Resilience Actions

Actions in the Resilience Strategy are organized into three focus areas: People & Neighbourhoods, Infrastructure, and Leading a Resilient City. Each focus area contains a series of goals and specific actions, which are the most critical projects Toronto must undertake to achieve resilience.

Goal: Toronto has resilient, safe, affordable homes

  • Priority Action: Home Resilience. Support homeowners and renters to prepare their homes for shocks.
  • Priority Action: Vertical Resilience. Enable wide-scale change in apartment towers to improve resilience through the improvement or retrofit of apartment towers and units.
  • Apply a resilience lens to the development of the new HousingTO 2020-2030 Action Plan and ensure comprehensive action to address Toronto’s affordable housing gaps across the full spectrum of need.

Goal: Communities take action to improve resilience in their neighbourhoods

  • Priority Action: Neighbourhood Resilience. Enhance the capacity of neighbourhoods to prepare for and recover from shocks through grassroots action and network building.

Goal: Poverty is eliminated and equity is improved

  • Prioritize the implementation and resourcing of the Council approved Toronto Poverty Reduction Strategy.

 

Goal: Toronto is more resilient to climate change, including the hazards of flooding and heat

  • Institutionalize an integrated, resilience approach to flooding by adopting the Flood Resilient Toronto Charter.
  • Priority Action: Flood Resilience. Centralize resources towards a city-wide flood planning and prioritization tool.
  • Review and update existing flood mitigation programs to account for resilience.
  • Take action to mitigate the effects of extreme heat.
  • Communicate, synthesize and scale up ongoing City efforts to advance a system of green and blue infrastructure.
  • Promote a sustainable and resilient food system.

Goal: Infrastructure and buildings are resilient to a changing climate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions

  • Develop a Resilience Lens and apply it to City investments, with a focus on infrastructure.
  • Integrate resilience into development and land use planning processes.
  • Incorporate climate resilience into the City’s asset management framework and plans.

Goal: Toronto has multiple reliable, affordable, and safe mobility options that reduce the amount of time it takes to get around

  • Create a city-wide mobility action plan through synthesis of ongoing mobility initiatives and priorities, and identification of resilience gaps.
  • Continue to prioritize service and capital improvements to the TTC that make the system safer, more affordable, more reliable, and less crowded.
  • Move more people more efficiently within the existing rights of way by expanding demonstration projects.

Goal: Civic engagement and trust in the City improve, and leadership better reflects Toronto’s diversity

  • Expand corporate civic engagement supports to improve engagement outcomes at the City.
  • Increase transparency and prioritize communications to improve trust in local government.

Goal: The City prioritizes the most vulnerable people and highest risk in decision-making

  • Integrate equity into the City’s strategic planning processes.

Goal: Indigenous communities have a leadership role in building resilience

  • Build relationships with Indigenous communities in Toronto around resilience.

Goal: Institutionalize resilience into the City’s decision-making and take leadership on resilience

  • Embed resilience as a practice across the City and partners.
  • Integrate climate resilience into TransformTO.
  • Integrate resilience into emergency management.
  • Improve risk management and communication to residents.
  • Support local partners in academia, industry, and community to take leadership on resilience.
  • Position Toronto as a regional, national, and international leader on resilience.