Ground 28 – Winter 2014 – Underground by Ground Magazine

Landscape Architect Quarterly 08/

Features Street Underground Interface

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What Lies Beneath

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Round Table Daylighting Water

Publication # 40026106

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Phytotechnologies

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All Work, No Pay Winter 2014 Issue 28

Contents

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Up Front Information on the Ground Underground:

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Street Underground Interface ILLUSTRATION AND TEXT BY JERGUS OPRSAL

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What Lies Beneath Excavating the past TEXT BY RONALD F. WILLIAMSON AND SUSAN HUGHES

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Round Table Daylighting water CO-MODERATED BY MICHAEL COOK AND JOCELYN HIRTES

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Phytotechnologies More than meets the eye TEXT BY PETE NORTH, OALA

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All Work, No Pay The underground economy of internships

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

This past year has seen many advances in OALA programs and services to the benefit of the membership. Many active members have contributed their time and energy to give back to our profession. Committee members engage with others to pursue important issues and items that have meaningful impact. As we move forward in this new year, we will continue to realize the results of this participation.

When the Editorial Board began to discuss upcoming themes more than a year ago, the “underground” idea represented notions of alternative design thinking, subversion of the status quo, unseen but consequential infrastructures, buried creeks, cultural artifacts uncovered by development, radical civic engagements that widened notions of the street, and so on.

In 2015, the new OALA logo will be rolled out by the Marketing Committee, chaired by Luke Jefferson. The new logo is a refreshing take on the OALA brand while still respecting the heritage of the trademark. A style guide accompanies the logo and will advise members and staff on when and how to use the new OALA branding on marketing material, websites, and other communications. The online Mandatory Continuing Education (MCE) Program reporting system is available following extensive development by the Mandatory Education Committee, chaired by Kendall Flower. This convenient online tool is designed to assist members in recording credits at any time throughout the reporting period, starting in 2015.

TEXT BY GRAHAM MACINNES

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Technical Corner Trees: below ground TEXT BY JAMES URBAN, FASLA, ISA

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Professional Practice Parkway in a prairie: An interview with Eha Naylor, OALA CONDUCTED BY KAARI KITAWI

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Notes A miscellany of news and events Artifact Subterranean green TEXT BY TAMAR PISTER

Following a substantial development and review process, the Strategic Plan 2015-2017 was completed in 2014. The renewed Plan identifies three strategic priorities and associated goals, which support the OALA’s established mission and vision. Council, committees, and staff will implement the Strategic Plan over the next three years to ensure that the OALA meets its legislated responsibilities and continues to provide meaningful services that benefit members. The OALA’s 47th Annual General Meeting & Conference will take place on March 27, 2015, in Guelph (in recognition of 50 years of landscape architecture at the University of Guelph). The planning committee, chaired by Doris Chee, OALA Vice-President, and comprised of the members of the Continuing Education Committee, supported by OALA office staff, is developing an excellent themed program for the day. Mark your calendars and plan to attend for speakers, networking, the AGM, awards ceremony, and more. We look forward to seeing you there! SARAH CULP, OALA OALA PRESIDENT

Winter 2014 Issue 28

On the figurative side, there have always been underground economies, underground cultural movements, underground ideas that, over time, percolate to the surface and become the status quo. Taken literally, looking underground reveals utilities, foundations, bones, artifacts, water tables, bedrock—elements that must be discerned and worked into the design of the site. Both ways of thinking are necessary in order to show how relevant landscape architecture can be to emerging and “new normal” challenges such as: climate change, water engineering, deforestation, food production, and human-scale cities. We have refined these tunnels of thought into an issue that explores the underground and landscape, and we hope you find it stimulating. We have increased our Editorial Board numbers with some new volunteer talent bringing fresh perspectives on the profession. We strive to get broad and varied input on the issues and topics that our readers want to hear about, and to share ideas on how Ground can be a thoughtful, smart, creative, and serious voice of our profession. As always, we want your input and thoughts on your publication—please email us at magazine@oala.ca and tweet us @GroundMag. TODD SMITH, OALA CHAIR, EDITORIAL BOARD

Masthead

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Editor Lorraine Johnson

2014 OALA Governing Council

Photo Editor Todd Smith

President Sarah Culp

OALA Editorial Board Shannon Baker Doris Chee Michael Cook Eric Gordon Ruthanne Henry Jocelyn Hirtes Vincent Javet Han Liu Graham MacInnes Karen May Kate Nelischer Denise Pinto Tamar Pister Phil Pothen Maili Sedore Todd Smith (chair) Brendan Stewart Netami Stuart Dalia Todary-Michael

Vice President Doris Chee

Art Direction/Design www.typotherapy.com Advertising Inquiries advertising@oala.ca 416.231.4181 Cover Photograph of Garrison Creek sewer by Michael Cook. See page 14. Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published four times a year by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects. Ontario Association of Landscape Architects 3 Church Street, Suite 407 Toronto, Ontario M5E 1M2 416.231.4181 www.oala.ca oala@oala.ca Copyright © 2014 by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects All rights reserved ISSN: 0847-3080 Canada Post Sales Product Agreement No. 40026106

Treasurer Jonathan Loschmann Secretary Jane Welsh Past President Joanne Moran Councillors Alana Evers Sarah Marsh Chris Hart Associate Councillor—Senior Katherine Peck Associate Councillor—Junior David Duhan Lay Councillor Linda Thorne Appointed Educator University of Toronto Elise Shelley Appointed Educator University of Guelph Sean Kelly University of Toronto Student Representative Matthew Perotto University of Guelph Student Representative Amanda Glouchkow OALA Staff Registrar Linda MacLeod Administrator Aina Budrevics Marketing and Communications Coordinator Joanna Wilczynska

OALA

About

About the OALA

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects and provides an open forum for the exchange of ideas and information related to the profession of landscape architecture. Letters to the editor, article proposals, and feedback are encouraged. For submission guidelines, contact Ground at magazine@oala.ca. Ground reserves the right to edit all submissions. The views expressed in the magazine are those of the writers and not necessarily the views of the OALA and its Governing Council.

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects works to promote and advance the profession of landscape architecture and maintain standards of professional practice consistent with the public interest. The OALA promotes public understanding of the profession and the advancement of the practice of landscape architecture. In support of the improvement and/or conservation of the natural, cultural, social and built environments, the OALA undertakes activities including promotion to governments, professionals and developers of the standards and benefits of landscape architecture.

Upcoming Issues of Ground Ground 29 (Spring) Trash Deadline for advertising space reservations: February 2, 2015 Ground 30 (Summer) Sound Deadline for editorial proposals: March 9, 2015 Deadline for advertising space reservations: April 27, 2015 Ground 31 (Fall) Cost Deadline for editorial proposals: May 18, 2015 Deadline for advertising space reservations: July 27, 2015 Ground 32 (Winter) Creatures Deadline for editorial proposals: August 17, 2015 Deadline for advertising space reservations: October 26, 2015

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Advisory Panel Andrew B. Anderson, BLA, MSc. World Heritage Management Landscape & Heritage Expert, Oman Botanic Garden John Danahy, OALA, Associate Professor, University of Toronto George Dark, OALA, FCSLA, ASLA, Principal, Urban Strategies Inc., Toronto Real Eguchi, OALA, Eguchi Associates Landscape Architects, Toronto Donna Hinde, OALA, Partner, The Planning Partnership, Toronto Ryan James, OALA, Senior Landscape Architect, Novatech, Ottawa Alissa North, OALA, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Peter North, OALA, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Nathan Perkins, MLA, PhD, ASLA, Associate Professor, University of Guelph Jim Vafiades, OALA, Senior Landscape Architect, Stantec, London

's environmental savings with Cascades paper Ground is printed on paper manufactured in Canada by Cascades with 100% post-consumer waste using biogas energy (methane from a landfill site) and is EcoLogo, Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) certified, as well as FSC® certified. Compared to products in the industry made with 100% virgin fiber, Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly's savings are:

15 trees 55,306 L of water 158 days of water consumption 838 kg of waste 17 waste containers 2,178 kg CO2 14,566 km driven 25 GJ 113,860 60W light bulbs for one hour 6 kg NOX emissions of one truck during 20 days

www.cascades.com/papers

Up Front

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01 INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONS

award-winning duo For the second time since Japan’s Gardening World Cup was inaugurated in 2010, Toronto landscape architects Alex Bartlett, OALA, and Robert Boltman, OALA, of b sq. Design Studio Inc. were invited to compete in a show that stretched their creativity as well as their team-building and project management skills. The result was worth the effort: the design duo garnered Silver and Best Lighting awards.

Up Front: Information on the Ground

Smaller in scale than Chelsea or other flower shows, such as Philadelphia and Canada Blooms, the Gardening World Cup, which takes place in a Dutch-themed mega-park just outside Nagasaki, seeks out some of the top designers in the world. Together with Canada’s b sq. Design Studio, landscape architects and designers from Britain, France, Italy, Morocco, Singapore, and Japan participated in the 2014 show, building eight outdoor feature gardens.

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b sq. Design Studio Inc. designed a garden for the 2014 Gardening World Cup, held in Japan.

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Lorraine Flanigan

Up Front

Bartlett and Boltman represent the only Canadian design firm asked to create a competition garden at the Gardening World Cup. GWC organizers spotted b sq. Design Studio’s feature garden at the Singapore Garden Festival in 2010, and invited the designers to build a garden in Japan, too. Bartlett and Boltman accepted, and won a Gold Award for their design at the GWC in 2010, which honoured world peace. With that show under their belts, as well as a return to the Singapore Garden Festival in 2012, the two Canadians agreed to participate at the GWC again in 2014. Work started in May, 2014, when their design concept, entitled “Home,” was accepted. Detailed specifications were sent to the organizers in Japan, including layouts, concept drawings, images, plant lists, and 3-D drawings. Fourteen subsequent layouts were produced, each tweaking the original design in an effort to provide the Japan-based construction contractor with as much detail as possible. “It took about a month’s work out of our lives,” says Bartlett. Although the 2010 competition involved a site visit a few months prior to set-up, in 2014 the opportunity to examine the location and meet the construction team wasn’t part of the process. So, 13 days before the opening of the show on October 3, 2014, Robert Boltman arrived to start work.

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One of the biggest challenges was that of working in a different culture, and in a foreign language. Show organizers provided translators fluent in both Japanese and English, but not all of them had landscape experience, so it was important to make sure that any technical or artistic nuance was not lost in translation. “The interpreter is an extension of the team,” explains Bartlett, “and they take their work very seriously. They helped tremendously.” Both Bartlett and Boltman add that the construction team assigned to them were hard workers who took pride in their work. During setup, a second water pump had to be installed for the lower part of the water feature that formed a focal point of the design. To install it, the construction team had to tear down a set of stairs, remove decking, and cut into a concrete water basin. The team didn’t hesitate to disassemble the materials, painstakingly reconstructing everything after the pump had been installed.

Despite the weeks of work, on-site challenges, and separation from their families back home, Bartlett and Boltman agree that the experience has helped them grow, providing them with an opportunity to work with world-class designers such as Holland’s Nico Wissing, “a visionary in sustainable landscape design,” says Bartlett. “It’s humbling,” he says, “to realize how good these designers are.”

Facing the challenges of working in a country far from home, in a language foreign to the designers, and with a construction team they hadn’t met before arriving on site, the Canadian landscape architects soon faced the added danger of a typhoon. High winds threatened to topple the water screen that rose high into the framework that outlined the shape of the house at the heart of the garden. Luckily, ropes held the screen in place, and the winds dissipated overnight as the typhoon blew northward.

To other landscape architects considering entering an international competition, Bartlett and Boltman offer this advice: “Creativity and design are very important, as well as the ability to create landscape plans that can be read clearly,” Boltman says. “Communicate your intent and vision as clearly as possible,” explains Bartlett. “Be flexible with alternatives, and yet direct enough to ensure that the design succeeds,” adds Boltman. Previous experience in local shows is a must. “You should be able to show the committee that you have successfully installed a show garden on more than one occasion,” says Boltman, “or be creative enough to capture the attention of the show organizers, like we did in 2010.” TEXT BY LORRAINE FLANIGAN, AN AWARD-WINNING GARDEN JOURNALIST AND THE EDITOR OF TRELLIS, THE MAGAZINE OF THE TORONTO BOTANICAL GARDEN.

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Robert Boltman (left) and Alex Bartlett (right) of b sq. Design Studio Inc.

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Jonathan Ward

Up Front

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Green Line’s original champions, first becoming interested in the idea when she attended a consultation for a local park in the hydro corridor. She left feeling frustrated. “Although I welcome these local investments—in this case it was $20,000 for some benches and replanting—I saw the need for a complete vision for the entire length of this corridor,” she says.

05 TRAILS

toronto’s green line If you stand in one of the small parkettes under the hydro corridor north of Dupont Street in Toronto’s west end, you’ll find yourself on the site of a new vision for public space in the city: the Green Line. The Green Line exists currently as an idea— an idea to transform the hydro corridor that runs from Earlscourt Park to the Annex into a five-kilometre linear park. It’s an idea that, through the work of local residents, has taken hold of the imaginations of people across the city. The Green Line, which would pass through three city wards and be close to two others, could provide more than new park space: it could also create walking and cycling connections, says Helena Grdadolnik. Grdadolnik lives and works near the proposed linear park. Associate director for Workshop Architecture, she is one of the

The land along the Green Line varies in use and quality, much of it disconnected by roads, grade changes, and fencing. Owned by Infrastructure Ontario and operated by Hydro One, parcels are already leased for uses such as parking lots and nine small parks. Connecting these spaces into a cohesive whole will be a challenge, particularly where roads slice through the site, whisking cars under the railway that runs parallel to the Green Line. To spark interest in the project, Grdadolnik ran an ideas competition through Workshop Architecture. The 2012 Green Line ideas competition drew 80 submissions from Toronto and around the world, with ideas ranging from the practical (community garden spaces) to the fanciful (a mini-putt green). For Mary and Evan Castel of the Davenport Neighbourhood Association, the Green Line resonates with their local needs. “Reclaiming and advocating for reinvestment in the green spaces in our neighbourhood has always been one of our top priorities as an association,” Mary Castel says. “And in our catchment, green spaces are predominantly within the hydro corridor.”

Evan Castel adds: “We see it as a great opportunity to ‘make’ more space by connecting, highlighting, and making accessible a great resource that has been there all along.” Toronto’s Chief Planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, agrees. Increasing connectivity between green spaces is critical to making them accessible to many more people in the city, she says. “When you fill in a little gap, you multiply exponentially the amount of benefit you provide to adjacent neighbourhoods.” This is the appeal of projects that use infrastructure corridors—such as New York’s High Line or Atlanta’s BeltLine—to create new park space. “As cities rapidly densify, we become less frivolous with spaces that at one time we would have seen as leftover spaces,” Keesmaat says. “In the instances where neighbourhoods are underserved by parkland, these are exactly the kinds of creative solutions that are required to provide more neighbourhood amenity.” A challenge, but also an opportunity, of the Green Line is that it must function as a cohesive linear park that connects multiple neighbourhoods while at the same time providing local park space and amenities in communities that lack them. 05/

An existing community garden along the proposed Green Line

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Mark Kasumovic

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The winning design in the Green Line ideas competition

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Gabriel Wulf

Up Front

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Joe Lobko, an architect and partner at DTAH who served as a judge in the Green Line ideas competition, acknowledges this tension, but likens it to the city’s main streets. “These streets pulse,” he says. “They connect communities, but they have nodes of intensity, so they have to accommodate both the local need and the larger regional, citywide need.” In order to push the idea forward after the design competition, Toronto Park People, an independent charity that works with communities to improve Toronto’s parks, took up the project with funding from TD Bank. This year, Park People helped form Friends of the Green Line, a group of local residents, such as Grdadolnik and the Castels, and others interested in making the Green Line a reality. All this attention has created momentum at Toronto City Hall. Council recently directed staff to negotiate licensing agreements when opportunities arise to transform the remaining Green Line land into parks. Council also approved using density bonus funds, which usually stay within the ward they were generated in, and park levies from future developments along Dupont Street for the Green Line, even though the project runs through adjacent city wards—a crucial source of funding and a vote of confidence in the Green Line vision. These movements are positive, but a master plan is still needed for the entire Green Line corridor, one that recognizes its potential as a linear park and brings different city divisions and community stakeholders together. “We’d like the City to look at the space as a whole for any future upgrades, however small,” Grdadolnik says. It’s important “to make physical connections and to implement a unified vision over time.” TEXT BY JAKE TOBIN GARRETT, A WRITER AND URBAN PLANNER LIVING IN TORONTO, WHO WORKS AS POLICY COORDINATOR FOR TORONTO PARK PEOPLE AND IS A MEMBER OF FRIENDS OF THE GREEN LINE.

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Metal detectorist Paul Taylor

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Courtesy of Paul Taylor

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A coin found by detectorist Paul Taylor.

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Courtesy of Paul Taylor

07 EXPLORATION

detecting new perspectives You’ve probably seen them lurking in the bushes in urban parks or shuffling through the sand at the beach—eyes down, headphones on, focused on their mission. These wand-waving, mysterious hobbyists are metal detectorists, and they have a unique perspective on the landscape. Paul Taylor is an avid metal detectorist whose hobby has influenced the way he sees the city, its parks, and the landscape in general. Paul is an actuary by day, and lives in a house overlooking Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto. One day a few years ago, he glanced up from his desk and saw a man metal detecting in the pouring rain. Paul was impressed by the man’s devotion, and when he noticed him return the following day, his interest was piqued. After a great deal of Internet research and what Paul describes as some “retail therapy,” he was soon the proud owner of his first metal detector.

Now Paul has the ability to determine roughly the depth, size, and even material of the metal by the pings and beeps emitted by the detector. He is adept at cutting cleanly into the ground, quickly locating the item, and returning the soil or sod to its original condition with no sign of disturbance. The latter is part of the informal code of ethics that is staunchly followed by the detecting community. Other codes include making all efforts to return identifiable items to rightful owners, treating sacred sites as off-limits, never detecting on private property without permission, and taking all garbage away (which is important when 50 to 90 percent of items recovered are trash).

Paul was too shy and embarrassed to just step into the park and begin, so his first attempts were in the backyards of family and friends. After gaining a bit of confidence, he began detecting in public parks with wooded areas that would shield him from view—not because it is illegal (in fact, it is legal), but because he was still too self-conscious to have spectators. His first foray into public view required the accompaniment of a friend. 08

Up Front

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The community of detectors is well connected through social media. Fellow hobbyists share their finds and advice, and organize outings. The primary interest within the community is in the historic value of the items. Detectors are essentially amateur archaeologists—to call them “treasure hunters” is not entirely fair. Often, their finds are of little monetary value. When one accounts for the cost of the tools, and the amount of time invested, it is by far a money-losing venture. The most prized items are simply ones that are most difficult to detect or have the greatest historic significance. Paul has yet to sell any of his finds, and has no intention of doing so.

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A Toronto park (outlined in pink) shows no change between the 1947 aerial photo (left) and the 2014 satellite photo (right), suggesting that it would be a good place to find older artifacts.

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Courtesy of Eric Gordon

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Artifacts found by Paul Taylor

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Courtesy of Paul Taylor

Much of the challenge in the hobby lies in determining where to detect. This is a research-based effort that involves comparisons between archival pictures, maps, and aerial photos, and the current conditions. Paul notes that “the goal is to find original [old] topography.” He searches for sites that either once had interesting uses or have a landscape that appears to have been undisturbed for long periods of time. As a result, he has extensive knowledge of Toronto’s old stream and ravine network, knows when certain areas of the city were filled in for development, what features are original, and so on. Whatever the history of the site, Paul has the ability to locate and remove items only within a few inches of the surface. As such, he has a keen eye for identifying areas that may have had soil added or accumulated in recent decades. In general, trees are great places to find things. “It’s where people sit, climb, and hide from the sun and rain—and, therefore, a great place to find what’s been lost,” says Paul. Things are often found in areas where many people gather. Thus, Paul observes people as well as the landscape, noticing how they gather, trying to draw connections between those habits and a site’s historic uses in order to locate promising areas to detect. Paul also has a new appreciation of soil conditions insofar as they can affect the corrosion of certain metals. For example, due to what Paul believes is the average

soil moisture content, coins found in Trinity Bellwoods Park come out consistently more corroded than coins of the same age found in upper Riverdale Park. There is competition amongst the detecting community, with new sites kept secret until the hobbyist has had a chance to verify the site’s potential. Finding fruitful new detecting sites in Toronto that haven’t been picked clean by fellow hunters is increasingly difficult; as such, finding a new spot is almost as rewarding as the treasures themselves. Paul spends a great deal of his free time detecting, and admits that his perspective on his city and the landscape has changed. “I wear big headphones to hear the detector’s beeps, but I can still hear what people say, and I hear people talking about me all the time. Once, while I was digging a small hole, I overheard someone say to their friend, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could do that!’ Though it may have been in reference to the legality of the hobby, it made me realize that before I started with this, I viewed the landscape as a hard surface, with no thought of its depth or what might lie beneath. It never occurred to me that I could actually go outside and just dig a hole. I now view the landscape in 3D.” Add to this his layered understanding of the landscape’s history, and Paul really views the landscape in 4D. TEXT BY ERIC GORDON, OALA, A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AND URBAN DESIGNER WITH OPTIMICITY, AND A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

Street Underground Interface

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SANITARY

ILLUSTRATION AND TEXT BY JERGUS OPRSAL

At street level, there are many places of intersection—where hints of what’s below ground are visible. We asked Jergus Oprsal, a Masters of Landscape Architecture student at the University of Toronto, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, to develop a diagram showing this interface.

Street Underground Interface

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STREET STREET UNDERGROUND UNDERGROUND INTERFACE INTERFACE HYDRANT •

THE HYDRANT SITS ON A ‘HYDRANT BEND,’ WHICH IS CONNECTED TO THE WATER MAIN ON THE STREET.

•

MINIMUM PRESSURE 35-60 PSI

SILVA CELL SILVA CELL THE SILVA CELL IS A MODULAR SUSPENDED PAVEMENT SYSTEM THATISUSES SOIL • THE SILVA CELL A MODULAR SUSPENDED VOLUMESPAVEMENT TO SUPPORT LARGETHAT TREEUSES GROWTH SYSTEM SOIL AND PROVIDE POWERFUL ON-SITE VOLUMES TO SUPPORT LARGE TREE GROWTH STORMWATER THROUGH AND MANAGEMENT PROVIDE POWERFUL ON-SITE ABSORPTION, EVAPOTRANSPIRATION, STORMWATER MANAGEMENTAND THROUGH 2 INTERCEPTION. ABSORPTION, EVAPOTRANSPIRATION, AND 2 ROOT CELL; SILVA CELL IS ONE TYPE OF INTERCEPTION. OTHERS STRATACELL, • INCLUDE SILVA CELL IS ONE TYPECELLWEB, OF ROOT CELL; AND CUPOLEX. OTHERS INCLUDE STRATACELL, CELLWEB, AND CUPOLEX.

ELECTRICITY

STORMWATER GAS

TRANSMISSION LINE

CABLE/INTERNET VENTILATION EXHAUST WATER MAIN • THE EXHAUST AIR FROM BUILDING VENTILATION SYSTEMS IS RELEASED AT A CONSTANT INDOOR AIR TEMPERATURE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. THIS CAN CREATE A MICROCLIMATE, IMPACTING THE LANDSCAPE DURING VARIOUS SEASONS.

MANHOLE

CURBSIDE STORM DRAIN • G

THERE ARE TWO COMMON TYPES OF G STORMWATER INLETS: SIDE INLETS AND G GRATED INLETS. • THE STREET SURFACE RUNOFF IS DIRECTED INTO THE CATCH BASIN AND THEN INTO STORM DRAIN.3

SOURCES: 1,3,4 - Ascher, Kate, and Wendy Marech. 2005. The works: anatomy of a city. New York: Penguin Press. 2 - http://www.deeproot.com/.

•

MANHOLES SERVE AS ACCESS POINTS FOR MAKING CONNECTIONS OR CONDUCTNG MAINTENANCE ON UNDERGROUND AND BURIED UTILITY SYSTEMS SUCH AS SEWERS, ELECTRICITY, STORM DRAINS AND GAS. • THE SPACING OF MANHOLES VARIES WITH THE SIZE OF THE PIPE; THE LARGER THE PIPE, THE LOWER THE CHANCE OF CLOGGING, AND THEREFORE THE SPACING BETWEEN THEM IS WIDER.4

What Lies Beneath

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Excavating the past TEXT BY RONALD F. WILLIAMSON AND SUSAN HUGHES

Early hunters in the Toronto region would have sought high vantage points, such as shoreline cliffs, to track herds of caribou and other large game.

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Shelley Huson, Archaeological Services Inc.

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11,000-year-old stone points

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Museum of Ontario Archaeology, Wilfrid Jury Collection

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A 500-year-old human effigy that adorned a ceramic pipe

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Andrea Carnevale, Archaeological Services Inc.

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A 2,500-year-old artifact made of banded slate

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Museum of Ontario Archaeology, Wilfrid Jury Collection

What Lies Beneath

For more than 13,000 years, southern Ontario has been home to indigenous populations. These indigenous peoples once occupied thousands of encampments and temporary villages. They left no written record of their lives, and their legacy consists of the oral histories and traditions passed on to their descendants, as well as the archaeological traces of their settlements. These traces are fragile: whenever you dig in the ground, you could be destroying irreplaceable cultural resources. All types of development—from garden landscaping or excavation for an in-ground swimming pool to a single family dwelling or an entirely new community—can remove traces of the past. Any modification that disrupts or displaces the upper layers of soil can have a huge impact on unknown archaeological resources. Thus, in advance of any construction or landaltering activity, most planning authorities

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in Ontario require archaeological assessments, which are mandated by the Provincial Policy Statement, for projects within their jurisdictions. Some projects, however, may not “trigger” a permit requirement. In these instances, due diligence is critical, because encountering an archaeological feature during project work can result in costly delays. It is best to know the local municipality’s requirements for archaeological assessments, and to consult with the appropriate authorities early in the project design process. One of the major problems in planning for archaeological site conservation is that we don’t know where all the sites are located. Comprehensive surveys of entire municipalities to complete archaeological inventories are clearly not feasible. Planners therefore depend on models that predict where sites are located. The main objectives are to design predictive models that map on a GIS platform the likely locations of archaeological sites, and to establish

planning guidelines for their management. Many regional municipalities, such as Ottawa, Durham, York, and Halton, and cities such as Kingston, Toronto, Brantford, London, and Windsor, among others, have undertaken archaeological management plans. In these municipalities, planners use the potential mapping to decide which projects require assessments. When preparing an archaeological management plan, it is important to distinguish between lands where modern development activities are likely to have destroyed any archaeological resources, and other lands, such as schoolyards, parks, and golf courses, which may be generally undisturbed. While most properties subject to recent development lack any 05/

A 700-year-old ceramic pipe bowl

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Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc.

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A 500-year-old ceramic human effigy pipe

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Andrea Carnevale, Archaeological Services Inc.

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A 500-year-old ceramic vessel

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Andrea Carnevale, Archaeological Services Inc.

What Lies Beneath

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hunting strategies and developing more varied toolkits. By 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, small bands of related families had settled into hunting territories along major drainages, and were trading across the eastern continent and producing exquisite stone art made of banded slate, which they carved and ground to resemble animals.

archaeological potential, the historic cores of municipalities may retain significant archaeological deposits, especially in parking or rear property lots and rear laneways. In downtown Toronto, for example, archaeological remnants of the first parliament buildings of Upper Canada were found in 2000 at the intersection of Front and Parliament streets despite the long history of disturbance at the location. A number of municipalities have defined historic settlement centres, along with known archaeological sites, as Archaeologically Sensitive Areas (ASAs). In these areas, even small-scale activities, such as the construction of a house addition, park facility upgrades, or tree planting, would trigger an archaeological assessment. What constitutes an archaeological site, and what do we find in them? The earliest sites in southern Ontario date to about 13,000 years ago when people came to live on the shores of the glacial lakes formed by the

melting glaciers. These early inhabitants hunted caribou, mastodon or mammoth (now-extinct elephants), and other game in what was then an open spruce forest mixed with tundra. Evidence concerning these hunters is very limited since their populations were not large and few of their tools have survived. By 9,000 years ago, southern Ontario had changed from a tundra-like environment to one more like ours today. Nomadic hunter-gatherers adapted to the changing environmental conditions by shifting their

Horticulture profoundly changed the lives of the indigenous people of southern Ontario. Maize was introduced into southern Ontario about 1,600 years ago and, by 700 years 08/

This small ancestral Huron ossuary, containing the remains of 87 people, was found near Leslie Street and Highway 401. Aboriginal leaders have viewed the disturbance to this sacred site as an immense act of disrespect that could have been avoided by proper planning in advance of development.

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Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc.

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This map identifies the locations of Seneca and Cayuga villages on the north shore of Lake Ontario in the late 17th century including Teiaiagon, on the Humber River, and Ganatswekwyagon, on the Rouge River.

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Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc.

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A moose antler comb found at the site of Teiaiagon (Baby Point, Toronto)

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John Howarth, Archaeological Services Inc.

What Lies Beneath

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ago, it often comprised more than half of the diet consumed by people. Iroquoianspeaking peoples, like the Huron-Wendat, Neutral, and Petun, established base settlements and cleared land for crops, while sending out hunting, fishing, and gathering parties to satellite camps to harvest other resources. Groups in northern Ontario, where the environment precluded the growing of crops, continued with their traditional lifestyles and were the ancestors of the Algonquian-speaking Anishinaabeg peoples. By the 1660s, the Haudenasaunee or Iroquois, whose homeland was in what is now central New York State, had established a series of settlements in southern Ontario at strategic locations along the trade routes inland from the north shore of Lake Ontario, including two villages in what is now Toronto on the Rouge and Humber branches of the Toronto Carrying Place— the canoe-and-portage routes that linked Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay and the upper Great Lakes, through Lake Simcoe.

The Humber River settlement was called “Teiaiagon” (now “Baby Point”) and is situated on a large promontory overlooking the main channel of the Humber River near Jane Street. There are few historical sources that refer to Teiaiagon, although we know that the Recollet missionary and explorer Father Louis Hennepin as well as René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle visited the site in the mid- to late seventeenth century. While hundreds of burials were documented there at the turn of the twentieth century, archaeologists have recently encountered the burial sites of two late-seventeenthcentury Seneca women, both of whom were disinterred from the utility service trenches in which they were found and re-interred nearby during ceremonies performed by a Six Nations traditional chief. Both women had been laid to rest along with a number of grave objects meant to accompany them to the next world, one with a brass pot containing an ash bowl that in turn contained squash, acorn, and grape remains; a number of iron tools; and a carved and engraved moose antler comb.

The comb included carved representations of a human, a bear, and a panther (with a rattlesnake tail) possibly representing Mishipizheu, the chief manitou of the underwater realm. Etched designs were also present, some of which can be seen in the art of Norval Morriseau and demonstrate the unbroken link between indigenous Ontarians and their ancestors. It is everyone’s responsibility to care for the traces of these ancestors, especially those of us who work with the land on a daily basis. BIOS/ SUSAN HUGHES IS THE CITY OF TORONTO'S SUPERVISOR FOR ARCHAEOLOGY, AND OVERSEES THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT PLAN. RONALD F. WILLIAMSON IS MANAGING PARTNER AND CHIEF ARCHAEOLOGIST OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SERVICES INC., A FULL-SERVICE CULTURAL HERITAGE CONSULTING FIRM THAT WORKS THROUGHOUT ONTARIO.

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Late 19th-century map of Baby Point showing the locations of various archaeological deposits

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Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc.

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Recreated village

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Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc.

Round Table

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Our panel of experts explores issues related to urban rivers and waterways, and how they connect with green infrastructure and development CO-MODERATED BY MICHAEL COOK AND JOCELYN HIRTES

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Helen Mills (HM): I saw an exhibit by James Brown and Kim Storey in which Garrison Creek was superimposed on the city grid, and it was a huge moment of recognition for me, with the idea of bringing these rivers back to the surface of people’s awareness. The idea morphed, through the Toronto Green Community, into a walking program of community discovery. On the very first walk, 35 people came, and for the last twenty years we have been entertaining more than 1,000 people a year on lost river walks, with roughly 55 walks a year, so obviously there is a very visceral attraction. I think our main role is to help shift people’s mental map of roads, subways, and transportation systems to something about the underlying life-support systems that exist. Carolyn Woodland (CW): I worked for the Crombie Commission when we did the first Garrison Common Study, and that was the first time we had done a downtown redevelopment in which the restoration of a creek and shoreline was a fundamental piece of the planning and was actually

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MICHAEL COOK IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURAL INTERN AT BROWN + STOREY ARCHITECTS AND A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD. FOR THE PAST DECADE, HE HAS BEEN PHOTOGRAPHING UNDERGROUND WATERWAYS IN TORONTO, AND ELSEWHERE. ALONG WITH ROUND TABLE PARTICIPANT HELEN MILLS, HE IS FEATURED IN THE 2012 DOCUMENTARY FILM LOST RIVERS.

MARK TARRAS IS A CONSULTING ENGINEER AND FOUNDING PARTNER OF THE MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE GROUP LTD. HE IS MAINLY INVOLVED IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND DESIGN OF MUNICIPAL SERVICES FOR MUNICIPALITIES.

Michael Cook (MC): Recovering lost rivers is not a new idea in Ontario. From the Garrison Creek proposal created by Brown + Storey Architects in the 1990s, through the continuing efforts of the Lost Rivers organization, Toronto was an early leader in recognizing how buried waterways might be returned to the city surface. However, to date there has been little practical momentum towards daylighting waterways in Ontario, despite the public interest in, and appetite for, the recovery of urban watersheds. Cities like Seoul, South Korea, and Yonkers, New York, have attracted international attention, with projects that have reconstructed and resurfaced streams in urban centres, while London, Seattle, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and many other places are hard at work achieving culvert removals and stormwater conveyances within suburban green spaces.

CAROLYN WOODLAND, OALA, IS DIRECTOR OF PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT AT THE TORONTO AND REGION CONSERVATION AUTHORITY. SHE HAS SPENT 26 YEARS DOING CONSULTING WORK AS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AND URBAN DESIGNER, AND WAS A PRINCIPAL WITH THE FIRM HOUGH STANSBURY WOODLAND (LATER HWNDL— HOUGH WOODLAND NAYLOR DANCE LEINSTER).

Helen, could you talk briefly about the history of efforts to recover lost waterways in Toronto?

JOCELYN HIRTES, A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD, IS A LANDSCAPE DESIGNER AT MARK HARTLEY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS. SHE HAS A BACKGROUND IN BOTANY AND ECOLOGY, AND HAS WORKED FOR AN URBAN FOREST RESTORATION COMPANY. NICOLAS KOFF IS A LANDSCAPE/ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNER, AND ONE OF THE CO-FOUNDERS OF THE COMPANY PROJEXITY, WHICH HELPS COMMUNITY GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS GET THEIR PROJECTS OFF THE GROUND [SEE GROUND 24, P6-7]. HE ALSO TEACHES A STUDIO, WITH GUEST LECTURER MARISA BERNSTEIN, IN THE MASTER OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. HELEN MILLS IS FOUNDER OF THE LOST RIVERS PROJECT OF THE TORONTO GREEN COMMUNITY, A GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY GROUP THAT HAS BEEN EXPLORING THE NETWORK OF HIDDEN WATERWAYS FOR CLOSE TO 20 YEARS. THE GROUP HAS A WEBSITE THAT MAPS THE NETWORKS OF RIVERS AND SEWERS, AND HOLDS NUMEROUS WALKS IN TORONTO. MARK SCHOLLEN, OALA, IS PRINCIPAL OF SCHOLLEN COMPANY, WHICH, ALONG WITH ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION, IS FOCUSED AROUND WATER AND RESTORING RIVERS, WATER COURSES, CREEKS, AND WETLANDS.

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Garrison Creek sewer, Toronto

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Michael Cook

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The sewer that replaced Wilket Creek, North York

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Michael Cook

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Kids playing in Wilket Creek, North York, 1968, before the creek was buried underground and replaced with sewer

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Beth Marley

Round Table

embedded into the secondary plan as a site-organizing idea. As a city, I think we’ve made more headway in the past in terms of river restoration than most cities have, particularly with the Bring Back the Don, the work of Michael Hough, the Crombie Commission, the Waterfront Trust, and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. I think there are various forms of daylighting; it’s a broad term. As landscape architects, if we look at this from an engineering perspective it may not always be practical to take those huge buried pipes and bring them back to the surface unless there is some way to deal with the issue of flooding. We have so much water coming through in storm peaks, which means that you need the space to manage that flow, and the rivers need to be restored to slow down the flow, which means you need a wider floodplain... So there are some technical realities that we have to think through. I think we are on the brink of that discussion, particularly with climate change and intensification. Jocelyn Hirtes (JH): If it’s not possible to daylight an entire stream or river, what about pilot projects like the one in Washington, D.C., where they are doing a few blocks at a time? Mark Tarras (MT): There is an opportunity to combine various programs in the city in order to reclaim or daylight creeks. A lot of basement flooding is caused by disturbances of natural flow patterns. By opening up old rivers and allowing flow paths to be recovered, you might be able to mitigate flooding in a cost-effective way, especially when you are spending significant amounts of money to retrofit the underground system for larger pipes. To make this successful, you have to pick a project in a location where the surrounding community is in full support of it.

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A typical channelized urban watercourse in an industrial park in Brampton before restoration (above) and after restoration of the meander dynamic (below)

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Toronto and Region Conservation Authority

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There can be severe technical constraints. Having combined sewers is one, where you would have to take the sanitary flow out of the flow and figure out how to direct only the rainwater into the creek. But there are an infinite number of ways to solve it, and if you can find something that’s got other benefits, then usually you get more people working hand in hand. Mark Schollen (MS): There’s often push back from people on issues related to real-estate value. We’ve got that with Black Creek [in Toronto] and in Richmond Hill, where we designed the daylighting of German Mills Creek. Real-estate values are so high that to give up 30 metres to get this creek corridor in, as opposed to 12 metres for a pipe, means millions of dollars of lost revenue in development. MT: Today, we must design systems to not only catch the rain water from everyday events but we also need to provide for catastrophic events and make sure that the water has a safe path. Obviously, creeks and rivers provide the easiest and best solution, but it’s probably not practical to do long stretches through downtown Toronto. So, pick limited stretches that provide some additional storage and width for conveyance, and get a success that you can then build on and try to replicate in other small stretches until you have something that’s more than the individual pieces. HM: One other constraint: people don’t want to daylight because as soon as it’s a river, there is flood liability; whereas as long as it’s in a sewer, it works. Nicolas Koff (NK): We are indeed a culture that sees water as a liability, as a risk, as something we’re removed from; this is very different from the way we originally settled our cities in the vicinity of water—really thriving thanks to the water. When we talk about daylighting projects, we talk about the environmental and sustainable sides, but we don’t necessarily talk about the cultural and social sides of it, which is a bit of a shame and, in many ways, a bit of a branding issue. We see our rivers solely as devices for channeling water, but rivers are also cultural places that need to be celebrated.

MC: There’s a jurisdictional challenge, too. We associate water planning and flood control with the conservation authority, but the conservation authorities are primarily responsible for planning related to existing floodplains. Should conservation authorities be responsible for planning overland flow in areas where the floodplain has been built over? CW: In the 1970s, the main focus of the conservation authorities was flood management. However, conservation authorities have moved to the whole concept of urban nature, ecological restoration, and water management including improving water quality in the cities on a watershed basis. We have made huge strides in terms of appreciating the integrity of rivers and actually working to restore them, and we have whole crews and departments at the conservation authority where our engineers and ecologists go in and do geo-fluvial restoration projects and bring back rivers to their natural state, and they work with municipalities to do that.

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MT: Part of the practical limitations is how creeks interfere with existing infrastructure. You’ve got gas pipelines, oil pipelines, telecommunications cables—a lot of buried infrastructure that nobody can see from the surface. That’s where daylighting will have a real challenge in the built-up areas, because when you account for 3:1 side-slopes that’s going to have an impact for 10 to 20 metres from where the creek actually is. MS: Another issue is that insurance companies understand pipes, and they do not understand watercourses. We’re working on a golf club that was wiped out last year, causing millions of dollars of damage, which their insurance company is on the hook to pay for. At our first meeting, the insurance company asked us if we could pipe it. I said no. We’ve been working with them for eight months now just trying to show them how a river works.

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Landscape of the recently renovated Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea—used for art festivals and public gatherings

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Courtesy of Travel Oriented

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Locals and tourists walk along the uncovered and restored urban river in Seoul, South Korea.

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Carlos Felipe Pardos

I sat on the stormwater review panel for the city of Hamilton after they had their horrendous flooding issues, and we had the insurance association on our panel. It was like a light bulb went off; just sitting around the table with engineers and others who are engaged, showed them that there is not just one reason, and it’s not one anomaly. It’s going to keep happening because all of the infrastructure improvements have to be done before the system gets better, or we have to start changing the way the system is designed. CW: Well, that and our storms are unique in terms of intensity. The conservation authorities in the province are starting to be in dialogue with the insurance companies because now they have all these worldwide catastrophic events. HM: An attitude I’ve encountered, from some engineers, is asking whether it’s worth doing the infrastructure retrofit, because it’s so expensive, and it might be cheaper just to let it flood and to fix it every time it does.

MS: We’re doing a project where the replacement of the sewer was on the capital projects list of the city of Markham, and it was a sewer that also runs beneath a park in Thornhill, and we came in and said, why don’t we get rid of that sewer and daylight that creek? When you do the math, it’s cheaper to daylight it. The driver was the infrastructure cost. It had to be a catalyst already on the radar for the city to make that investment. MT: The thing is, there is probably nobody holistically looking at those types of issues, and overlaying them. For example, when analyzing the needs and desires of the

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anticipating and accommodating the current and prospective flow of the Don River. As part of a strategy for sustainably daylighting creeks, we also need to reduce runoffs. How do we deal with a much broader strategy of integrating smaller parks and smaller rainwater-harvesting devices into the rest of the city in order to allow for the long-term daylighting of creeks? We are not going to be able to safely excavate as many creeks as we should unless we are able to retrofit our communities around them—and not just as a solution to stop basement flooding, but as a solution that deals with slowing down the flow of water through watersheds. CW: The conservation authority has watershed plans and report cards, and there are alliances in all the watersheds that work with community representatives to look after river corridors. It takes a lot of work to figure out which ones, of all our lost rivers, you could restore. HM: The easy way to do that is, I think, through community organizing. You look at all the opportunities, how many square metres of laneway there are, what it would cost to retrofit, how much rain we can catch, by doing permeable pavement in those laneways. Where we can put rain gardens… Maybe it’s not going to catch every single drop, but when you look at that urban fabric, there are all these opportunities, and you can’t really do them without having a huge amount of community engagement and awareness.

parks department or a cultural group, there might be a particular project that is not top on their priority list; but if we combine it with some other works which may have been identified by the works department, then it may make the project more economically viable and move the project up to the top of the list. It allows for greater cost efficiencies and reduces the disruption to the overall community. MS: When an engineer looks at a pipe and says it needs to be replaced, his first inclination is, well, put a new pipe in. Whereas if you had a more collaborative

approach, then somebody would have said, hey, you know what, there is a river there and why don’t we do this? CW: You have to get multiple benefits. And you need creative engineers and creative landscape architects and planners to put all those pieces together. The multi-disciplinary approach is really important. NK: A creative example of a project bringing together landscape architects and engineers is the new development on the West Don Lands in Toronto. It’s actually built within the landscape, built as an inhabitable yet floodable landscape, in a way that is 09

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MS: Downtown Toronto, from the west end to the Don Valley, is pretty much a candidate for all those infiltration techniques. And they work, so if you came at it really hard with a community-based focus, selling a very comprehensive rain garden program, you’d solve a lot of problems and save a lot of money on infrastructure improvements. No more big pipes. HM: There’s a great, brand new project in Seattle: it’s a living building with a six-storey composting toilet system. It’s a completely closed loop. NK: Cornelia Hahn Oberlander did that twenty years ago, on the UBC campus. MC: What is necessary for achieving all these things we’ve been talking about? Green Development Standards are primarily facilitating retrofits in certain parts of Toronto and certain parts of other municipalities, but not in other areas. The same is true for the adoption of new ways of dealing with wastewater at the site level. Even in terms of community organizing around lost water, it has primarily been something that happens downtown. So how do we extend these techniques, these approaches, and these ideas around water to other Ontario municipalities and the suburban GTA where the building form is individual suburban housing that is not likely to see significant redevelopment or retrofit in the near future? NK: I think changes to the Ontario Building Code (OBC) are going to be pretty useful for that; the OBC needs to be redesigned in order to accommodate new technologies. It just took me almost a year to get a permit for a straw-bale house, not quite a new technology but one very much rediscovered. It would also appear that many technologies that foster independence from the grid are frowned upon; I think change is something that needs to happen on the level of policy. CW: A multi-disciplinary approach to advocacy is really important. When you’re a combined force, it’s a little easier. Pilot projects are really important and will go a long way over a period of time. Change is not going to happen overnight.

MT: Developers have huge apprehension about anything innovative because time is so important to them and innovation takes time to get approved. We have a mixed bag of approval agencies, which makes it very difficult for developers or individual builders to bring innovation forward. I think you have to incentivize—giving credits, whether through parks or some other method that allows them to get something for the risk they are taking. I think all engineers and landscape architects, and planners and designers, would like to implement the latest and greatest, but the people with the money and the backing are afraid of doing things differently. It has to come at the city or agency level—to allow a framework to be put in place, not to come up with the solutions, but to come up with a set of rules.

MS: I think the secret regarding suburbia is the roads. For every retrofit project we have done in the suburban landscape, the first thing we do is look at the roads. They are over-wide, built in the 1950s and 60s for cars we don’t drive anymore. If you can take a 13-metre-wide road and take it down to 8.75 metres, you are already 40 percent better than you were before, just by narrowing the road. And if you can put in green infrastructure, even better.

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Project to expose and formalize seasonal creeks in Pennsylvania's Wissahickon forest

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Courtesy of Nicolas Koff

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Residential rain gardens can mitigate urban flooding.

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Schollen & Company Inc.

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Project in Choroni, Venezuela, involving the rediscovery and restoration of a creek that was previously used to dispose of waste and refuse

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Courtesy of Nicolas Koff

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CW: We don’t design our communities with water in mind. Even today, with all that we know about watersheds, water is the afterthought that we stick in little channels or in a little wetland in a park or in a few pipes. We should start with the opportunities that come with open space and natural features, including water and rivers, and then build density.

When we did Lakeview, we took a road that was 11.75 metres wide (which is the Mississauga standard) and we brought it down to 8.75. When we proposed this, it was as if the whole city was going to explode and everybody was going to die— fire trucks couldn’t get through, there’s no place to put the snow, etc. Well, guess what: the road was built, and it works. If we really start to tackle the street in the suburban landscape, then we could replicate those lost rivers on the landscape within those road rights-of way. CW: To get there, we’ll need a change in the way we work. Now, the developers and landowners determine what they need based on how they interpret policies and urban design standards. Whereas the way we were all trained at school was to start together, in some kind of design workshop think-tank, and build towards a project. Somehow we have lost the creativity of a dialogue and the desire to do something innovative. We are supposed to start off by looking at opportunities.

So much of what’s going on right now is oriented around intensification. There used to be a lot more strategic conceptual work done, where you work not just at the level of urban buildings and the streets, but also on the open space system, which would include river restoration and flood remediation, for example. That’s a more comprehensive approach. MS: What’s missing, when you go through the process with the present planners, is that it’s all about urban design. There are some fundamental principles that speak to environmental issues, but they’re kind of general and they don’t drive you to be innovative, or to explore site-based solutions. I am thinking of Markham Uptown as a good example: when we went through that process (and it was a very good process), at the end of the day it was an urban design exercise, as opposed to a much more multidimensional systems approach, where you would look at the actual underlying function of the site, and what the impacts will be after it is built. It was a stylistic exercise of what looks good, as opposed to what works well, and that’s where you need the strong multi-disciplinary approach with people who have a great understanding of what the objectives are and how to get there.

MT: It’s not an easy problem to solve. It’s numbers based: the province sets certain guidelines for the municipalities to follow, and they take those raw numbers to a planner who then sets out the road patterns and the general densities that will achieve that. And that then goes to another planner who makes a more distinct layout of the landform. But what to do with the rivers, which are in the way now because you can’t achieve the densities that they just told us they could get, which is what the developer paid the money for. Given the planning framework, we have to try to have small victories with pilot projects that demonstrate there is a better way to do things within the overall stormwater management strategy. CW: I had an interesting experience over the past few years in downtown Brampton, where a river that flowed through the main street was diverted in the 1940s into a huge concrete channel. No one ever paid any attention to it; it was just the way water resource engineers did flood structures and

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Concept plan for Glencrest Park showing the proposed recreated tributary

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Schollen & Company Inc.

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Buried tributary of German Mills Creek in Glencrest Park at interface with storm sewer

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Schollen & Company Inc.

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NK: This is also what Helen and her group have been doing: building histories and mythologies that go beyond the environmental identity of rivers, narratives that really define rivers as unique characters in the story of our city; after all, each river has its own identity and that’s something communities can really rally around, something that can help define entire neighbourhoods. This may be useful for expanding a daylighting strategy to other parts of the province—to build these individual stories and mythologies that define rivers as more than just bodies of water. 14

diversions back then. But recently there was a need to revitalize the business core downtown and relook at updated flood protection in the downtown. Plus, the business community and developers wanted to see a restoration of the river—to turn it into a downtown amenity. It was a very modern way of looking at bringing back the river: as something to kick-start a whole economic change in the downtown. And this didn’t come from an environmental group. It came from a group of business people and landowners who cared very much about the value of their property, and said that we really need to bring some green into our downtown and reduce flood vulnerability— and addressing the river is the way to do it.

MS: The good news is: Ontario is leading the way. We are ahead of the curve, even though it doesn’t seem that way. I worked on the Stormwater Management Guidelines for the Canadian Standards Association, and part of that work was to poll every province and territory in Canada to find out where they are at and who is doing what. Only three provinces have stormwater management guidelines: B.C., Manitoba, and Ontario. Six provinces don’t know what stormwater management is. Montreal does not have stormwater management guidelines.

There are a lot of good things happening here. A lot of optimism. People are getting the message. The policy issues are starting to work themselves out. The proof is in the testing and in the monitoring; we are actually proving that these things are working in our climate. People will say that permeable pavement doesn’t work. However, we have the numbers that actually show that it does. So I think we are getting over that hill and starting to really roll with a lot of this stuff. CW: People don’t want to see it as yet another engineering intervention that takes away developable area. If you can design water management in a way that is integrated—for example, if it’s in an urban square, or part of your parking lot design or part of the roadway or roadway amenity—I think that will go a long way to convincing people that it’s not an added expense, but that it’s actually a fundamental part of the project. WITH THANKS TO CASEY MORRIS FOR TRANSCRIBING THIS ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION.

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Erosion damage to Taylor-Massey Creek in Toronto’s Warden Woods (below) and after restoration (above)

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Bill Snodgrass, City of Toronto

Phytotechnologies

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Phytotechnologies

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More than meets the eye TEXT BY PETE NORTH, OALA

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Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, a German park with an industrial past

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Pete North

As a landscape architect, I most often select plants based on how they perform above ground. Design and aesthetics, climate control, air quality improvement, habitat creation, and ecological factors are just a few of the benefits that come to mind. However, below ground, plants also have the ability to contribute a great deal to our environment in the realms of erosion control and slope stabilization, stormwater and groundwater mitigation, and soil remediation. These remarkable, largely hidden, processes taking place underground at the plants-root level, present significant opportunities for restoration and remediation of brownfields and other disturbed sites through a process known as phytoremediation or, more broadly, “phytotechnologies.”

The term phytoremediation came into popular use within the discipline of landscape architecture in the early 1990s, and refers to the use of plants to remediate or manage contaminated soil and groundwater. While still an evolving technology, it is now widely accepted as an effective lowcost remediation strategy and compelling alternative to some of the more invasive and costly remediation technologies, namely dig and dump. It can be applied in situ (onsite) and ex situ (off-site) and can target a variety of contaminants, both organic and inorganic. Too often, site remediation has been the exclusive territory of engineers and scientists. However, with the use of phytotechnologies, along with thoughtful landscape design and planning, landscape architects now have a key role in designing site remediation strategies that renew or establish healthy vegetative communities and integrate ecological processes. This approach to the restoration and remediation of disturbed sites connects strongly with the expertise of many landscape architects.

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So, where does the contamination go? With phytotechnologies, most people assume that all contaminants are simply taken up into the plant tissue, inevitably requiring the plants to be harvested with further treatment off-site (typically, incineration). While this is true in some cases, there are many other processes at work that can be beneficial to on-site remediation of soil and groundwater. Some additional processes are: 4 Phytoextraction: removal and concentration of contaminants, generally metals, in plant tissue;

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Toronto waterfront

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Pete North

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The Junction neighbourhood in Toronto

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Pete North

4 Phytodegradation: plant uptake and transformation of contaminants to less toxic forms; 4 Phytostabilization: erosion control of contaminated soils or hydraulic control through management of the soil/water balance; 4 Phytohydraulics: the use of plants to uptake large volumes of water in an effort to contain or control the migration of subsurface water; 4 Phytovolatilization: the removal of contaminants by evaporation into the atmosphere through plant leaves;

4 Rhizofiltration: the removal of contaminants by absorption through plant roots; 4 Rhizosphere biofiltration: enhanced microbial degradation of contaminants near plant root surfaces; 4 Natural attenuation: monitoring and verification of natural remediation processes (natural plant growth and succession often found on abandoned or vacant sites). To date, research and development of phytotechnologies have largely focused on their use on brownfields and post-contamination conditions. (A brownfield site is commonly defined as an abandoned, vacant, derelict, or underutilized commercial or industrial property where past actions have resulted in actual or perceived contamination.) It has been estimated that there are more than 30,000 brownfield sites within Canada, 40 percent of which can be found in Ontario, according to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

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While not all brownfield and disturbed sites are well suited for phytotechnologies as a potential remediation strategy, many are. Specifically, larger vacant sites with lower-level contamination, which too often languish under red tape, are excellent candidates for this longer-term process. As a long-term, low-cost solution, phytotechnologies have the potential to provide a viable interim remediation strategy, aiding to reduce or remove site contamination, restore ecological process, and improve the overall visual quality of a site while planning continues. In addition to being used as a post-contamination remediation strategy, phytotechnologies are increasingly being considered for use in ongoing, pro-active design strategies on sites that have the potential to contaminate other sites, or as a means to shield or buffer an adjacent non-contaminated site. As phytotechnologies continue to gain momentum in landscape design, the new and exciting challenge is to utilize plants in a way that combines “above-ground” design and aesthetics with below-ground performance. Research and development of new

plants for use in phytotechnologies is ongoing, and there now exists an extensive list of plant species that are capable of being deployed on a wider range of sites and soil conditions. A landscape architect’s expertise in species selection, planting techniques, and longterm management and maintenance has an ever-increasing role in phytotechnologies. To state it simply, plants must thrive in order to be effective. The use of plants in phytotechnologies that rely on how plants function “below ground” in combination with landscape design that appreciates their “above-ground” attributes, has opened up opportunities for landscape architects, engineers, and biologists to work together to remediate and restore disturbed landscapes while simultaneously creating thoughtfully designed, resilient environments.

BIO/ PETE NORTH, OALA, IS A PARTNER AT NORTHDESIGNOFFICE AND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT THE DANIELS FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE, AND DESIGN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO.

All Work, No Pay

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TEXT BY GRAHAM MACINNES

Last summer, I graduated from the University of Guelph alongside my fellow millennials, a generation of tech-savy, twenty-somethings coached since infancy to believe that we were special. We were taught that we could accomplish anything, and were encouraged to pursue our dream jobs. We could become whatever we wanted to be if we put our minds to it. Landscape architect? Absolutely.

The underground economy of internships

Shortly after removing my metaphorical graduation cap, reality set in. Apparently I was overoptimistic about the current state of the economy. It didn’t take long for me to realize that my “dream job” was a lot further off than I had anticipated. The return on education is not what it used to be. Young Canadians are studying longer, and paying the highest tuition prices on record; they are graduating with larger debts, to ultimately accept positions that pay less than ever before.

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5 IN CONVERSATION WITH …

George Dark, Senior Partner at Urban Strategies Inc.

Why do you think it’s important for firms like Urban Strategies Inc. to offer paid internship programs? “There should be a responsibility for firms

I spoke with several recent graduates who felt as though they had hit a dead-end when applying for jobs, and they couldn’t pinpoint what they were doing wrong. Many thought that graduating from university would be enough to pave the way to a career. Ironically, however, many entrylevel landscape architecture positions in Ontario require years of experience. So what are young graduates to do? Many are turning to unpaid internships, working for no salary in order to gain experience and put something on their resume. I found myself in a similar situation. After graduation, I began to feel a twinge of desperation, and I was anxious to start a career. But I didn’t have the work experience that appealed to employers. So I jumped on the bandwagon (and the Go Train) and started an unpaid internship at a small, boutique landscape architecture firm in downtown Toronto. It seemed like the perfect solution. The position allowed me to flex my creative muscle, network, and develop new skills. Overall, the internship was a positive experience. But I quickly began to realize that my unpaid position was contributing to a burgeoning underground economy powered by free labour. A revolving door of unpaid interns had once called my desk theirs, and I struggled with the concept of someone using my ideas and my talent to benefit their business, all whilst inferring that my ideas were worthy but I was not.

After three months I decided to call it quits. I had spent all of my savings on GO Train fare, and cinnamon raisin bagels. My parttime job, folding clothes for a megacorporation, wasn’t paying the bills. But more importantly, I recognized that I wasn’t benefiting enough from the internship to justify staying any longer. I wasn’t receiving training, and couldn’t differentiate the work I was doing from that of paid employees. I was proud of myself for knowing when to walk away.

that are established to put internships in place because it is an important way to grow the profession.” “These days it’s very difficult to get yourself started, to build a career. Unless established practices create a situation where people can get entry-level jobs, get experience on their resumes, and network with people, I don’t understand how the industry can continue.” “People shouldn’t work for nothing. Urban

Recognizing that I benefited greatly from my unpaid experience, it would be dishonest of me to persuade others to not undertake a similar position.

Strategies has never had unpaid interns. I think it is really taking advantage of people. I don’t know how anyone would expect someone to live in Toronto and not get paid. It’s a kind of silly prospect.”

However, it should be stated that many young people cannot afford to work for free, and as a result are being locked out of what is, unfortunately, becoming a rite of passage for recent graduates. This is one of many reasons the government of Ontario has taken action against companies and businesses that offer unpaid positions. Whether the exploitation is unintentional or intentional, if the intern has profited the company, and is proven to be an employee, then they are entitled to appropriate financial compensation. Even though times are tough, and graduates are desperate for experience, there is no justification for exploitation. Despite the fact that it’s increasingly difficult for young Canadians to establish a financial foundation, we’re millennials after all. We can accomplish anything we put our minds to, and we certainly won’t give up the pursuit of our dream job, no matter what it might be or how many times it changes. BIO/ GRAHAM MACINNES IS A RECENT GRADUATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH'S BACHELOR OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM AND A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

Cecelia Paine, Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Guelph What are some ways students and recent graduates can better prepare themselves for a tough job market? “Students need to do everything they can to improve their skills. Go to workshops, take courses online, learn from your classmates, and study the work of others from professional journals and websites. Take a course in public speaking. All of these skills can and do make a difference in getting a job.” “Be ready to move. Right now, the jobs are in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Go there. Get experience. You may decide to stay there for life. If you don’t like it there, you can eventually come home. At least now you have experience and are one step ahead of those who didn’t want to leave their hometown.” (INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED BY GRAHAM MACINNES.)

Technical Corner

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TEXT BY JAMES URBAN, FASLA, ISA

Recently, I made a tour of the latest generation of street and plaza trees around the downtown area of Toronto. I was looking to see if the past ten years of work to change the way we design with trees has had an impact, particularly in the context of Toronto’s adoption of “Tree Planting Solutions in Hard Boulevard Surfaces,” which I co-wrote. Most of the projects I visited were likely designed prior to the official adoption of the standards, and my hope was that I would see some of the influences of the education effort that preceded the new standards. What I found was that while there were some good things to be enjoyed, a few common elements stood out as still needing work. The following highlights some of these.

The primary issue I observed relates to the place where the tree disappears into the earth—a dynamic space surrounded by pavement and filled with dirt, mulch, and a small piece of wood in the middle. This space will slowly transition into a place completely filled with wood, or so I hope. Here, some change has occurred in the past decade. In the old standard detail, the hole around the tree was often less than 300mm with a concrete cover on top of the rootball. This detail was enlarged in the projects I visited, with spaces between 300 and 800mm. The openings were typically tree grates of concrete, metal, or supported pavers suspended over a larger opening. However, what I saw was still well below the new Toronto standard of 1400mm square, with an allowance for openings as small as 1100mm where the space is not sufficient for the minimum walk width of 2100mm between the tree and the building. It is important to remember that this is a minimum tree opening width, and that larger spaces are encouraged.

The new approaches to planting require larger soil volumes than have been used in the past, and the projects I visited all had incorporated larger volumes. While I applaud the requirement of 30 cubic metres (20 cubic metres for trees in shared volumes), this is still far lower than is needed for mature trees. Sugar Beach and the Waterfront Toronto Promenade have more than 38 cubic metres per tree, which should ultimately support very large trees. Queens Quay trees are being planted in about 31 cubic metres of soil in shared soil volumes on the south side of the street. The north side trees are not so lucky due to space constraints, and will make an interesting comparison for the impact of different soil volumes over the next several decades. Larger soil volumes will grow much larger trees than landscape architects are used to experiencing in their projects. These larger trees are going to have much bigger trunks

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04 On Yorkville Avenue in Toronto, a larger tree opening would still leave room for pedestrian traffic.

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A 600mm opening for a Toronto tree pit

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James Urban

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James Urban

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This Toronto sidewalk is wide enough for larger tree pit openings.

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Irrigation binding the tree trunk IMAGE/

James Urban

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James Urbans

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Technical Corner

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and substantially larger trunk flares, which will be in conflict with the small holes in the pavement—thus, my concern that larger spaces must accompany the larger soil volumes.

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Tree openings could be larger and still meet Toronto’s standards for walkway width.

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James Urban

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300mm tree pit openings in Cawthra Square, Toronto

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James Urban

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Room for larger tree pit openings

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James Urban

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300mm openings

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James Urban

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Room for larger tree pit openings

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James Urban

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Materials tied around the trunk harm trees.

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James Urban

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An 810mm opening with water-collection trench drain on Front Street in Toronto

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James Urban

I fail to see the technical need to pave so close to the tree. In all the spaces I visited, there would have been more than ample room for pedestrian activity if a larger planting space had been designed. Even in dense downtown spaces, a few more millimetres of paving would not cause problems for pedestrians in normal rush-hour periods. During peak demand, pedestrians might walk in the mulch bed around the tree. I would argue that this is not going to harm the tree. Some might consider the mulch bed a tripping hazard. I would argue that the raised pavement being displaced by the tree’s trunk flare in a smaller space is a much more likely tripping hazard, and one that is much more difficult to mitigate. The second issue I observed during my Toronto tour was a lack of rainwater harvesting ideas. Except for 300 Front Street, with its efficient trench drain along the curb, which directed water into the soil under the paving, all the projects seem to be relying on pressurized irrigation. And it was unclear which, if any, projects included irrigation extending under the pavement. But even if they do, pressurized irrigation is a very poor substitute for a surface-water-harvesting system such as the Front Street trench drains or the inlets at Sugar Beach. I hope that the trench drain option prevails.

Pressurized systems always need maintenance, and it is almost impossible to maintain these systems under the pavement. Emitter heads get clogged up with the calcium in water; winter tears up piping and connections; systems are forgotten about, fail to be winterized, or restarted in the spring, etc. At one of the Toronto projects I visited, the emitter head was strapped to the trunk with a stem-girdling plastic tie that will do great harm to the tree if not cut away. A much better option would be to add passive water collection systems to every tree, designed as simply and as independent of maintenance as possible. The final issue was part of the reason for my tour: salt. If we are going to direct surface rainwater into the soil under the pavement,

Technical Corner

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aesthetic ideas that jeopardize the future of a tree. When designers propose constructions that clearly challenge nature’s requirements, nature always wins. Make planting spaces as large as the tree will need; understand how trees grow, mature, and die; get rainwater into larger soil volumes; and demand that research continue to resolve the difficult questions about the unintended consequences of our designs. BIO/ JAMES URBAN, FASLA, ISA, IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT SPECIALIZING IN URBAN TREES AND SOILS. HE LIVES IN ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, AND IS A FREQUENT VISITOR TO TORONTO AS A CONSULTANT TO LOCAL DESIGNERS.

how concerned should we be about salt going into the soil as well? Salt manifests itself on the tree in two forms: salt in meltwater that enters the soil and salt that gets atomized into the air by car tires at higher speeds. Both can be deadly to trees. At this point, questions about salt need to be studied in order to make informed decisions. The design of tree planting spaces is an area in which landscape architects should be the primary experts within the field of building public spaces. We should have knowledge of the available science on this topic and require that scientific principles lead the development of the aesthetic principles. We should be able to state clearly that our design proposals are technically proficient, and we should stand against any 11

Professional Practice

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An interview with Eha Naylor, OALA, about the challenges of working on a large and complex infrastructure project—the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway in Windsor

CONDUCTED BY KAARI KITAWI

Kaari Kitawi (KK): What are the complexities of managing a project of this scale? Eha Naylor (EN): The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway, in Windsor, is a collaboration between highway engineers, structural engineers, landscape architects, ecologists, water resources engineers, electrical engineers…a very large and complex team. The project context is both a highway and a very sensitive natural landscape, so this collective experience, in my case more than 30 years, of integrating natural processes into highly urbanized environments has been extremely valuable. It’s a $1.6 billion infrastructure project, and it is complex due to its scale and schedule. The landscape and urban design component has two pieces: urban landscapes relating to 11 tunnel-top parks, gateways, and municipal road interface; and the highway roadside landscapes, screening landscapes, and stormwater management landscapes. This is all set into the ecological restoration of the Ojibway Tallgrass Prairie that was disrupted by the parkway project. It is one of the most complicated aspects of the project because the lands cover 300

acres; the parkway corridor itself is 11 kilometres long and runs through Windsor, LaSalle, and Tecumseh. Even though the landscape architects are one of among twenty disciplines, our work touches every other discipline. It touches the structural team because the tunnel-top parks are suspended over the roadway. We work with the highway team because we need to be able to design landscape typologies that will survive very hostile environments along Highway 401, which will be 8 metres below grade with all the associated salt spray and heat on the walls of that corridor. We collaborate with municipal engineers because somehow we need to figure out how to make the labyrinth of utilities work throughout the parkland. We work with the electrical engineers and stormwater management team because the landscape and ecological layer is the last that goes onto this project. KK: What has been the most surprising thing about this project? EN: The sheer scale. We understood that the site was 300 acres, with massive structures suspended over a highway 8 metres

below grade, but when you see it, it is absolutely riveting. I have frequently worked on projects that are up to 100 acres, but this is a big change. The road construction will be substantially complete by December [2014], but the landscape will not be complete until the end of next year and possibly into 2016 due to weather and the lack of available plant material. KK: What has been most challenging? EN: The overload of information all the time. Hundreds of e-mails related to something that may or may not impact you. We are getting better at managing the flow of data, understanding what to pay attention to, what to make a priority, and what to discard. Another challenge is the change of personnel within construction companies. It’s unfortunate, in my view, because there is a certain institutional memory one develops during a project, so when you have changes in personnel you lose that knowledge and need to get new people up to speed quickly. In large projects, there are lots of details and loose ends that require a consistent team to reduce confusion. Not having that is a challenge.

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KK: What advice do you have for others based on lessons you’ve learned from this project? EN: It is very rare that you get opportunities to stay involved in a project for a number of years; for me this has been four years. My advice is: whenever possible, use the opportunities presented in large-scale infrastructure projects to catalyze community renewal. That includes enhancing the public realm, showcasing local culture, and ensuring ecological renewal. My advice is to be very assertive at the outset, advocating that this be a significant component of the overall project and not simply landscape as add-on “parsley around the pig.” If we foster this upfront, it is the best value we can bring to the project. You need to be very clear and convincing, and it helps when there is an overarching political mandate. The biggest impact you can make and the most lasting one is to have a voice at the table at the very beginning. KK: What would you do differently? EN: There are lots of things I would do differently, but the biggest would have been to compromise less. KK: You would have “leaned in,” as Sheryl Sandberg puts it in her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead?

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Parkway landscape with compost sock

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Courtesy of Dillon Consulting Limited

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Roadside landscape

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Courtesy of Dillon Consulting Limited

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Buffer landscape

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Courtesy of Dillon Consulting Limited

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High retaining walls

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Courtesy of Dillon Consulting Limited

EN: We did lean in hard at times, but in hindsight I would have leaned in a little harder. It’s a P3 project, and you are on a team with the constructors; during the bidding process they really push you to back off and cut costs. We did some compromising, and if I was going at it again I would probably stand firmer on “these are the things we absolutely need.” As well, we should have insisted on being part of the landscape management advisory team for the next five years after construction, because this is when significant and important decisions are made and there are many lessons learned. Currently, our contractual relationship ends once the construction is over. P3s, by their nature, have ongoing oversight—it is a design, build, manage, operate, and finance. We are working for the parkway constructors, but it is the Windsor Essex Mobility Group (WEMG),

their partners, who will take over the operation once it’s substantially completed. If I had been more astute at the time, we would have pushed a little harder to be part of that relationship. Maybe we still can do that. We have a good rapport with the folks who will be managing it, and have put a lot of energy into the project. Landscapes change over time, and the first five years are incredibly essential for ecological restoration projects. There is a lot of applied research happening here because of the scale and complexity of the landscape; the management and operation of it will be complex as well. I would certainly like to see how it evolves, and would like to have a voice in how it’s managed. BIO/ EHA NAYLOR, OALA, A PARTNER AT DILLON CONSULTING LIMITED, IS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN LEAD FOR THE RT. HON. HERB GRAY PARKWAY PROJECT. KAARI KITAWI IS AN MLA STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO.

Notes

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Notes: A Miscellany of News and Events

photo contest Congratulations to the winners of the OALA Photo Contest. In the category of “Portal,” both first and second place were awarded to Matthew Mills, Tract Consulting Inc. There was a tie for third place, between Howard Nauboris, Cosburn Nauboris Ltd., and Mallory Thacker. In the category of “Wild,” Real Eguchi, Eguchi Associates Landscape Architects, was awarded first place. There was a tie for second place, between Alana de Haan and Stacy Geisberger.

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Alana de Haan tied for 2nd place in the “Wild” category.

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Alana de Haan

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The 2nd-place award in the “Portal” category went to Matthew Mills.

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Matthew Mills

new members The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects is proud to recognize and welcome the following new full members to the Association: Alex Bartlett

Daniel Jackson

Robert Boltman

Chenzi Li

Sheri Edwards

Andrew McNeill

Erin Eldridge

booklets

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Howard Nauboris tied for 3rd place in the “Portal” category.

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Howard Nauboris

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Mallory Thacker’s “Portal” image tied for 3rd place.

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Mallory Thacker

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The 1st-place winner in the “Portal” category was Matthew Mills.

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Matthew Mills

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Real Eguchi won 1st place in the “Wild” category.

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Real Eguchi

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Stacy Geisberger tied for 2nd place in the “Wild” category.

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Stacy Geisberger

A series of informative and useful booklets was recently published by Toronto Park People. Covering topics such as “how to host a campfire in the park” and “how to connect with nature in the park,” the booklets provide inspiration and detailed information to animate public space. For more information or for copies, visit www.parkpeople.ca.

events

Mark your calendars for the 2015 Grey to Green conference, being held in Toronto from June 1-2, 2015, hosted by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. The subtitle (and focus) for this year’s conference is “Exploring the Economics of Urban Agriculture and Resiliency.” For more information, visit www.greytogreenconference.org.

Notes

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09 08

events Within just three years, Toronto’s Gladstone Grow Op event has influenced the local landscape design and broader cultural community by presenting an intriguing annual event exploring new perspectives about landscape and place. Grow Op 2015, hosted at the Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto, will take place from April 16-26, 2015, and feature more than 25 jury-selected artworks shown within a lively program of related talks and performances. Through video, sound, performance, participatory experience, photography, and new media, Grow Op is an immersive exhibition that is provocative and boundary pushing. Embedded into the hotel and its environs, from adventitious niches to feature rooms, the artworks explore new territories and seek to uncover new ways of expression and meaning about cities, landscape design, and sustainability. For more information, visit www.gladstonehotel.com/spaces/ gladstone-grow-op/.

butterflies The Royal Ontario Museum recently published the fifth guide in its popular series of Field Guides. The ROM Field Guide to Butterflies of Ontario highlights 167 species of the most beloved insects recorded in Ontario. Written by renowned lepidopterists Peter W. Hall and Colin D. Jones and ROM entomology technicians Antonia Guidotti and Brad Hubley, the book features striking field photography, sections on the best places to observe butterflies in Ontario, and a list of plants used by butterflies and caterpillars. The book is available at stores and online.

green roofs Green Sky Toronto is a David Suzuki Foundation Homegrown National Park initiative to promote “off-the-ground growing” (green roofs and balcony/vertical gardens) in Toronto through cultivating a rich network of engaged individuals and organizations. For information on this new network, contact Ari Gross at abgrss@gmail.com.

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Grow Op 2015 will take place at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, in April

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Courtesy of Grow Op

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The ROM Field Guide to Butterflies of Ontario has just been published.

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Courtesy of the ROM

calendars Every year, the Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation publishes the popular Toronto Tree Portraits calendar, with photos and texts by various artists and writers, the proceeds of which support the foundation’s charitable work. For this year’s 10th-anniversary edition, select texts and images have been chosen from past years’ calendars and gathered together for a special retrospective edition. Copies are available at Book City stores, the Evergreen Brick Works Garden Market, and online. For more information, visit www.torontoparksandtrees.org.

in memoriam The OALA is saddened to announce the passing of Bruce Cudmore, OALA, a Full Member since 1978, who passed away on December 6, 2014, at the age of 65. Bruce passed away, peacefully at home, surrounded by family after a dignified and courageous battle with cancer. Bruce spent most of his professional life as a principal of EDA Collaborative Inc. along with partners and friends Patrick Li and Ted Muller. Bruce also became a Fellow of the CSLA in 2006. As an award-winning urban designer and landscape architect, he had completed a wide range of complex planning, design, and implementation projects for major private development and public realm projects across Canada and internationally. Bruce specialized in project management, facilitation of team process, client engagement, and overall design leadership. As a senior practitioner, Bruce regularly participated in municipal design awards juries and design review panels, and delivered papers at symposia, universities, and colleges. Throughout his career, Bruce had the pleasure of working with many outstanding professional colleagues and clients. Bruce’s love of life, sense of humour, and positive attitude will always be remembered. Condolences and memories may be forwarded through www.humphreymiles newbigging.com. As is the OALA’s custom, a book will be added to the OALA library and a memorial tree will be planted at the Guelph Arboretum Wall-Custance Memorial Forest in Bruce’s name.

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Artifact

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NYC’s Lowline

TEXT BY TAMAR PISTER

Delancey Street, a busy thoroughfare in New York City's Lower East Side, is perhaps best known for its mix of delis, discount bargain stores, and trendy retail shops. However, since 2011 the underground section of Delancey and Essex streets, home to the former Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal, has been gaining some heavy traction. James Ramsey, of RAAD Studio, and Dan Barasch, of Pop Tech, are the co-creators of the Lowline, a proposal to reclaim this space as an underground public park. The subterranean park would use solar technology and a series of fiber optics to illuminate the space as well as to allow vegetation to grow indoors. The project, first launched as a Kickstarter campaign in 2012, envisions the 60,000-square-foot space as a niche community hub in an area lacking major green space.

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Rendering of proposed Lowline for New York City

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Raad Studio

The Lowline has turned into an innovative community urban design project that is reimagining what constitutes open space as well as the use of social financing, corporate backing, and public grants to fund bottom-up public projects. In an age of rapid urban intensification, it seems that sky, as well as ground, is no longer being seen as the limiting factor.. BIO/ TAMAR PISTER IS A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

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