The spur on the construction of billions of dollar flood prevention projects in Toronto dates from 1954 to a devastating hurricane, but the planners say that its urgency was reinforced by the recent tragic floods in Texas.
The Hafenland project has partly reversed the consequence of industrialization by connecting the Ontario Lake to the Don River again, more than a century after the separation to create an industrial area.
Chris Glaisek, Chief Planning Officer of the municipal body Waterfront Toronto, said that the idea was “the country of the way it was implemented 100 years ago” with a focus on “flood protection and naturalization”.
The complex project – one of the largest in the history of Toronto with costs of 1.4 billion US dollars (1 billion US dollars) – encompassed the ditch of a river and the creation of two new river litings with moist areas and swamps to absorb excess water during extreme storms.
The mouth of the Don River was once the greatest freshwater march of the Great Lake system, a rich habitat and an important food resource for indigenous people before colonization.
But Toronto recorded industrial growth in the late 19th century, like many North American cities.
A large part of the swamp was drained and filled out to make room for a port industry, while the river was redirected to an artificial channel.
The harbor land never stayed as an industrial area and left a huge route from the eastern city center, and the Don River was polluted.
“It was really dirty, it was bad, it was terrible,” said the mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, recently.
– Hurricane Hazel –
Hurricane Hazel Toronto scored on October 15, 1954 after having hammered parts of the Caribbean and the East of the United States.
It killed 81 people in the greater Toronto area and served as a catalyst for the city to make the protection of flood seriously.
Hazel flooded the Humber River in West -Toronto, but Glaisek said: “At the time it was understood that the same amount of precipitation landed on the (eastern) Don, a comparable amount of damage would have caused damage.”
He called Hasel a first “impulse” to re -naturalize the harbor countries, but in the past two decades about the causal connection between climate change and extreme floods in the past two decades helped to advance the project.
– 'Duty bound' – –
In order to regain the harbor countries, Toronto worked with the landscape architecture company Michael van Valkenburgh Associates, which was based in the USA, who worked on Brooklyn Bridge Park and on the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Laura Solano, the senior designer, said that the project was “obliged to tackle catastrophic floods, but emphasized” much more “.
Since the area was reformed in such a way that they deal with the floods, parts for new apartments were declared safe – an urgent need in the expensive metropolis.
There is also a new park, hiking trails and people can be canoe or kayak through the rehabilitated Don.
Solano emphasized that Toronto's first decision to change the area agreed over time as North American cities “industrialize their waters … to increase their economic position”.
But now: “Every city wants to reclaim its water,” she told AFP.
The port lands “shows the world that it is possible to remedy the past and to transform deficit and binding industrial areas into living and breathing infrastructures.”
– 'The river will flood' – – –
As Glaisek described the project, he stood on a bench that would be under water during a large storm.
“Everything is planned so that it can flood, the water level can rise, the river can be about three, maybe four times wider than now, absorbs the entire water volume,” he said.
“If the storm event subsides, it shrinks again.”
It is a planning approach that realizes that “we see more and more of these events”.
“As in Texas, they see very tragic results when they have not really tried to plan nature,” he told AFP and referred to fall floods in early July, in which at least 135 people were killed.
He asked the planners to “reposition” their relationship with nature and the way of thinking, “people can) control everything”.
“Let us acknowledge that the river will flood. Let us build the room for it.”
BS/