Strip mall parking lots have never been renowned for their ability to entice passers-by to gather and mingle. But that has been changing in parts of Toronto in the last few years thanks to a University of Guelph-led project called plazaPOPS.
The project has transformed barren parking lots in Toronto’s outer boroughs into inviting spaces where residents can sit and chat between shopping errands, or where entire neighbourhoods can gather for day-long community and cultural events.
This year, the first in a three-year grant-funded program of new plazaPOPS, saw a new expanded approach, with four parking lots throughout north Etobicoke repurposed into plazaPOPS spaces through the Albion Islington Square BIA, in partnership with the Rexdale Community Hub.
Each plazaPOPS site featured shaded benches and planters filled with trees and native perennial plants to attract pollinators, as well as murals, a stage and street art projects created by local artists.
A local church hosted a weekly free BBQ and concert at one of the sites, while several large community-led events were held throughout the summer, including carnivals with music, free food and local entertainers. The season ended with a fall harvest festival featuring music and Diwali performances.
Daniel Rotsztain, a U of G graduate whose master of landscape architecture thesis helped launch plazaPOPS, says wherever the team goes, they have insisted the local community lead the event planning.
“We want to create an authentic relationship with community members so that each installation expresses their local culture and their vision for the neighbourhood,” he said.
Enhance spaces that have no space for communing
A parking lot might seem an unusual locale for a neighbourhood party, but as landscape architecture professor Prof. Brendan Stewart explained, the point of plazaPOPS is to create a “main street” atmosphere in parts of the city that are dominated by large lanes of traffic. “We aim to provide a publicly accessible space where there are already lots of things happening and where people are spending time,” said Stewart, a professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development (SEDRD) within the Ontario Agricultural College. “The point is to enhance spaces that are already buzzing but have no space for communing.”
Many of the plazaPOPS have been in strip mall parking lots where locally owned businesses have agreed to give up parking spaces to create a community meeting place.
“We go to where we are invited. We want to support small business, not push anyone out,” Stewart said. “And we always go back to the idea that what’s good for the community tends to also be good for local businesses.”
Attendance at the community events was high this summer, with families and locals gathering. In place for three months, the installations were well used throughout the summer by people looking for a place to sit amid some greenery. “We had a local artist named Wong who spent several weeks on the site creating some of the pavement art and he is full of stories of how people used the space, how there were regulars who come every day,” said Rotsztain.
“It feels like it was very appreciated,” he added. “This part of the city often doesn’t get as much investment in the arts and culture realm as other areas, so it was a refreshing thing for them to have a public space.”
plazaPOPS recently incorporated as not-for-profit organization
With the aim of creating a sustainable, long-term initiative, plazaPOPS was recently incorporated as a not-for-profit organization with an executive and board of directors.
The project received three years of funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev) through the City of Toronto’s Main Street Recovery and Rebuild program, as well as a Partnership Development Grant. Next year will see an enhanced research project involving U of G sociologists Drs. Mervyn Horgan and Saara Liinamaa, SEDRD’s Dr. Karen Landman, University of Toronto economist Dr. Rafael Gomez and other collaborators. Local community members will be trained to participate in the research, which aims to understand the economic, social and environmental impact of the plazaPOPS project.
Along with community partners, the team will discuss sites for next year’s installation during the U of G community design studio course to be held in the winter 2023 semester, Stewart said.
“We are trying to create a vibrant city that everyone has access to and are really excited about how this project has grown.”
plazaPOPS, a collaborative research initiative that enhances the public realm through publicly accessible pop-up installations within the privately owned parking lots of commercial strip-malls, has received two significant new grants!
Led by Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor Brendan Stewart, in collaboration with MLA’18 graduate Daniel Rotsztain, the initiative has grown over the past three years. The seeds of the idea were developed in Daniel’s Master of Landscape Architecture thesis which led to a 2019 pilot in Wexford Heights, Scarborough — known as ‘WexPOPS’ — funded by Park People’s Public Space Incubator Grant (with financial support from Ken and Eti Greenberg and the Balsam Foundation), as well as the City of Toronto’s BIA Kickstarter grant, and supported by the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development.
Following the success of the pilot, staff from several divisions of the City of Toronto expressed interest in further development of the initiative, and in 2020, joined the research team in a successful Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant with a goal to develop a framework for the creation of a sustainable plazaPOPS program. The SSHRC research involved a working group of ten City staff from multiple divisions, who provided input and oversight through a series of virtual workshops in fall 2020 and spring 2021. The partnership led in July 2021 to a $1M grant from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev). Part of a larger ‘Main Street Recovery and Rebuild program’
that responds to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the FedDev project involves the planning, design, fabrication, installation, and programming of a number of new plazaPOPS installations from 2022 to 2024, with the design of an initial cluster in the north Etobicoke neighbourhood of Rexdale planned to open in July 2022.
A second SSHRC grant, providing three years of funding, was just announced, which will evaluate, document, and communicate the social and economic benefits of this new round of plazaPOPS pilots. To oversee the execution of the projects, plazaPOPS has incorporated as a not-for-profit, and has recruited a board of directors who bring a diversity of perspectives and experiences.
The new SSHRC will involve University of Guelph sociologists Mervyn Horgan and Saara Liinamaa, University of Toronto economist Rafael Gomez, as well as SEDRDs Karen Landman, among many other collaborators. The project will bring numerous opportunities to landscape architecture students within SEDRD, including research assistantships, and the possibility of integration into community design studios. As an initial output from the SSHRC funding, plazaPOPS is aiming to launch a refreshed website in fall 2022. See UofG news release for additional information.
If you’ve strolled Reynolds Walk on campus this September, you may have noticed a pop-up relaxation spot installed next to Branion Plaza. The WexPOPS installation is a portable public gathering place that was relocated to U of G from its initial installation earlier this summer in a strip mall parking lot in Scarborough, Ont.
WexPOPS is the pilot installation of the plazaPOPS Initiative – a design and research project led by master of landscape architecture grad Daniel Rotsztain and U of G landscape architecture Profs. Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman.
“Neighbourhood main streets need accessible gathering spaces to support community life and individual well-being,” says Stewart. “PlazaPOPS is testing a high-impact, low cost model to create such spaces in areas that need them most, all in partnership with local businesses who own the land.”
This summer’s POPS (privately owned public space) installation in Wexford Heights Plaza in Scarborough hosted musical acts, workshops and community events.
Designed with community in mind
WexPOPS features a series of modular planters, benches, tables and umbrellas, all clad in marine plywood and trimmed in cedar. The original installation created a comfortable and sheltered space that framed views of the strip mall.
Ben O’Hara, an MLA grad and sessional instructor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, managed the installation’s carpentry. All components were designed as modules that can be reconfigured to suit varying future site conditions and that can be packed flat for easy assembly and storage.
The original installation featured almost 500 plants, which were installed in colour-coded pails recycled from U of G: > red for native perennials > orange for annuals > yellow for edible plants
Most of the native plants were donated to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and planted in a stretch of the Meadoway — a utility corridor naturalization project that runs through Scarborough — this September. The annuals and edible plants were brought back to Guelph and incorporated into the installation on campus. A year of community consultation, planning and design
Retail strip mall plazas are everywhere in suburban North America, Stewart explains. While privately owned, he says, these plazas define main streets and serve as important settings of community life for millions of Canadians. Finding ways to humanize these areas can positively impact many people. The WexPOPS project was part of a second-year master of landscape architecture design studio this past winter. MLA students worked in teams to develop concepts that were presented and refined through workshops and open houses with Scarborough community members. WexPOPS resulted from more than a year of community consultation, planning and design work.
Stewart and Landman hope to roll out a broader plazaPOPS program across the province.
The reinstallation is supported by the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, the Sustainability Office and Physical Resources.Learn more about plazaPOPS at www.plazaPOPS.ca and on Instagram and Twitter @plaza_pops.
Turning a few spaces in a strip mall parking lot into a human-friendly oasis is the vision of the plazaPOPS concept.
Led by U of G School of Environmental Design and Rural Development professors Karen Landman and Brendan Stewart, both in the landscape architecture program, the concept is becoming reality in an iconic suburban Toronto strip mall and is getting a lot of media attention. Stewart and project co-lead Daniel Rotsztain, a landscape designer and artist, were on CBC Radio’sFresh Air over the weekend to discuss the concept.
Stewart told Global News Radio that suburban strip malls were primarily designed for the car, but there are many who walk or bus to the malls and contribute to their vibrancy.
“Our project is really about just trying to create better pedestrian facilities and amenities, so that people can take a load off and relax, maybe read a book, and most importantly meet their neighbours,” Stewart said.
Wexford Heights Plaza has undergone a plazaPOPS upgrade, with an enclosed space featuring 360 native plants, some edible, as well as tables and benches. The design was chosen from entries in a landscape architecture design contest at U of G.
Stewart’s research focuses on heritage conservation planning and design, cultural landscape theory, design history, and participatory design practices.
Landman’s research seeks to find ways to make urban agriculture more acceptable by assessing how to design for green space in urban landscapes.
