Underground Landscape: the Urbanism and Infrastructure of Toronto’S Downtown Pedestrian Network
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Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology incorporating Trenchless Technology Research Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 22 (2007) 272–292 www.elsevier.com/locate/tust Underground landscape: The urbanism and infrastructure of Toronto’s downtown pedestrian network Pierre Be´langer * Centre for Landscape Research, University of Toronto, 230 College Street, Toronto, Canada M5T 1R2 Received 11 January 2006; received in revised form 1 July 2006; accepted 23 July 2006 Available online 2 October 2006 Abstract Beneath the surface of the streets of Toronto lies a sprawling labyrinth that serves over 100,000 people every day and countless tour- ists and visitors. One of the city’s most under-valued urban spaces, Toronto’s underground is remarkably the largest underground shop- ping complex in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records with more than 30 km of shopping tunnels and retail nodes. Since the 1970s, this underground system has grown and multiplied beneath the surface of the city with relatively little interven- tion from city planners. This article discusses the development pattern of the underground as a network and the future it holds as an important urban infrastructure. Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Underground; Pedestrian network; Urbanism; Infrastructure; Landscape 1. Introduction Edmonton Mall in Canada or the Mall of America in the United States.2 As a retail complex, the underground ‘‘A real challenge to urban design is to accept that infra- houses over a half million square meters of retail space structure is as important to the vitality and the experi- filled with 1200 different stores that employs about 2500 ence of the contemporary metropolis as the town hall people. Like a small city, the underground connects over and the square once was. As we move into the twenty 50 office towers and buildings, six major hotels, two major first century, one of the primary roles of urban design department stores, over 20 underground parking garages will be the reworking of movement corridors as new ves- and several major tourist destinations.3 As a transportation sels of collective life.’’1 infrastructure, the underground is surrounded by two sub- way lines, six stations, a regional transit terminal and a The Toronto underground is a vast urban environment national bus terminal (Fig. 1). In total, the underground that can be considered a city onto itself. As a pedestrian services a daytime population of over 100,000 people that network, the underground is approximately six blocks wide come from as far as Oshawa and London, some 150 km and 10 blocks long, a 3 km walk from one end to the other. away. The size of the underground rivals that of the West * Tel.: +1 647 833 0102; fax: +1 416 971 2094. 2 The underground is serviced with five independently operated rear- E-mail address: [email protected]. alley docking areas equipped with freight elevators that also provide drop- 1 Alex Wall, ‘‘Programming the Urban Surface’’, in James Corner, ed., off points for truck deliveries during off peak hours. Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture’’ 3 ‘‘Toronto’s Downtown Walkway: Path Facts’’, City of Toronto, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 246. www.city.toronto.on.ca/path/. 0886-7798/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tust.2006.07.005 P. Be´langer / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 22 (2007) 272–292 273 Fig. 1. Underground landscape: extents of the Toronto pedestrian network, 2005. 274 P. Be´langer / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 22 (2007) 272–292 2. Strata and structure tributors of pedestrian circulation. Like indoor streets, axes are lined with retail shops where vendors capitalize on the Though its structure appears haphazard, the configura- abundance of foot traffic to deliver convenience goods for tion of the Toronto underground is extremely logical. stop-and-go purchases such as newsstands and variety Comparable to the interior space of a suburban mall, the stores. Axes are not all situated underground, they some- overall spatial structure of the underground follows a series times re-surface at street grade or even at mezzanine levels of axes and nodes, surrounded by an underground subway to cross over streets to circumvent car traffic altogether. loop (Fig. 2). Major pedestrian movements are concen- The Toronto Skywalk is a clear example of this variation: trated along north-south and east-west axes that loosely a 1.2 km tunnel entirely located above ground that joins parallel the streets above. For example, the main direc- Union Station, the main regional transit terminal at the tional flow of the underground lies along two main south end to the Rogers Centre (formerly the Skydome), north-south axes that split off from the Union Station tran- a fifty thousand person stadium at the west end. The walk- sit terminal at the south end, towards the Eaton Centre way passes above York and Simcoe Streets, two of most shopping centre and the City Hall building at the north congested streets in the downtown area. end. Although they are circuitous, these axes follow the The structure of the underground is further amplified at directionality of major streets above ground. Two of the specific nodes in the network. These areas are created by the most heavily traveled axes are below Bay Street, the spine intersection of several axes and are most often found in the of the city’s financial district and Yonge Street, the longest middle of blocks where office towers and pedestrian corri- street in North America. Lateral axes have also formed in dors meet. Whereby axes function as conduits, nodes func- an east-west direction: one following King Street, the main tion as social condensers. Nowhere is this more evident entertainment district, another along Queen Street, the than in the shopping concourse of Toronto Dominion Cen- main shopping street, and another along Front Street, tre, one of the busiest nodes in the system. Its volume of the major event street. Axes function as collectors and dis- activity is primarily a function of its location: bordered Fig. 2. Underground matrix: the structure of axes and nodes of the underground network. P. Be´langer / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 22 (2007) 272–292 275 Fig. 3. Underground node: Axonometric view of the First Canadian Place concourse. by four major nodes (First Canadian Place, Commerce as a pattern, this network of axes, nodes, and diagonals Court, Royal Bank Plaza, Standard Life Centre), its shop- form a distinct matrix-like structure where the historic ping concourse is also located at the junction of two major street grid above simply dissolves.5 circulation axes flanked at each end by two subway stations (St. Andrew and King) making a major access point to 3. Developments and effects other areas of the network. The concourse also provides a clear understanding of the differences in physical shape The historical development of the Toronto underground and retail activity between axes and nodes. Whereas the is both planned and accidental. Though a planned network axes are long and linear, nodes are wide and expansive was officially proposed in the 1950s, several conditions (Fig. 3). In the case of the Toronto Dominion Centre, for were already in place by the turn of the century. The Eaton example, that configuration enables niche convenience such Centre was the catalyst: as Canada’s largest department as fashion shops and business services to line the concourse store, it had already linked its vast shopping block with axes while cafe´s and restaurants cluster around a central underground tunnels. By 1917 for example, five under- seating area where informal conferences can be held, away street tunnels connected its main store, catalogue store, from high-traffic tunnels.4 bargain annex and stable.6 With the construction of Union Ts or jogs in the network are merely shortcuts between blocks, diagonal passageways created to minimize the 5 Fulford, Accidental City: the transformation of Toronto (Toronto: amount of tunneling or bypass underground pipes while MacFarlane Walter and Ross, 1995), 46. Fulford’s differentiation of the shortening the distance between nodes. Barely recognizable pattern of the underground network from the aboveground street grid suggests the invalidity of cardinal points of references such as north, south, east and west that are currently used as main wayfinding elements 4 The functional characteristics of the network vary considerably as one in the network. moves north to south. In the southern part of the system, convenience 6 As indoor environments, arcades and passages may be considered the goods and personal and business services increase while in the northern typological antecedents to modern underground shopping concourses. For part of the underground fashion tends to be more dominant. In the centre example, where the Eaton Centre is now located, once lay the Toronto of the underground food retailing is more pronounced. It is clear that Arcade between 1883 and 1955. Indoor streets lined with shops of arcades these variations are a reflection of the types of different users in different and passages are not new nor are they particular to city of Toronto. Their parts of the [network]. See Norman Dudley, ‘‘An Overview of the retail roots lie deep in the eighteenth and nineteenth century with models such as Structure of Toronto’s Underground Pedestrian System’’, The Operational Le Passage Feydeau in Paris (1790), the Burlington Arcade in London Geographer Vol. 7 No. 2 (1989), 22–27. (1818) and the Galeria Vittorio Emmanuelle II in Milan (1867). 276 P. Be´langer / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 22 (2007) 272–292 Fig. 4. Chronological development of the Toronto underground network in the past century (1917, 1971, 1993, 2006).