case study Humber Bay Park, located on Toronto’s western waterfront, presents an opportunity to explore this approach. Created through lake-filling in the 1960s and 1970s and opened in 1984, the park consists of two peninsulas extending into Lake Ontario around the mouth of Mimico Creek. Today, it faces mounting ecological and social pressures. Mimico Creek and the nearby Humber River are some of the most heavily urbanised watersheds in the city. They deposit large volumes of contaminated sediment from northern suburbs and farmland into the lake, while ongoing condominium development in the delta increases population density along the waterfront. Although Humber Bay Park provides valuable recreational space, it was never designed to respond to these changing environmental conditions. Our proposal is to bring the mouths of Mimico Creek and the Humber River into a combined deltaic landscape that unites industrial, ecological and social functions. Rather than sedimentation as a problem, the project reimagines it as a productive process capable of generating new landforms, habitats and public programs. Two additional peninsulas would frame the river mouth and capture excess sediment, while an expanded network of trails, observation areas, and recreational spaces would allow visitors to engage directly with the landscape’s continuing evolution.
At the core of the proposal is an on-site sediment processing system capable of handling up to 1,400 tonnes of material per month. Following dredging operations, sediments would be dewatered. They will then be mixed with compost and microbial amendments, which degrade, neutralise or remove immediate contaminants — bioremediation. The next step is to place this bioremediated material in phytoremediation cells, where grasses, shrubs, and trees further degrade contaminants over periods ranging from seven to thirty years. The resulting landscape with cells of soils at different stages of phytoremediation is a mosaic of evolving ecological conditions across the park. Once remediated, the sediment is a high-quality soil product suitable for shoreline stabilisation and wetland restoration. At the same time, the park would continue as a publicly accessible landscape. Phytoremediation cells can be meadows, picnic grounds, sports fields and habitat areas, changing over time as remediation cycles progress. Local communities will be participants in determining future uses in the park’s continual evolution. Our proposal redefines the urban park as both a recreational destination and a productive environmental infrastructure. By integrating sediment management with leisure, it demonstrates how industrial processes can support ecological restoration while creating exciting public spaces that evolve in response to environmental and social change.
above: Sediments trail in the Humber Bay, undated image. above right: Scale comparison of total sediments being dischanged from Humber River and Mimico Creek, as well as levels of contamination. right: Levels of urbanisation for each of the watersheds.
6,7 Solano, Laura. ‘Reconsidering the Underworld of Urban Soils’ Scenario Journal , Issue 03, 2013, scenariojournal.com/ article/reconsidering-the-underworld-of-urban- soils/. Accessed July 14, 2019.
Andrey Chernykh and Léonard Flot
40 on site review 49 :: shorelines
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