The Ravine Reconnect project seeks to cultivate a broader community of advocacy and support for prioritizing and investing in Toronto’s ravine parks as the city’s most valuable natural infrastructure assets. With an online ArcGIS Story Map and physical Poster Map as advocacy tools, it creates a collective understanding of the ravines as part of a greater connected Metropolitan Parks System that is essential to sustaining the growing urban region. Through photography, storytelling, mapping, and research, it strives to build landscape literacy, to raise awareness and support for ongoing Ravine Strategy implementation work by the City of Toronto and TRCA, and to motivate, connect, and grow the network of community advocates and stewardship organizations, amplifying the impact of collective efforts. The project also engages students in a Multidisciplinary Urban Capstone Project at the University of Toronto School of Cities, to help build future capacity for ongoing advocacy and creative thinking to restore landscape connectivity across the growing city region.
