Toronto’s waterfront transformation is one of the world’s most ambitious experiments in landscape-led city building. Once an industrialized and ecologically degraded shoreline, the waterfront is now being reshaped through parks, flood-protection landforms and public spaces that integrate climate resilience, Indigenous reconciliation, design excellence, housing, and public life. Leading with Landscape: Toronto’s Waterfront Transformation convenes local and international designers, scholars, policymakers, Indigenous leaders and members of the public to critically examine how landscape architecture has functioned as critical urban infrastructure in Toronto’s waterfront renewal.

The organizing structure of the conference and exhibition follows the narrative landscape of the waterfront itself: a tapestry of transformational, regenerative, and socio-culturally resonant landscapes. The exhibition showcases Toronto’s waterfront parks and public realm projects in thematic and typological clusters, communicating the value of these investments to the public. The exhibit, on display through November 2026 at One Spadina’s Larry Wayne Richards Gallery, features drawings, models, artifacts, maps, archival materials, policy documents and photographs generated through a rigorous design-based investigation of the waterfront. It serves as the intellectual foundation and prompt for the conference’s keynote conversations and panel discussions. 

Leading with Landscape seeks to enhance the legibility of landscape architecture’s role in fostering local civic, cultural, economic and ecological value while contributing to an international dialogue on resilient, inclusive and climate-adaptive city-building. As Toronto’s waterfront undergoes a profound transformation rooted in regeneration and reconciliation, this investigation examines the implications of this shift for Toronto’s emergence as a global 21st-century waterfront city.