A Journey Through the Memoirs of a City: The Transformation of Toronto's Post-Industrial Waterfront into a "Memory Landscape"

While many waterfront projects in Toronto engage Lake Ontario as merely a leisure landscape, this thesis explores the city’s topographical edge as a cultural landscape capable of orienting Toronto’s citizens with a deeper awareness of the city’s past. Building on a study of Toronto’s urban development from its founding as a British settlement in 1793 to the present, this thesis pursues a “memory landscape” for the city of Toronto, asking: can a new landscape be created in Toronto that reflects and responds to the historic narratives of the city’s development? This thesis proposes that public landscapes can be invested with narratives of the past, while also welcoming the imprints of future narratives. A post-industrial site of the city’s reclaimed waterfront provides a venue for structuring a physical and topographical expression of urban memory.