Urban Forest and Sustainable Square
With an award-winning design for the Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization, Toronto is poised to once again, welcome visitors and residents with a civic square that inspires by its design and consideration for the environment.
Soon Torontonians will be able to celebrate, gather, be heard, and live green in the heart of a city that strives to be one of the greenest on the planet.
The revitalized Square will serve as a showcase for sustainability. It will follow Toronto’s Green Development Standard and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and is targeting a LEED Gold certification.
Creating an urban forest
As part of the Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization, the City of Toronto will increase the number of trees on the Square to create an urban forest in the middle of downtown Toronto. Trees will help cool the Square, extend the city’s urban forest, provide wildlife habitat, clean the air, and absorb carbon dioxide.
Tree and plant species have been selected to ensure a healthy canopy with increased shade and a greater variety of trees, using native and adaptive species to ensure their long-term viability and to reduce the need for irrigation. In addition, most of the existing soil will be recycled, amended and reused within a Silva cell paving support system. This system will ensure that the soil remains uncompacted and provides excellent tree growth, natural filtration of pollutants and stormwater retention, while maintaining hard surfaces for activities at ground level.
As well as planting trees, the revitalized Square’s street edges and western area will be landscaped with planted areas containing diverse shrubs and underplanting.
Tree Protection and Relocation
During the revitalization of Nathan Phillips Square, the City of Toronto will preserve and protect healthy trees that are currently located on the Square.
A schedule and strategy have been developed to remove and preserve many of these trees that will be affected by construction in Spring 2010. These trees will be removed prior to their spring bud break in order to reduce stress on the trees and will be temporarily stored on the site. Signage will be provided to help educate the public about how these trees are being preserved until their new on-site locations are ready for their replanting. As the revitalization project continues, these trees will be transplanted bare root into the new revitalized scheme.
New Green Roof on City Hall
- The City Hall podium roof has been transformed from barren concrete to living garden, becoming Toronto’s largest publicly accessible green roof. As well as becoming an urban oasis in the heart of the city, the green roof on City Hall will help to reduce the urban heat island effect, manage stormwater, enhance biodiversity, improve air quality and energy efficiency, and beautify our city. More information
Conserving Water
- To help conserve water, the revitalized Square will harvest and re-use stormwater runoff for landscape irrigation and grey water plumbing systems.
Mitigating the Urban Heat Island Effect
The City of Toronto recognizes the reality of today’s climate and will take measures to mitigate extreme heat on the Square and promote the public's year-round enjoyment of the Square.
- The revitalized Square will feature light coloured surfaces to help reflect heat.
- Soft materials such as wood furniture and soft landscape surfaces will be used to enhance and cool temperatures in the Square.
Conserving Energy
- City Hall is heated using steam. The near-100 degree Celsius condensate generated by the city hall office towers provides an excellent opportunity to recover heat and use it to warm the new buildings on the Square.
- Heat recovery from condensate return will be used for building heating, zamboni snow melting, and slab heating on the skate pavilion roof terrace.
Reducing Pollution
- Creating safe, secure, and open walking spaces and urban paths, with improved lighting will encourage the flow of pedestrians on the Square and reduce their carbon footprints.
- Using more local materials (from within 800 km of the Square) during construction and revitalization of the Square will reduce the transportation costs, gasoline consumption and vehicle emissions associated with hauling these materials, while supporting the local economy.
- Best construction practices will be used to reduce the amount of waste leaving the site and to reuse and recycle as much materials as possible.