Image credit: Robert Burley, Williamson Park Ravine
Toronto’s system of lakefront and ravine landscapes is its most valuable resource, but despite a legacy of conservation through the efforts of the Toronto Region Conservation Authority and City initiatives like the Ravine Strategy, many gaps still exist, particularly through lower income neighbourhoods. Toronto’s network of diverse landscapes is almost, but not quite yet, a Metropolitan Park System like Boston’s or Chicago’s. This online GIS Story Map of Toronto’s Potential Landscape System will raise awareness of the value of its natural heritage, cultivate a community of advocates for the protection, restoration, and improvement of the lakefront and ravines and work toward the realization of the larger regional connected system.
Toronto has a legacy of strong community advocacy for conservation and re-naturalization, which have led to some of the unique places in our city such as the Leslie Spit, the Meadoway, the Toronto Islands, the re-naturalization of the Lower Don River, and the more recent efforts to protect ravine landscapes from infrastructure construction projects. This initiative follows in the footsteps of Anne Spirn’s West Philadelphia Project, engaging the creativity of students and communities to support the implementation of the City of Toronto’s Ravine Strategy, and to serve as an educational and advocacy tool to cultivate an informed public that will value and protect the city’s landscape system in perpetuity.