As Toronto continues to make progress on the Gardiner Expressway’s rehabilitation, there is a groundswell of support for retrofitting the under-highway as well—including spaces like the Bentway that transform overlooked infrastructure into vital public space. While transformation of the Gardiner’s understory is a long-term ambition, it’s important to reflect on the concept itself, and where that concept has already found success.
Miami’s The Underline is somewhat of a “sister project” to The Bentway, an ongoing effort to reimagine the 10-mile stretch of land beneath the city’s elevated Metrorail into a network of parks, trails, flexible programs, and public spaces.
The Bentway takes a cue from that, and last week the Gardiner Corridor Alliance (GCA) hosted an event pulling the curtain back on The Underline — and what makes it tick. Held on Wednesday, September 10, the event featured Isabel Castilla, Associate Partner at Field Operations, and Patrice Gillespie Smith, President and COO of Friends of The Underline, and was moderated by Robert McKaye, Senior Manager Planning & Design of The Bentway Conservancy.
From left to right: Patrice Gillespie Smith and Isabel Castilla storeys.com
As Miami copes with the adverse effects of rapid urbanization, Gillespie Smith points at The Underline as a way to return the city to some semblance of its natural roots.
“We knew that this could be something much better. It was a place where illegal dumping was taking place, where people were taking their dogs and not cleaning up after them — just an undesirable place,” she explained. “And we knew we could rewild it. By the time The Underline is finished — which is going to be 10 miles, finished by June of next year — we will have planted more than 500,000 trees and native plants. You may not see the Black Panther, but you will see birds, bees, and butterflies that were there 30 years ago.”
The Underline / © Sam Oberter
Gillespie Smith added that though the first phases of The Underline have only been open for four years, it’s accrued some 2.2 million visitors, and hosted 200 free programs every year, engaging more than 40,000 participants.
By the numbers, The Underline project is a marked success, but Castilla impresses it wasn’t — and isn’t — without skeptics.
“There were only a few of us that were actually supporting the project — we saw the mission for the project. And there were many tools that we used. The first one was to have extremely fun community engagement meetings to really build the brand, to have these meetings be almost a celebration, so people actually came. And then when they came, they actually listened. And then they started becoming excited,” Castilla said.
“Then we had the skeptics within the government. And then they were just the bigger skeptics that said, Fine, you can build this. But who’s ever going to want to go there? Why are you building a stage underneath active train tracks? It’s going to be loud. So there were moments where we would take over the corridor and do pop ups to start demonstrating that it could be attractive.”
Long story short, there are plenty of lessons to take away from The Underline as Toronto susses out the full potential of The Bentway. Both were — and still are — under-utilized spaces itching to be made into something that serves the public better.
Of course, having the right people on the job helps. And thankfully — with the collective of developers, designers, planners, engineers, and other urban changemakers that make up the Gardiner Corridor Alliance — Toronto does.
Gardiner Corridor Alliance
The Bentway / thebentway.ca
The Gardiner Corridor Alliance (GCA) is an emerging group of developers, designers, planners, and other professionals working to transform the 7km stretch of land along and adjacent to the elevated Gardiner Expressway. To learn more about the GCA or inquire about joining, contact Kate Wivell, Fundraising & Partnerships Manager, at kwivell@thebentway.ca.
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This article was produced in partnership with STOREYS Custom Studio.