The West Don Land Precinct Plan

The stream that once gurgled through cool forest and flashed with salmon is a storm sewer today. It is fed by filthy water flushed off the city’s pavements and by the effluent of a sewerage treatment plant. Much of what was once a lovely valley is now a transportation corridor and a repository for road salt, dirty snow and illegally dumped garbage. The river’s lower stretch is strait-jacketed in steel and concrete, while chain link fences discourse stroll along its degraded banks. Long gone is it natural mouth, an expensive delta that once teemed with life. Instead, a consorted right angle turn and tangle of expressways and railway tracks mark the rivers entrance into the lake.

-Michael Hough on Donlands in Cities and Natural Processes

Pan Am Games Village Site3.1 Introduction

The Pan American Games Village will be located on the West Don Lands near Downtown Toronto. The West Don Lands is an 80-acre area that runs from Parliament

Fig-7: Site Plan for Pan-American Games Village

Source: Google EarthStreet in the West to the Don River in the east and from King Street down to the Lakeshore rail corridor. The area is almost entirely owned by the provincial government. The area is within walking distance of downtown, is right next to the Distillery District and has good connections to the existing St. Lawrence and Corktown neighbourhoods. Suitable for 8,500 athletes, the proposed Pan- American Games Village will be one of the most important components of the entire event. Located within proximity to Toronto’s picturesque waterfront, iconic downtown and several major Games venues, the Village will incorporate an 18-acre park with a range of training facilities including a 50 mt. pool, 400 mt. track and running trail...

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Innovation

Limitations of the Present Precinct Plan:

Although the West Don Land Precinct Plan incorporates environmental sustainability parameters at various levels. Today there are communities and even cities being designed as carbon neutral, zero waste and powered completely by renewables. The present Plan fails to integrate and capitalize on these ideas. The Pan American Games Village at West Don Lands presents an opportunity to create a community that is carbon neutral, zero-waste and powered entirely by renewables.

Various examples like Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, Dongton in Shanghai etc are some of the examples where the idea of zero carbon development and carbon neutrality have been explored. Further sections of this research will explore such developments and will recommend strategies to replicate them in context of Pan-American Games Village.