Alex Reid

Epic.

Great job Chuck Dillon.

A Toronto architect has proposed building a seven-kilometre park on top of the Gardiner Expressway. The “green roof” was proposed for the run between Dufferin Street to the Don Valley Parkway, eight metres above the current road. It would be similar to New York’s High Line (video) (photo) which is a two-kilometre park on top of an elevated freight railway.

Since the Gardiner was built in 1965, residents have long complained that the elevated expressway blocked their view of the waterfront and recently the City of Toronto has been debating what to do with it. Mayor David Miller favours dismantling the expressway at the tune of $200 million while others suggest burying it at the cost of nearly $1 Billion.

Les Klein, the architect behind the unsolicited proposal says his idea would cost about $600 million, but the design also would include solar panels and wind turbines to power it’s lights. He argues that the roof would protect the road underneath from rain and snow and thus save the city from snow clearing and using salt.

Unrelated to the proposal, Toronto recently passed a bylaw that requires the construction of a green roof on all new developments of a certain size – a North American first.

Klein says even if his idea isn’t accepted, at least he has proposed an idea that will fuel the debate and get people to think about creative alternatives.

From coast to coast, from big to small, the message is that urban green spaces are what qualify “a great city”.

Larry Beasley, Vancouver’s former co-Director of Planning for the City Of Vancouver and chief archiect behind Vancouver’s enhanced downtown core, was in Prince Edward Island last week to speak at a function celebrating the 100th anniversary of Charlottetown’s Experimental Farm. The Farm, as it’s called, is 55-hectares of green space in the town’s centre that Agricultural Canada deemed as “surplus” in 2002. Since then, Charlottetown has been exploring options of what to do with the land.

Beasley remarked that “most cities would die to have that opportunity” of having such open green space. “Most importantly, most cities will never have it,” said Beasley. “If you have big, contiguous, publicly owned open space, you want to be very careful about that.”