Waterfront, the new face of Toronto

Last year, Toronto was named Intelligent Community of the Year by the Intelligent Community Forum (IFC). But unlike other cities that have typically earned the title for their city-wide wireless network systems, Canada’s Queen City was recognized for a far more ambitious project.

Its name is Waterfront Toronto (WT), and if you’ve been to Toronto lately you’ve probably seen for yourself how extensive it is. WT is a technological hub, of course, but it is also an urban development project with an economic and social dimension. It aims at nothing less than revitalizing the city’s waterfront (long neglected in the process of industrial decline) and making it a major urban focal point that can attract brainpower, talent and investment.

One of the especially enviable aspects of WT is its affordable and unlimited access to an exponential speed Internet connection (the use of fibre optic cables makes it much faster than traditional networks) and the New Blue Edge portal, developed jointly with IBM, which can provide up-to-the-minute information about weather, public transit and water use. Free WIFI will also be available in a number of sectors in this vast neighbourhood.

Goals and inspiration

WT hopes to serve as an inspiration to other urban development projects in Canada, wherever the connection with water has long been neglected. The goal is to create a mixed-use waterfront community where smart infrastructure allows people to thrive and gives businesses a competitive advantage. What makes this project so special is indeed its mixed nature, that combination of town planning, business, the arts and ecology in a single urban redevelopment project that is one of a kind.

Toronto’s new face already has many features, such as the Simcoe Wavedeck, part of an award-winning long and curvy wooden promenade designed to resemble the contours of Lake Ontario's shoreline and evoke the cottage experience. Water is, naturally, an architectural leitmotif of the redevelopment project and it is also reflected in the various gardens, which are reminiscent of New York City’s High Line linear park.

A global movement

But the Toronto waterfront revitalization brings to mind projects on a grander scale. Other similar projects are now being undertaken in Kingston, for example, and Saint John – places where access to the water has long been associated with industrialization and commerce and has been undervalued, ignoring the connection that residents have and could develop with the water.

The main issue being raised about the Waterfront project is gentrification: will the redevelopment attract so much capital as to make it prohibitive for young families to live there and benefit from all the improvements? Is WT destined for an exclusively corporate vocation? Although that is a real risk, there are many countervailing measures in place. Parks and recreational areas abound, while affordable housing projects are helping to set the course for this giant ship, steering it in part towards the kind of city dweller that the project seems to target. It remains to be seen whether WT will prove a model of the urban haven dreamt of by growing numbers of urbanites.