8 Creating an Environment for Change: The ‘Ecosystem Approach’ and the Olympics on Toronto’s Waterfront

Pursuing design excellence: Urban design governance on Toronto's waterfront

“…report, which, by promoting closer ties between the public and private sectors, had set the foundation for a corporate waterfront renewal. In addition, the bid for the Olympics was, as mentioned earlier, a private-sector endeavour that was supported, rather than led, by government (Laidley 2011 (14). The planning and design vision for the waterfront contained in the Fung report offered a more nuanced and urbane masterplan than the one presented in the Olympic bid document (see Figure 13) and also augmented the broad vision that had been sketched out in The Wave of the Future!…”

“…Public consultation during the Task Force years often occurred after strategic decisions had been made and, as a result, had a negligible impact on the waterfront planning and design agenda. As the corporation took control of the waterfront redevelopment process, concerns remained about its ability to act in the public interest (Eidelman 2011;Laidley 2011). In this section, the paper looks at the TWRC's commitment to public participation.…”

(Re)discovering Toronto's waterfront: infrastructure and connectivity in a post-industrial landscape

“…The desire to become or remain globally competitive for capital investment is often a driver for waterfront redevelopment. Waterfronts that are suitable for postindustrial, twenty-first century economic uses are seen as being able to create a cycle of private investment that can fuel growth, create jobs, and generate tax revenues (Laidley, 2011). Toronto's waterfront redevelopment strategy is no exception, with the TWRC's initial plan for the waterfront situating waterfront redevelopment as a 'competitive necessity', given the twenty first century economic structure (Laidley, 2011).…”

“…Waterfronts that are suitable for postindustrial, twenty-first century economic uses are seen as being able to create a cycle of private investment that can fuel growth, create jobs, and generate tax revenues (Laidley, 2011). Toronto's waterfront redevelopment strategy is no exception, with the TWRC's initial plan for the waterfront situating waterfront redevelopment as a 'competitive necessity', given the twenty first century economic structure (Laidley, 2011). Much in the way that the redeveopment of Copenhagen's waterfront was presented as a national interest, the redevelopment of Toronto's watefront was regarded as being economically imporatnt not only to Toronto, but the province of Ontario, and Canada as a whole (Laidley, 2011).…”

Rescaling Ambitions: Waterfront Governance and Toronto's 2015 Pan American Games

“…In particular, the public nature of Toronto's waterfront land—normally the area selected to stage the games—made the process challenging with different levels of government holding key properties and reluctant to participate. For this reason, it was rather remarkable that one of the legacies of Toronto's 2008 Olympic bid effort was the establishment of a waterfront redevelopment agency that was supported by a tripartite agreement between the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario, and the federal government, each of whom promised CDN $500 million to waterfront development (Eidelman, ; Horak, ; Laidley, ; Oliver, , ). As Horak (, p. 321) argues, the “lure of a mega‐event” was key to creating an “institutionalized multi‐scalar collaboration.” Yet, after a decade of operation and with the initial CDN $1.5 billion now allotted, Waterfront Toronto is at a crossroads because it still lacks the authority to expropriate land and borrow money (Gordon, ) and remains “bankrolled via a series of bilateral and trilateral funding agreements,” referred to as “contribution agreements,” which are individually negotiated on a project‐by‐project basis (Eidelman, , p. 9).…”