house a human enterprise on the scale of the Manhattan Project but dedicated to life not death. There is also the advantage of having the world’s greatest urban test-bed just across the harbor.

What would it look like? When urban designers get the job of imagining a Governors Island of the future, they must acknowledge that this is not just another green-field site waiting to be planted with so much architectural stuff. (...read more...)

Major urban design schemes like the West Donlands take years to complete. While we wait for it to take shape, have a look at the way students at the University of Waterloo Urban Design Studio envisioned the project.

Moving our world from this . . .


to this.

For more than a generation now one of Toronto's most compelling public spaces has remained hidden in full view of the thousands of commuters who travel along the Don Valley. The Brick Works, figurative birthplace to much of old Toronto's red-orange patina, sat waiting for a purpose worthy of its potential. Then along came Geoff Cape and Evergreen ("Imagine your city with nature") and everything changed. Infused with a green vision for the city, Evergreen imagined the rusting buildings and gouged earth on the site as an ideal test bed to research urban-based environmental change. Claude Cormier, one of the landscape architects involved with the project confirmed that idea at the launch yesterday, saying there is a tension at this site between being almost downtown yet being immersed in nature.



The Brick Works produced bricks for the city from 1889 to 1984 from a 40 acre site along the Don River with a bounty of clay deposits. The fired legacy of those natural deposits can be seen most notably at the old Massey Hall and at Casa Loma's Stables--landmarks of Toronto's early exuberance as a young colony. It is ironic that today those same 40 acres may well be the home to another rebuilding of the city. In the 21st Century activities on the site will not rip up the earth and burn energy to construct the city, they will save energy to help maintain and protect it. What happens here in the next few years may well reveal how we can live well--extremely well in fact--and yet conserve the fragile natural world that is our home.



Included are images created for yesterday's launch. Evergreen is involved in a campaign to raise $55 million to achieve its mission. To date $37 million has been raised. In typical Canadian fashion, as imaginative as this project is it does not go nearly far enough (that's not the fault of the good people at Evergreen). Evergreen's project provides Toronto, Ontario, and Canada with an opportunity to become a world leader in the sustainable city movement. If we as a society are to achieve that end, important projects like this one need more funding from government and from the private sector. We need to give this project a scale comparable to building an Avro Arrow or levelling millions of acres of land for a James Bay hydro electric scheme. Until we make that kind of investment projects like Evergreen's will be seen as fringe activities rather than the truly world-changing activities they need to be.