Courtesy TheMarkNews.com

The potent combination of climate change and unrelenting urbanization is demanding that cities around the globe adopt new models for growth and infrastructure development. In light of this, Toronto has a simple decision to make: lead or fall behind.

With Toronto’s population expected to grow to 2.8 million by 2018, the city’s complex urban issues – including transit, congestion, energy consumption, waste and water management, and affordable housing – cannot be solved by relying on yesterday’s approaches, particularly the reliance on inexpensive suburban land, cheap fossil fuels, and access to the automobile.

It is imperative that Toronto adopt new approaches to urban planning and infrastructure development. At the municipal level this means, among other things, creating a culture of innovation that compels and empowers officials to implement new approaches to urban issues.

The initiative to revitalize Toronto’s waterfront is one example of next-generation city building that is striving to addresses the demands of climate change and urbanization. One of the largest urban redevelopment projects in North America, it is a 25-year, $34 billion dollar project that will transform 2,000 acres of brownfield lands into beautiful, sustainable, mixed-use communities and dynamic public spaces.

Waterfront Toronto, the agency mandated by the three levels of government to lead and implement revitalization, is utilizing this massive infrastructure project to deliver a unique development model. This includes not only excellence in urban design and land use planning and development, but the integration of best practices in sustainability and leading-edge technology.

Beyond the sheer size of the revitalization effort is the intended impact on the economy. At completion, the project will deliver 40,000 new residences, three million square feet of office space, and 40,000 new jobs – all within an intelligent community framework that empowers people to connect, communicate, innovate, and live in new, exciting ways.

Facilitating this quantum leap forward in connectivity is affordable, open-access, ultra-high-speed broadband technology, enabling access for everyone, everywhere – at speeds that are up to 1,000 times faster than today’s typical residential networks. With state-of-the-art infrastructure forming the backbone of the waterfront’s intelligent neighbourhoods, the open-access community-based network will enable innovation for businesses, residents, and visitors alike.

The vision is to create the city of the future and the intent is for the waterfront’s new information, communications, and technology infrastructure to attract the world’s leading organizations working in the knowledge and creative sectors. Already, the waterfront model has drawn Corus Entertainment, one of Canada’s largest media companies, Filmport, a major film studio, and George Brown College, which has selected the waterfront for its state-of-the-art Centre for Health Sciences campus.

The waterfront’s advanced technology infrastructure is intended not only to connect people and businesses but also to revolutionize its applications. Intelligent buildings in waterfront precincts will use broadband networks to remotely control and manage lighting, heating, and cooling systems. People will be empowered with real-time management of their personal carbon footprint. The overarching result will be lower energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and costs.

From the use of the latest, best technology to treat and reuse contaminated land to a comprehensive series of mandatory green building requirements, waterfront buildings and neighbourhoods will be among the greenest in the world. These buildings will incorporate ecologically friendly features, such as green roofs, and all will meet LEED Gold certification.

The waterfront neighbourhoods now under development are among the first in the world to receive LEED ND Gold Stage 1 certification. The Toronto waterfront project achieved this high level of certification by integrating the principles of smart growth, urbanism, and green buildings into community-wide design and development rather than traditional building-by building implementation. Since clean energy generation is another principle objective of waterfront revitalization, all buildings will also use district energy, which future-proofs the neighbourhood and allows for increasingly new and efficient energy sources to be used as they become viable.

Toronto’s waterfront revitalization project aims to be a world leader in creating extraordinary, environmentally friendly waterfront communities – and that aspiration is already attracting global attention. For instance, the Lower Don Lands area on the waterfront, which will be developed into one of the world’s first carbon neutral neighbourhoods, has been selected by U.S. President Bill Clinton's Climate Initiative and the U.S. Green Building Council as a founding project in a global program to demonstrate sustainable urban growth models. By naturalizing and re-routing the mouth of the Don River, the project will transform these largely underutilized industrial lands into beautiful new parks and communities. The plans include a light rail transit system for efficient transportation in the area, solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal heating, and the ability to harvest rainwater from building roofs to feed into the wetlands.

Across the waterfront, conventional infrastructure is being re-imagined and re-purposed to enhance the quality and liveability of surrounding communities while at the same time addressing Waterfront Toronto’s sustainability agenda. Sherbourne Park will inventively serve double duty as both iconic public space and water treatment facility. Storm water is collected and conveyed to a UV purification facility housed beneath the park’s pavilion. After the UV treatment is complete, the water will cascade into a channel through one of three dramatic water sculptures in the park. After traveling the full length of the channel, which includes a bio-filtration bed, clean water will be discharged into Lake Ontario – innovation meets sustainability, design, and function.

The 2010 municipal election is a time for bold leadership; a time to seize the opportunity for Toronto to lead again in the area of forward-thinking city planning. The costs of complacency – doing things the same old way at city hall – patently outweigh the risks of embracing new solutions. It is time for out-of-the-box thinking on new urban planning and infrastructure development. The innovative approaches to intelligent city building underway on our waterfront can serve as a roadmap for the entire city.

The Mark News is Canada’s online forum for opinion and analysis.