By 11 am, our ceiling was leaking. And just as we finished shuffling desks to avoid the stream of water, the power went out. Even as I write from a darkened, empty office, I feel reasonably lucky. Across Toronto, the July 16 storm brought calamitous flooding, shutting down the waterlogged Union Station and transforming stretches of the Don Valley Parkway and Lake Shore Boulevard into brown, turgid rivers. As countless homes, businesses and offices struggle to contain the water, tens of thousands more remain without power. In the days to come, the human and economic tolls will be tallied, culminating in a staggering dollar figure that expresses the damage to public health and infrastructure, as well as the countless hours of lost productivity. And then it’ll happen again.

As the consequences of global warming are increasingly pronounced, disruptions to daily life are felt across the planet. And while Toronto’s geography and temperate climate makes for a comparatively climate resilient habitat, extreme weather events are already becoming more common. In 2013, a similar deluge caused almost a billion dollars in damages — a figure that could imminently be surpassed by today’s flood. Then, in 2018, a late summer storm dumped a month’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, leaving wayward transit riders wading to shore as backed up sewage filled the streets. Yet, this type of devastation is far from inevitable.

Beyond the urgent and obvious global imperative to reduce atmospheric carbon, climate resilient landscapes and infrastructures are key to containing flood water and runoff. Following Toronto’s 2013 flood, all three levels of government prioritized efforts to mitigate future damage, accelerating the landmark Port Lands revitalization, which is now transforming the eastern waterfront into a more livable, economically thriving, and flood-resistant landscape. In addition to unlocking new development land (and public tax revenue), the project is replacing some 80 hectares of paved industrial land with lush, water-absorbing greenery. The keystone of the plan is the re-naturalization of the mouth of Don River, transforming a concrete channel into a landmark destination — and a giant urban sponge.

But are we learning our lesson? Although Toronto has made headway in building climate-resilient infrastructures, progress has continually been undercut. Small improvements like the basement flooding protection program — which improved drainage infrastructure and introduced incentives to reduce flood risk — are mirrored by instances of stalled progress. In 2017, for example, then-Mayor John Tory shut down a proposed stormwater surcharge, which would have incentivized property owners to reduce flood risk by planting trees and vegetation. More alarmingly, however, the Ontario government is actively taking steps in the opposite direction.

Much of Toronto’s natural climate resilience is a product of the woods and wetlands that surround the densely populated Golden Horseshoe, which plays a vital role in absorbing excess water and runoff during floods. Protecting the greenery was part of the rationale for the creation of the Greenbelt in 2005, which has helped maintain the ecological system — connected to the city’s river valleys and ravines — that bolsters North America’s fastest-growing urban region. In recent years, however, the provincial government has defunded conservation authorities and repeatedly moved to open the Greenbelt for development, which would pave over natural landscapes with low-density, car-dominated urban sprawl.

It’s not the only mistake. As Toronto’s Lake Shore Boulevard was reduced to a slow-draining swamp, the folly of allowing a $600-million, publicly subsidized underground parking garage at neighbouring Ontario Place is excruciatingly apparent. Beyond the broader controversy of transforming a public park into a private spa, building a publicly funded garage — beneath a lake — in an increasingly flood-prone urban landscape makes for an astonishingly poor investment. For all the wreckage, the July 16 storm offers a wake up call — and a simple and valuable heuristic to shape decision-making about public infrastructure at all scales. What will it look like after a 100-year flood? And what happens when that flood takes place every five or 10 years instead? How much taxpayer money will it all take to fix?

These questions ought to be at the heart of every decision made — and not just by the Ontario government. While ongoing controversies surrounding the erosion of the Greenbelt, the privatization of Ontario Place and the construction of Highway 413 make the provincial government an obvious locus of criticism, climate resilience — and acute flood risk — applies at every turn. East of Ontario Place, for example, a long-standing debate about whether to expand runways at Billy Bishop Airport to allow jets continues to make headlines. The airport, which sits in the middle of a lake, closed its pedestrian tunnel due to heavy rainfall. Pearson remains open.

There’s plenty we shouldn’t be doing, but there’s plenty more that we should. Viewed through the lens of climate and flood risk, efforts to limit the physical footprint of the built environment by investing in dense, transit-friendly cities — framed by absorbent green infrastructure — are increasingly urgent. And for every civic boondoggle, a transformative urban project remains on the sidelines: Let’s forget the underground parking garage at Ontario Place and accelerate the proposed transformation of University Avenue into a lush, welcoming and water-absorbing linear park.

There are lessons from around the world to help us take the next steps. In China and beyond, designers Turenscape have championed the “sponge city” concept, reviving former industrial sites into sociable, economically thriving, and flood-resistant landscapes. From Beijing to Bangladesh, the public spaces they create are beautiful — and invariably designed to save public money. In Seattle, water-absorbent thickets of greenery and gravel line public sidewalks, creating lush and resilient neighbourhoods while channelling runoff away from homes. Across Mexico, conservation-driven public policy is driving the design of innovative public parks where water management mitigates flood risk while using runoff to support greenery and serve public toilets.

Closer to home, Toronto’s own Gh3* have completed a series of innovative infrastructure projects in Edmonton — facilitated by the city’s innovative procurement culture. Even seemingly prosaic public facilities like bus garages and water treatment plants are deftly incorporated into the landscape, and framed by water-absorbing plants. At the firm’s recently completed Windermere Fire Station, for example, rainwater and runoff is channelled into a bioswale, safely collecting runoff while filtering out debris and pollution. Down the highway in Detroit, landscape virtuoso Julie Bargmann has transformed a parking lot into a dense and porous thicket of native greenery, absorbing rainwater and melted snow.

For all that, the most important lesson comes from our own history. After Hurricane Hazel devastated the city in 1954, development in Toronto’s ravines and floodplains was halted and reversed. Land was expropriated and turned into parkland, creating many of today’s beloved ravines. Retrospectively, such moves seem uncharacteristically radical. Yet, their obvious logic was borne out by 70 years of floods. In 2024, the time has come for another bold and transformative urban paradigm. The rain will come again. The damage doesn’t have to.

***

Want to learn more about sustainable design? On October 24 and 25, Azure’s inaugural Human/Nature conference will bring together thought leaders from across Canada and around the world to share proven strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article noted that Billy Bishop Airport was “closed due to flooding.” This was inaccurate. The airport remained open throughout July 16, and only the pedestrian tunnel was closed.

Lead image: University Avenue rendering by Public Work.