Visions and Master Plans - Honourable Mention

Regent Park Revitalization Plan
Address: Gerrard Street (north) to Shuter Street (south), Parliament Street (west) to River Street (east)
Architect/Urban Designer: Markson Borooah Hodgson Architects, Greenberg Consultants Inc.
Owner/Developer: Toronto Community Housing Corporation

Pat Bollenberghe
What is noteworthy about this project is the successful process of consensus building with a broad and diverse stakeholder audience to achieve a plan that creates a successful and pedestrian-friendly Toronto neighbourhood. They did all the right things.

Alex Krieger
The objectives of this effort are laudable, the design principles sound, and the motivations to evolve over time a normal mixed-use, mixed-income urban neighborhood, are right-on. There is in fact nothing extraordinary about this revitalization plan except its rarity. Rather than experimenting on the poor, a trap which so much social housing of the 20th century fell into, this project sets out to simply produce a good, ordinary, option-filled, safe, diverse place to live - how about that for innovation!

Bruce Kuwabara
Isn't it ironic? A plan that aligns itself with New Urbanism thinking is commended for transforming a modernist plan for Regent Park that was itself lauded in its time for creating a variety of residential types within a park-like setting? Following a great community planning process, the plan for increased density and housing for a mix of incomes should provide the neighbourhood and the city with a great opportunity to demonstrate how urban architecture and landscape design can express and sustain urban design.

Lisa Rochon
Orthodox modern planning produced the physical isolation of Regent Park - the way it was ultimately cut off, economically and socially, from the rest of the city. This revitalization plan makes an important pledge to carefully knit a variety of mixed-income housing, public space and new streets back into the regular democracy of Toronto. All of the right urban design moves are made in the Regent Park Revitalization Plan. The next challenge will be to distinguish itself with housing that is both human and contemporary, rather than simply rehashing traditional built form.