Corktown Common

Corktown Common opened in 2013 as part of the broader West Don Lands redevelopment ahead of the 2015 Pan American Games, built on land immediately adjacent to the Don River in an area long constrained by flood risk. Rather than treating flood protection and public parkland as separate, competing land uses, designers built the two together on the same site.

Flood infrastructure disguised as a hill

The park's rolling, elevated terrain, rising up to about 8 metres above the surrounding grade at its highest point, is in fact an engineered flood-protection berm, designed to shield the surrounding West Don Lands development from Don River flooding while functioning day-to-day as an ordinary public park with sweeping downtown skyline views from its hilltop. That integration of hard infrastructure with genuinely usable green space made Corktown Common a frequently cited example of designing flood protection that doesn't read as flood protection to the people using it.

Sources

• Waterfront Toronto — Corktown Common
• Wikipedia — Corktown Common

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