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The Clean and Beautiful City initiative gives Torontonians increased pride in our city. It challenges everyone to look at how day-to-day decisions affect the way the city looks and to do all we can to ensure that those decisions contribute to the city’s appearance in a positive way.
In 2004, City Council approved a five-point action plan to help us make Toronto a cleaner and more beautiful city. Encompassing over 48 initiatives, the plan provided new operating and capital funds to improve Toronto’s public spaces.
The ideas contained in the Five Point Action Plan are: sweep it, design it, build it, grow it and celebrate it. These simple ideas have galvanized city employees, residents, community groups and businesses to clean and maintain our streets, neighbourhoods and buildings as well as improving them so that we can proudly show them off to the world.
In particular, community groups and businesses have embraced Clean and Beautiful City’s Community Projects Initiative to create hundreds of projects to enhance Toronto’s appearance while fostering neighbourhood pride and volunteerism, building new relationships, and enhancing quality of life. Modest grants are provided to groups in each of the city’s 44 wards for neighbourhood beautification projects including community clean-ups of civic spaces and ravines, the creation of community gardens, plantings, mural painting, art installations, gateway signage, graffiti eradication, and winter outdoor decorative lighting.
Clean and Beautiful City also works with other governments, and public and private sector organizations to mount large-scale public amenity and landscape improvement projects. These demonstration and capital projects create and revitalize city streetscapes and improve public spaces while testing new technology and implementing cutting-edge green designs.
North American cities with similar programs include Vancouver, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and Philadelphia.
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