Drew Adams / Fadi Masoud / Karen May / Denise Pinto / Jameson Skaife
University of Toronto
Reimagining urban agriculture in Toronto and beyond, the city’s 8,000+ acres of sprawling hydro corridors are envisioned as an abundant urban garden generating local, organic produce to feed a hungry metropolis.
Through a series of bureaucratic changes including exchanging land and air rights and forming FeedToronto, a new agency pursuing food production across the city, a realizable vision is presented. Key to the transformation is a typological approach responsive to diverse adjacencies. In this way, individual or community gardens intersect with residential areas; learning and community nodes integrate alongside schools or other institutions and so forth.
Ultimately, the significance of these corridors, a staple of the North American urban landscape, is embraced by a new landscape that embodies an equally compelling type of energy – food.
image: Denise Pinto
image: Drew Adams
image: Denise Pinto
image: whole Team
image: J. Skaife & F. Masoud
““Feed Toronto” is a visionary, remarkably mature, and refreshing student project. Instead of aesthetic experiments, the students choose to pursue a less spectacular but ambitious and generous task – to transform Toronto’s power line corridors into a viable sustainable farming enterprise capable of feeding a lot of its population.
Considering the lost connection between food and urbanism, the students proposed a very elaborate and detailed plan including personal and community gardens, learning and community nodes (integrated with schools and institutions), storage and distribution centres, and larger scale organic farms, each of which address the lofty goals of sustainability and public health in inspired ways. The project proposes highly practical implementation strategies including setting up an enterprise, zoning changes and securing the land.
“Feed Toronto” strives to make the city a much more sustainable, just, and healthy place and should be further developed to pursue public and institutional support. It is comforting to know that with such projects and goals the future of the city building professions (and urbanism) is well ensured.”