Leading With Landscape: Walking Tour of the Port Lands

Walk with two landscape architects from MVVA, the firm leading the planning and execution of the Port Lands project for almost 20 years.

Walking Tour of the Port Lands led by Herb Sweeney and Stefan Herda (MVVA).

Toronto’s waterfront transformation is one of the world’s most ambitious projects in landscape-led city building. Once an industrialized and ecologically degraded shoreline, the waterfront is now being reshaped through parks, flood-protection landforms, new infrastructure, and public spaces that integrate climate resilience, Indigenous reconciliation, design excellence, housing, and public life.

Leading with Landscape: Toronto’s Waterfront Transformation brings together local and international designers, scholars, policymakers, Indigenous leaders, and members of the public to examine how landscape architecture functions as critical infrastructure in Toronto’s waterfront renewal. The organizing structure of the conference (October 1-3, 2026) and exhibition follows the narrative landscape of the waterfront itself: a tapestry of transformational, regenerative, ecologically performative and culturally resonant landscapes. The exhibit, on display through November 2026 at One Spadina’s Larry Wayne Richards Gallery, showcases Toronto’s waterfront parks and public realm projects in thematic and typological clusters. It underscores the value of these investments to the public and serves as the intellectual foundation and prompt for the conference’s keynote conversations and panel discussions.

Leading with Landscape aims to enhance the legibility of landscape architecture’s role in shaping a more resilient, inclusive, and climate-adaptive form of city-building. As Toronto’s waterfront undergoes a profound transformation rooted in regeneration and reconciliation, this investigation examines the impact of this shift on Toronto’s emergence as a global 21st-century waterfront city.