Will Toronto’s new car-free street pave a different path?

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Kids are dancing in the street. In the shade of a bur oak, parents have set up a table for a birthday party; over by the birdhouse, a little boy draws on the pavement while a squirrel scampers by.

This is how landscape architects SLA and Trophic have imagined Centre Commons, the first public street in Toronto to be built - from scratch - for pedestrians only.

It will form the spine of Ookwemin Minising (OM) island in Toronto’s Port Lands. Here, a street is a gathering place full of nature and human activity – and, in one case, with no cars.

This vision was revealed Wednesday as part of a revised urban design approach for OM. It received unanimous support at a meeting of Waterfront Toronto’s independent Design Review Panel. The waterfront agency, which manages the revitalization for this area, plans to start development and building next year.

Ookwemin Minising is an island created by reshaping the mouth of the Don River in Toronto’s harbour. That visionary project created the new Biidaasige Park, but the structure of the neighbourhood has been in flux.

Last year a new team was hired to add density and design quality. They’ve succeeded. The vision shows how Indigenous thinking and the hygge of Scandinavian cities can shape Canada’s urban future.

The team includes SLA, from Copenhagen; the Indigenous-led Ontario firm Trophic; engineers GHD; and London architects and urban designers Allies and Morrison; along with accessibility consultants Level Playing Field and community engagement by Monumental.

Two highly visible moves stand out among 16 planned blocks. One is the “Sandbar Trail.” A north-south street will be filled with a meandering path of pavers, seating and rich plant life that follows the historic path of a sandbar, here in what was once a great, fecund wetland.

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The other is the car-free street. That verdant corridor will run across the middle of the island, open only to pedestrians or emergency vehicles. (Cars will be diverted a block away.) The centre of the island becomes a place to stay, not drive through. “When you remove car traffic from a street,” landscape architect Rasmus Astrup of SLA said in an interview, “you create room for everything else citizens value: social space and green space for community.”

This move also comes out of deeper engagement with Indigenous communities, which had been largely excluded from the earlier planning work. “For Indigenous people, this isn’t just about the housing; it is about places to gather in community and with nature,” said landscape architect Terence Radford of Trophic. “We are going to deliver that, and people are very excited.”

The earlier plans for OM (formerly Villiers Island) reveal the faults of orthodox North American urbanism: blocky buildings all of the same, modest size, with enormous streets and a surfeit of open space. That would have been boring. It also wouldn’t have generated enough development revenue to pay for its own infrastructure.

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Changes to the arrangement of buildings, led by Allies and Morrison, have increased density by about 27 per cent on public lands, while keeping all public space and adding flavour. Some streets have been narrowed; others squeeze and spread, framing points to gather. “There will be surprise and variety,” said architect Alfredo Caraballo of Allies and Morrison, “a juxtaposition of the past and present.” Old industrial buildings will receive pride of place.

There are many departures here from typical urban design logic. Among them: Each block will include big and small buildings, ranging from house to high-rise. And Allies’ design pushes support functions into the middle of each block, covering dumpsters and loading bays with second-storey green courtyards. All street fronts are reserved for front doors, lobbies, restaurants and shops - for people.

In drawings that the team presented Wednesday, streetscapes are designed to cradle trees, understory and groundcover – only then are the arteries of water and sewage and power laid down. Plants before pipes.

So, are all the relevant engineers, builders and maintenance staff ready to hug these trees?

“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult to get where we are,” Mr. Astrup said. One can imagine. When it comes to urban design – the arrangement of buildings, streets and open space – cities are conservative, and Toronto has been stubbornly committed to an orthodoxy that never seems to make a nice place.

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Now, the city and Waterfront Toronto are firmly aligned behind this vision, Toronto chief planner Jason Thorne said in an interview Monday.

One wild card is Premier Doug Ford’s sudden call for jets at Billy Bishop Airport. Will that cut the tops off potential tower sites?

Mr. Thorne said the city has no details.

That aside, “There are a lot of interesting things being done in this plan that will inform planning of future districts in the waterfront,” he said, “and future thinking of large-scale sites around the city,”

Here’s hoping. But that invites a question: If one city neighbourhood can produce a grand park and intimate lively streets, surprise and variety and homes for tens of thousands, what have our cities been missing?