J.P. Moczulski for The Globe and Mail

West 8 and DTAH

Landscape architecture continues to play an outsize role in reshaping the city. The 1.7-kilometre remake of Queens Quay shows the potential and suggests why landscape matters so much. By condensing car traffic into two lanes, it makes room for a grand avenue that caters to people on streetcars, on bikes and on foot. Harbourfront and the nearby area have, in a stroke, been made vastly nicer places to walk. That’s because the team of Toronto’s DTAH and Dutch landscape architects West 8 got the details right. The trees have the soil and space they need to grow; their species have even been selected to survive the effects of global warming. The rebuild also adds quality materials, such as granite pavers and custom ipe wood benches; all this helps send a message that the public realm matters. Getting cyclists and pedestrians to co-exist may take a while – a video this summer captured a pedestrian throwing a punch at a scofflaw cyclist – but those battles will take place in a more civilized setting.