Toronto's East Bayfront has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. Remember when we used to complain that the waterfront was under-utilized?
Here's what it looked like circa 2005 (photo via Waterfront Toronto):
And here's what it looks like today:
The waterfront has, in my opinion, become one of the nicest neighbourhoods in the city. I'm bullish on this part of Toronto. But it's not done yet.
One key piece of infrastructure that was just completed is the landfilling of a part of the Parliament Slip.
If you go back to the previous aerial photo, you'll see that the water's edge now runs parallel to Queens Quay East in this section.
This was an important piece of city-building work because it will allow Queens Quay to continue eastward to Cherry Street, establishing a new city grid that can be used for transit and future development in the area.
If you'd like to see what it takes to landfill part of Lake Ontario, below is a time-lapse video, also from Waterfront Toronto.
If you can't see it embedded in the post, click here.
Cover photo from Waterfront Toronto
While this is true, I do I have some suggestions. At the top of the list is this: Toronto needs to make better recreational use of Lake Ontario and its waterways. More specifically, it needs a summer bathing culture.
Toronto's East Bayfront has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. Remember when we used to complain that the waterfront was under-utilized?
Here's what it looked like circa 2005 (photo via Waterfront Toronto):
And here's what it looks like today:
The waterfront has, in my opinion, become one of the nicest neighbourhoods in the city. I'm bullish on this part of Toronto. But it's not done yet.
One key piece of infrastructure that was just completed is the landfilling of a part of the Parliament Slip.
If you go back to the previous aerial photo, you'll see that the water's edge now runs parallel to Queens Quay East in this section.
This was an important piece of city-building work because it will allow Queens Quay to continue eastward to Cherry Street, establishing a new city grid that can be used for transit and future development in the area.
If you'd like to see what it takes to landfill part of Lake Ontario, below is a time-lapse video, also from Waterfront Toronto.
If you can't see it embedded in the post, click here.
Cover photo from Waterfront Toronto
While this is true, I do I have some suggestions. At the top of the list is this: Toronto needs to make better recreational use of Lake Ontario and its waterways. More specifically, it needs a summer bathing culture.
One of the gold standards for this is easily Zürich. The city has a long history of urban swimming right in Lake Zürich and the Limmat River. And because the city has some of the cleanest urban water in the world, all that is really needed are platforms leading straight into water. But Zürich also has a rich history of beautiful public bathhouses (called Badis). These facilities accommodate the obvious daytime functions, but they also transform at night into bars, clubs, and event venues. It's for these reasons that their seasonal opening in May is often viewed as the official opening of summer in the city. This is what Toronto needs. So how do we make that happen?
The obvious first step is that we need clean water, which means we need to eliminate the poop. This remains a problem and here's why (taken from this 2014 document):
About 30% of the land area, which is really in the older area of the city [of Toronto], is serviced by combined sewers. That's a single pipe that carries both raw sewage and stormwater runoff when it rains. Inherent in the way these systems were configured back in the late 1800s and up to about 1950 is that during heavy rains there's a spillage of combined sewer overflow, as we call it. It's a mixture of raw sewage and stormwater runoff. We have about 80 outfalls across the city, 34 of which discharge to Lake Ontario.
The good news is that we're working on it. In 2018, Toronto started on the largest stormwater management program in the city's history with the promise that it will virtually eliminate the release of combined sewer outflows into the Lower Don River, Taylor-Massey Creek and Toronto's Inner Harbour. I don't know enough, technically, to say whether this will get us all the way there, but I do know that it is absolutely crucial to making Toronto more like Zürich. Zürich also some combined sewers, but they use large retention tanks to hold excess wastewater and prevent it from overflowing into Lake Zürich and the Limmat River.
The second step is that we need to invest in incredible bathhouse facilities. From what I can tell, this is also a work in progress. As part of the preliminary design for the Parliament Slip (in the city's central waterfront), there is a proposal for a floating barge and two outdoor pools. There may even be a snack bar! (Let's hope it's a lot more than that.) This won't be the same experience as swimming directly in Lake Zürich, but it will still be awesome and Toronto should make it happen.
But there are other opportunities. One that often comes to mind for me is Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion. Originally constructed in 1922 and renovated in 1980, today it mostly feels abandoned, other than the mediocre cafe facing the boardwalk (and yes, the adjacent pool). It's severely underutilized and under kept. What we ought to do is host an international design competition and challenge the world to rethink it and its relationship to the lake, just as we did for our central waterfront. And of course, we should do this in parallel with making our bodies of water some of the cleanest in the world.
Toronto needs a summer bathing culture.
Photos from Zürich Tourism
This is one of my Christmas gifts. And it is, of course, exactly the sort of thing that gets me excited. Thank you Bianca. You clearly know me.
I am endlessly fascinated by cities. I keep a running list of places I want to explore (everywhere from São Paulo to Shanghai). And frankly, I consider it to be an important part of my job to think about how to make our cities better.
As I was flipping through the book this morning, I was reminded of something that I have been saying for years on this blog. Toronto could use a floating public pool like the Badeschiff ("bathing ship") in Berlin:
Constructed from the hull of an old cargo vessel, the Badeschiff opened in 2004. The Spree itself is too polluted to swim in (or at least that was the case back in 2004), and so this has become an important swimming outlet for the city.
Paris is in a similar situation with the Seine, but it's looking to clean it up in time for the Olympics.
The real benefit of a floating pool is that you're mostly in a big body of water, but now you can also heat it. In the winter, the Badeschiff is covered and turned into a spa/sauna. This would be particularly useful in a place like Toronto.
It's easy to bring people to water in the summer. Apparently Summer-Badeschiff even has a bar and regular DJ sets (presumably all techno given this is Berlin).
The real challenge is in the winter. And if you've ever read an RFP involving a public space in Canada, you'll know that this question invariably comes up: So, how do we, like, get people to come here when it's 10 below?
Hot water, nice views, and a little food & drink. I promise that's all you need.
One of the gold standards for this is easily Zürich. The city has a long history of urban swimming right in Lake Zürich and the Limmat River. And because the city has some of the cleanest urban water in the world, all that is really needed are platforms leading straight into water. But Zürich also has a rich history of beautiful public bathhouses (called Badis). These facilities accommodate the obvious daytime functions, but they also transform at night into bars, clubs, and event venues. It's for these reasons that their seasonal opening in May is often viewed as the official opening of summer in the city. This is what Toronto needs. So how do we make that happen?
The obvious first step is that we need clean water, which means we need to eliminate the poop. This remains a problem and here's why (taken from this 2014 document):
About 30% of the land area, which is really in the older area of the city [of Toronto], is serviced by combined sewers. That's a single pipe that carries both raw sewage and stormwater runoff when it rains. Inherent in the way these systems were configured back in the late 1800s and up to about 1950 is that during heavy rains there's a spillage of combined sewer overflow, as we call it. It's a mixture of raw sewage and stormwater runoff. We have about 80 outfalls across the city, 34 of which discharge to Lake Ontario.
The good news is that we're working on it. In 2018, Toronto started on the largest stormwater management program in the city's history with the promise that it will virtually eliminate the release of combined sewer outflows into the Lower Don River, Taylor-Massey Creek and Toronto's Inner Harbour. I don't know enough, technically, to say whether this will get us all the way there, but I do know that it is absolutely crucial to making Toronto more like Zürich. Zürich also some combined sewers, but they use large retention tanks to hold excess wastewater and prevent it from overflowing into Lake Zürich and the Limmat River.
The second step is that we need to invest in incredible bathhouse facilities. From what I can tell, this is also a work in progress. As part of the preliminary design for the Parliament Slip (in the city's central waterfront), there is a proposal for a floating barge and two outdoor pools. There may even be a snack bar! (Let's hope it's a lot more than that.) This won't be the same experience as swimming directly in Lake Zürich, but it will still be awesome and Toronto should make it happen.
But there are other opportunities. One that often comes to mind for me is Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion. Originally constructed in 1922 and renovated in 1980, today it mostly feels abandoned, other than the mediocre cafe facing the boardwalk (and yes, the adjacent pool). It's severely underutilized and under kept. What we ought to do is host an international design competition and challenge the world to rethink it and its relationship to the lake, just as we did for our central waterfront. And of course, we should do this in parallel with making our bodies of water some of the cleanest in the world.
Toronto needs a summer bathing culture.
Photos from Zürich Tourism
This is one of my Christmas gifts. And it is, of course, exactly the sort of thing that gets me excited. Thank you Bianca. You clearly know me.
I am endlessly fascinated by cities. I keep a running list of places I want to explore (everywhere from São Paulo to Shanghai). And frankly, I consider it to be an important part of my job to think about how to make our cities better.
As I was flipping through the book this morning, I was reminded of something that I have been saying for years on this blog. Toronto could use a floating public pool like the Badeschiff ("bathing ship") in Berlin:
Constructed from the hull of an old cargo vessel, the Badeschiff opened in 2004. The Spree itself is too polluted to swim in (or at least that was the case back in 2004), and so this has become an important swimming outlet for the city.
Paris is in a similar situation with the Seine, but it's looking to clean it up in time for the Olympics.
The real benefit of a floating pool is that you're mostly in a big body of water, but now you can also heat it. In the winter, the Badeschiff is covered and turned into a spa/sauna. This would be particularly useful in a place like Toronto.
It's easy to bring people to water in the summer. Apparently Summer-Badeschiff even has a bar and regular DJ sets (presumably all techno given this is Berlin).
The real challenge is in the winter. And if you've ever read an RFP involving a public space in Canada, you'll know that this question invariably comes up: So, how do we, like, get people to come here when it's 10 below?
Hot water, nice views, and a little food & drink. I promise that's all you need.
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