CityPlace: Railway Lands West Public Realm Master Plan, Architectural Guidelines and Implementation Plan

Site: Railway Lands West from Spadina Avenue to Bathurst Street and from the Railway Corridor to Gardiner Lakeshore, Toronto.
Architect/Landscape Architect/Designers/Artist: IBI Group, Corban and Goode Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Page + Steele Architects, and Marshall Macklin Monaghan
Client:Concord Adex Developments Corporation

Project Description

CityPlace Railway Lands West is one of the last large-scale development opportunities to create a new neighbourhood with its own special identity in downtown Toronto. Influenced by the waterfront, entertainment district and local history, these lands inspire an urban response to community design where parks, open spaces and public thoroughfares become the framework for built form.

The neighbourhood vision for CityPlace is for residences, affordable housing, retail, community centre and school to be connected to other neighbourhoods by an attractive, walkable street network, parks and an open space system. Architectural massing, scale, block pattern and design expression of streets and parks mitigate the impact of the Gardiner/Lakeshore, Railway Corridor, Skydome and CN Tower, while reinforcing relationships with Lake Ontario and the waterfront system.

An accessible public realm based on a regular block pattern is aligned with the existing north-south City grid. A major community park, linear parks, mid-block open spaces and a vital street network of pedestrian, bicycle and transit routes offers the Railway Lands West community a variety of experiences and range of uses.

Jurors' Comments

Hammered out by the developer, City officials, architects and planners over several months, this set of public realm guidelines for the huge CityPlace residential development is an exemplary instance of public and private cooperation in creating the common good. Streetscapes and public thoroughfares have been strengthened, large construction blocks have been pared down, and general design of CityPlace has undergone considerable, overall refinement. While concerned about the quality of architecture in the CityPlace towers remaining to be built, the jury found that the agreed-upon guidelines point the way to a notably humane and coherent development of the railway lands.