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plazaPOPS Installation Adds a Pop of Colour to Reynolds Walk

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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.



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2019: WexPOPS

When parks pop-up, butterflies pop in

By Jake Tobin Garrett

When parks pop-up, butterflies pop in
The coolest thing happened in the middle of a Toronto strip mall parking lot along Lawrence West in Scarborough last month: a monarch butterfly came to visit.

No, it wasn’t looking for lunch at The Wexford Restaurant (though I hear it’s good)–the butterfly was attracted by over 360 native pollinator plants that were part of a pop-up park installation called WexPOPS.

WexPOPS, led by artist and Master of Landscape Architecture graduate Daniel Rotsztain and University of Guelph professor Brendan Stewart, was intended as a project to support community-use and social gathering. It was one of five projects funded through Park People’s Public Space Incubator program in 2018.

When parks pop-up, butterflies pop in
But the design also included lots of native plants, supplied by Native Plants in Claremont, thanks to the collaborative design process between local community members and University of Guelph landscape architecture students.

“We selected a wide variety of native perennial wildflowers and meadow grasses — 29 species in all — and we certainly hoped to attract bees and butterflies and other insects, but we’ve been completely amazed at the results,” Brendan Stewart said.

“It’s been quite dramatic to watch the monarch’s progress from larva to adult butterflies, and to see how much milkweed they eat in the process. The garden is constantly buzzing and visitors tend to be surprised and delighted to experience this much life in the middle of a huge parking lot.”

It’s a striking example of how small pin-pricks of nature in an otherwise sea of pavement — even in temporary spaces — can help support biodiversity and threatened species, like pollinators.

Emerging research backs this up, too. A recent study explored the potential of temporary pop-up parks (cutely acronymed PUPS) to support greater species diversity.

When parks pop-up, butterflies pop in
Large scale green spaces are critical, but the study author points to research showing that the quality and density of ground-level plants — like the native plants populating WexPOPS — can have a greater degree of influence on species diversity than factors in larger green When parks pop-up, butterflies pop in
spaces, like tree density.

The conclusion: don’t discount the importance of small spaces.

This should come as welcome news to Canadian cities who are hard at work trying to restore natural habitat lost to urbanization and increase biodiversity. Supporting biodiversity was a key trend we found in our 2019 Canadian City Parks Report–which surveyed 23 cities–released in June.

In particular, Toronto is doing some creative work with a newly approved Pollinator Strategy. The City just launched its first PollinateTO community grants, which fund small-scale pollinator gardens cultivated by local residents. As WexPOPS shows, these initiatives can have quite positive impacts, when using the right native plant mixtures for local species.
Vancouver is also working to create small pollinator gardens in the city. A pop-up pollinator park planted at 5th and Vine in 2016 on a small 0.3 acre site packed in 1,500 community- planted pollinator plants. A citizen science survey observed the second highest number of pollinator species within the garden compared to other observed park sites.
Red Deer has designated four official pollinator parks where city staff handpick weeds and pesticide use is banned. And Hamilton’s Pipeline Trail features small pollinator gardens along its route tended by local community members.

You can read more about how cities across Canada are supporting pollinators and urban biodiversity by reading about it in our Canadian City Parks Report.

Back in Scarborough, the team behind WexPOPS will be taking down the pop-up near the end of August, meaning the parking spaces it occupies will go back to housing cars rather than plants and people.

A critical question in thinking about the viability and importance of pop-up parks in contributing to urban biodiversity is what happens after the pop-up pops down?

When parks pop-up, butterflies pop in
For the team behind WexPOPS that question was something they thought of from the very beginning. The plants will be transported to a local hydro corridor, which is undergoing its own transformation as a 16km linear park and trail called The Meadoway, where they will be re-planted.

This is a great solution, but there’s also an opportunity here to think about how these pop- up park projects can literally seed change in their own location.

For example, the plants repurposed within the stripmall parking lot itself. It’s these hardscape urban landscapes that require the most attention and care if we are to truly re- green our city, restoring some of the natural habitat we stole when we paved it over.

Some may look at micro-gardens like WexPOPS sitting in the middle of a parking lot and wonder: what good is this actually doing?

But as WexPOPS shows, if you build it butterflies will come.


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2019: WexPOPS

Measuring success in a suburban oasis: U of T students team up with neighbourhood groups to address urban challenges

By Romi Levine

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If you happen to be near Warden and Lawrence Avenues in Scarborough this summer, you’ll likely notice an unusual sight at one the many strip malls that populate the area.

Wexford Heights Plaza is a one-storey stretch of local businesses – including a barber, a Syrian pastry shop and a 61-year-old family restaurant – bordered entirely by a parking lot. But from July 5 to Aug. 18, a portion of the lot has been transformed into a makeshift suburban oasis, complete with comfortable seating, interactive art and hundreds of potted plants.

The installation is called WexPOPS – a temporary, collaborative project that aims to create a place where community members can gather, meet each other and support local businesses.

WexPOPS serves as a pilot project that, if successful, can be replicated in different ways in other business improvement areas (BIAs) in Toronto and elsewhere.

But to prove the project is worthy of future funding means having the data to back up its success. It requires a toolbox of strategies that will help organizers measure the impact of the project on the local community and businesses. That task was given to a group of University of Toronto students.

The U of T students were part of the Rotman CityLab Fellowship, a year-long elective course that pairs MBA students from the Rotman School of Management with urban planning and industrial relations master’s students. Together, they team up with BIAs and community groups, using their expertise to help address issues faced by neighbourhoods across the GTA.

“I was really excited about working with different people from different parts of the university and the tangibility of the project seemed really cool,” says Fifile Nguyen, who graduated this spring from the Rotman MBA program.  

“I was also compelled because my parents, for several decades, were small business owners so I was really excited to be able to do something related to the work I had watched them do as I grew up.”

The WexPOPS installation was created by a group out of the University of Guelph called plazaPOPS, led by Daniel Rotsztain, a recent graduate of Guelph’s master of landscape architecture program, and his faculty advisers Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman. The project originated from Rotsztain’s thesis, which was realized when the team secured funding through a number of community grant programs to create its first pop-up installation in Wexford Heights Plaza.

PlazaPOPS was also inspired by the work of Rafael Gomez, a U of T associate professor and director of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, and his work on small businesses and BIAs, which he wrote about in his book Small Business and the City. Gomez is also the co-founder of the CityLab course.

“When we reached out, Rafael was very generous with his time and knowledge, and suggested and facilitated the connection with CityLab,” Stewart says.

Gomez developed the CityLab course alongside Neel Joshi, director of Rotman’s office of student engagement. 

Joshi and Gomez met by chance over a decade ago in Wexford Heights Plaza where Gomez was hosting a pop-up of his own – occupying a storefront where he ran exhibits that celebrated the history and culture of the Scarborough neighbourhood.

The duo reconnected a few years later when they both coincidentally ended up working at Rotman, and decided to identify an experiential learning opportunity that could benefit both students and BIAs.

“The nature of urban problems is complex and multidisciplinary and at a local level, to assemble that kind of diversity of talent would be really expensive if these organizations were trying to do it on their own,” says Gomez. “We can come in with solutions to a challenging problem that requires all of our insights and training and academic knowledge.”

Since its inception, CityLab has placed students in BIAs across the city, working on projects that included navigating the tensions between long-standing and new businesses in a gentrifying neighbourhood, assisting with entrepreneurship programs in Scadding Court, and working with the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas to explore how big infrastructure projects are affecting small businesses.

For the plazaPOPS partnership, the U of T students provided the team with options for evaluating the strip-mall installation – including how WexPOPS affects the availability of parking, its economic impact on local businesses and the level of community engagement, says Stewart.

“They helped us work through the most efficient research data collection strategies that we can utilize in order to measure the performance of the installation,” he says.

“We’re implementing their recommendations, pretty much as we speak.”

Building the right metrics involved a great deal of research and community consultation. Students read up on evaluation methods used by other City of Toronto pilot projects and tapped into their combined academic knowledge of design thinking and urban planning. The students also interviewed local businesses and community members to gain insight into what they felt would make WexPOPS a success.

“[Business owners] were telling us that they were really excited about being the catalyst for people to meet each other,” says Nguyen. The students also discovered that community members felt it was important to raise the profile of the neighbourhood, telling them, “the only time our neighbourhood is ever in the news is when something bad happens … but really there is so much more vibrancy to our neighbourhood than that.”

Similarly, U of T students were keen to turn the spotlight on Scarborough – an area of Toronto that’s often overlooked when it comes to inventive design and planning.

“When it comes to certain planning elements, suburbs are not looked at the same way as the downtown core, especially with regards to investment and doing things that are more innovative,” says Igor Samardzic, who graduated with a master’s in urban planning from the Faculty of Arts & Science.

In neighbourhoods that are less dense than downtown Toronto, strip malls play a much more important role in fostering a sense of community, says Michael Guberman, a CityLab student and recent MBA graduate.
“What they are lacking is the warmth and gathering spaces that you would see in more of an urban landscape,” Guberman says.

Projects like WexPOPS can help those suburban spaces become more of a community hub, he says. “Using what they have already, building on it and getting the community buy-in is important to see that this type of infrastructure is not forgotten and not thought of as a waste of space.”

Stewart says plazaPOPS is currently in talks with a number of potential partners as they determine how the project will evolve beyond the Wexford pilot. Regardless of the outcome, the data collected from WexPOPS with the metrics designed by U of T students will play an important role in defining its future.

“The data and the feedback on how it’s received is really critical to being able to scale this up,” says Stewart.

This September, the CityLab fellowship will enter its fourth year, offering a new cohort of students the opportunity to make their mark on community projects across the city.


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2019: WexPOPS

Wexford Heights BIA partners with plazaPOPS to create urban oasis

By Andrew Seale

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In the middle of Scarborough’s Wexford Plaza parking lot, an oasis has sprouted. Butterflies and bees encircle wildflowers, edibles and meadow grass, while people from the community chatter on benches shaded by umbrellas, framed in by a mural from local artist Echo Railton.

It’s called WexPOPs, and it’s a demonstration of how Toronto’s vibrant inner suburban strip malls, those privately-owned public spaces (POPS), can be turned into ‘pop-up’ community gathering places.

“It’s interesting (seeing) the contrast of a pretty intense nature experience in the middle of a parking lot,” says Brendan Stewart, one of the collaborators on the WexPOPs project and an assistant professor at University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Design and Rural Development.

The project – a collaboration with local stakeholders, the Wexford Heights BIA, Scarborough Arts, and the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, is supported by grants from the BIA Innovation Fund and Park People’s Public Space Incubator grant.

It’s part of the wider plazaPOPS project, spun out of Daniel Rotsztain, the Urban Geographer and recent University of Guelph Masters of Landscape Architecture (MLA) graduate’s thesis research.

“The whole idea of the project is recognizing the richness and diversity of Toronto’s strip malls as already being the site of community gathering,” explains Rotsztain. “Most strip malls are privately-owned even though they’re already used as public spaces… the pilot is testing the ability to activate (these) spaces.”

The pop-up area combines shaded seating, nearly 500 plants – ranging from herbs and vegetables to local species, and an event area with a small stage and mural. It occupies 10 parking spaces, a key factor given that it required buy-in from the plaza’s owner Tony Kiriakou.

“The Kiriakou family is very community-minded, they’re entrepreneurs and business owners,” says Rotsztain. “Ten years ago if you were to come up to property owners and say we’re going to take parking spots for a public space, they wouldn’t give you the time of day but these are entrepreneurs and business people who see that investment in the public realm and these spaces are good for business.”

The Wexford Heights BIA has helped drive the project since Rotsztain and co. first pitched the idea. Linda Raeside, the BIA’s executive director, says the pop-up, which is only in place for six weeks from July through to mid-August, has already been well-used. She’s looking for ways to re-introduce it next season.

“Because of its modular form it can be adjusted and made smaller,” she says. “We’re thinking about even bringing it back for events like the Taste of Lawrence… you’ve got an oasis basically in an urban area.”

Both the team behind plazaPOPS and Raeside say it’s not a stretch to see these types of pop-ups in other BIAs. That is, after all, the point of WexPOPS, to pilot a wider sweeping solution to public community spaces in urban areas. When the spot is decommissioned in August, the team plans to work through an extensive exit report to measure the impact from local economic development straight through to social benefits.

But Rotsztain says it’s already clear BIAs are a key part of the equation. “This kind of project requires a third party between the residents and the business owners and that apparatus already exists,” says the Urban Geographer.

“Residents have a desire to bring better streetscapes and the BIA has a role in that – one of the theses of the project is that city- building initiatives and the goals of small businesses are one and the same, so how can we overlap those so everyone benefits?”

WexPOPS seems like a good place to start.


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2019: WexPOPS

WexPOPS, a Scarborough ‘oasis,’ aims to prove what plaza spaces can be

By Mike Adler

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WexPOPS is a green “oasis” where you wouldn’t expect one.

Now, its creators want to see what you do there.
Part of the parking lot at Wexford Heights Plaza is now surrounded by 300 planters filled with vegetables and herbs, which will be given away — and wildflowers and grasses, which will grow in a nearby hydro field.

From now through Aug. 18, though, this experiment near a corner of Lawrence and Warden avenues is a place to relax in, and see performances by local musicians and artists.
As vans and taxis circled the installation on July 4, volunteers were putting WexPOPS together in time for this weekend’s Taste of Lawrence festival.

It will be cool to see how it gets used, said Chelsea Braun, who grew up near the plaza and helped fill in a mural by local artist Echo Railton as backdrop for a small wooden stage.

Twenty University of Guelph master of landscape architecture students worked on the project, sharing six designs which were voted on. “None of them were perfectly buildable,” Prof. Brendan Stewart said during the construction.

The result, really a hybrid, aims to prove that a POPS — a priviately-owned public space — in suburban plazas can be versatile and inviting.
People, particularly owners of plaza businesses, can see its potential, said Minaz Asani-Kanji, outreach manager for Park People, a nonprofit group that found funds for WexPOPS.

“It needs to bring business in. If they see it’s a money-maker, then I think they would be open to doing this,” added Asani-Kanji, a Scarborough resident on the project steering committee.


Local companies cut signs for WexPOPS and donated soil. The planters were old recycling bins that the university was throwing out.

On July 28 and Aug. 17, Scarborough Arts has booked performers for WexPOPS — and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority will lead walks to the emerging Meadoway linear park nearby.

The project team has hired eight young people to care for the plants and the rest of the installation.

Will parts of it be stolen?

Daniel Rotsztain, one of the project’s leaders, hopes that the obvious effort behind WexPOPS will make thieves think twice. But that, too, is part of the experiment.

Studying public life at the plaza, Rotsztain noticed many people come and “hang out in their cars,” never stepping outside.

This summer, that could change.

“The question is, will people get out of their cars to sit here?” Rotsztain asked.


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2019: WexPOPS

Pop-up garden in Toronto has deep roots in Guelph

The wexPOPS space opened on Jul3, 2019. Organizers hope it will encourage people to come together in otherwise drab spaces. – Daniel Rotsztain, provided

By Jonathan Duncan

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“Let’s go hang out in the strip mall parking lot” is probably something you’ve never wanted to say, but that may soon change.

The plazaPOPS project has opened it’s first garden space in Scarborough.

The pop-up parks will feature a variety of plant life, and offer benches and umbrellas to encourage people to embrace the space. It started in the mind of Daniel Rotsztain, with his 2017 masters of landscape architecture thesis at the University of Guelph.

The thesis looked at “pragmatic ways to enhance the public realm for pedestrians,” says Rotsztain.

With the help of U of G professor Brendan Stewart, they concluded there should be a pilot project to gauge the worth of community gathering spaces in private strip-mall parking lots.

“In Guelph, strip malls are kind of dismissed because they’re ugly in architecture, but they’re very vibrant places,” says Rotsztain. “So it was figuring out a way to enhance these places, without erasing the communities that already existed.”

Stewart and Rotsztain say they’ve been working with dozens of people since receiving funding in April 2018.

University of Guelph professor Karen Landman is a co-lead on the project. Stewart says she’s been helping to figure out the planning and research design components of the project.
“Another part of this project is thinking about how it can scale up in future years,” says Stewart. They’ll be measuring the performance, including its impact on parking.

They also integrated the project into a course at the U of G, giving students a chance to add their voice.

The design is intended to be quick to set up/teardown, modular and easy to store, meaning it should see repeated use over the years says Rotsztain.

It was designed and built by Ben O’Hara in Guelph.

The first instalment, WexPOPS, was opened in Scarborough’s Wexford Heights Plaza on July 5th, 2019.

While vandalism is a concern, Stewart and Rotsztain say the community has really embraced the concept, and people will be keeping a close eye on the site.

They’ve been working with a variety of community groups and other local actors, and Stewart says encouraging local stewardship is the best strategy for vandal proofing the site.
“It’s an interesting kind of little community that we’ve tapped into that’s been really supportive and excited to be a part of the project,” says Rotsztain.

Local high schoolers, mostly newcomers from Nigeria, will be employed to care of the garden.
Stewart says they chose the inner suburbs of Toronto because it’s where huge numbers of new Canadians live.

“We need to have strong communities, we need people to be connect and we need people to aware of each other, and not see people as ‘the other’ and all of that kind of thing,” says Stewart.
The project is being funded by the Park People’s Public Space Incubator Grant, which is in turn funded by Ken and Eti Greenberg and the Balsam Foundation.

Others like the U of G, have donated materials and other resources. While the Toronto Region Conversation Authority will take the leftover plants and reuse them in the community.
“We’re trying to think through the life-cycle of everything we use, to minimize waste,” says Stewart.

He says they’ve had a number of inquiries from the U of G, business improvement areas, community groups and others, but they’ll be focusing on the one project for now.
If you’d like to learn more, you can visit the groups website here.

Fun fact: POPS is an acronym for Privately Owned Public Space, says Stewart.

Another concept in the same vein is the “parklet” however those are generally built on public spaces.


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2019: WexPOPS

8 Questions with Daniel Rotsztain and Brendan Stewart

By Candice Leung

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In 8 Questions, 8 80 Cities asks amazing partners we’ve worked with, or amazing people doing amazing work 8 questions about their passions, their history and their amazing-ness. And then we ask them to suggest a question for our next interviewee.

This week, 8 80 Cities Project Coordinator Candice Leung spoke to Daniel Rotsztain and Brendan Stewart. Daniel, also known as The Urban Geographer online, identifies as a Toronto based artist, cartographer, writer and a landscape designer. Brendan is a professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph. Together they are co-leading the plazaPOPS project which proposes pop-up gathering places in privately-owned strip mall parking lots in the inner suburbs. plazaPOPS’ first pilot, called WexPOPS, opened on July 5th in the Wexford plaza in Scarborough. We talked about their approach to public spaces.

8 80 Cities: What is plazaPOPS? How did this work come to fruition?

Daniel Rotsztain: Growing up near strip malls, I was familiar with plazas as a commercial hub of mom and pop shops. It was really in my thesis that I looked deeper into them as an urban typology of public space.

For my thesis, I studied what people liked about plazas and what needed to be improved. I found a lot of plazas where businesses generally cater to local communities and that the creation of community spaces was well aligned with that mission. Secondly, I noted that plaza shopping is both thriving and at risk – people love them but business ebbs and flows, so the idea of creating spaces for people to linger is also strategic. Lastly, the traditional planning tools to improve these spaces are restrictive. For example; plazas are typically privately-owned land, Business Improvement Associations (BIA) are limited in resources especially those in the inner suburbs of Toronto, and the City Neighborhood Improvement programs rarely address the private conditions of plazas specifically. At the end of my research, I was inspired to take action.

At that time, Park People launched their Public Space Incubator grant. I wanted to dedicate efforts to equity in urbanism so working with the Wexford Plaza was a way to step into that. Brendan was on my thesis committee and we jumped at the opportunity.

8 80 Cities: On the heels of the projects launch, what has surprised you so far about this work? Was there anything that you weren’t expecting?

Daniel Rotsztain: Yes! There was willingness from the community to collaborate. At the onset, the community working group was onboard. I’m conscious that we are working in a part of the city that at times vocalizes their opposing political views, views that carry further right than my own. But we are able to find the common ground that public spaces matter in communities. Our goals are harmonious.

I’m also grateful for the willingness of property owners. Something drastic has changed in the last 10 years that we are able to see the value in taking away parking spots for community spaces. When I was doing my research for my thesis, I spoke to a planner at the City who had a similar idea 10 years ago and said that it was a non-starter.

8 80 Cities: Why the Wexford Plaza? Did you take any unique approaches to this work based on this neighborhood?

Daniel Rotsztain: The BIA model of Toronto tends to be less successful in the inner suburbs, but the Wexford BIA is punching above their weight. They demonstrate a lot of success with the Taste of Lawrence festival and have the excitement and support of City Councilor and Deputy Mayor Thompson. WexPOPS builds on that momentum.

In terms of unique approaches there are a few factors I will mention…
– Wexford Plaza is private land so throughout this project we respected the needs of those owners.
– We created a working group and paid them for their efforts. The working group is made up of various community stakeholders and they were paid 2 honorariums of $100 each for 4 working meetings.
– The working group practiced something Brendan and I have been calling ‘Positive Opportunism.” Anyone who is excited about the project was able to jump in and be apart of it.
– Open Houses were planned at the request of the working group. It was their suggestion to engage seniors and youth, so we connected with the Arab Community Centre of Toronto (ACCT) and the Wexford Residential home nearby.
– We worked with ACCT to create a short-term Site Supervisor job to employ newcomer youth.

8 80 Cities: How does the plazaPOPS project integrate an educational component? Why was that important to the project?

Brendan Stewart: We integrated plazaPOPS into the graduate community design studio that I teach as part of our Masters of Landscape Architecture program at Guelph and I think this created a number of valuable opportunities for both the students and the project.

Our 19 students were divided into 6 teams, and each spent the semester creating a unique design concept for the pop-up, developed through a process that involved community feedback and design adjustments, and guidance from Daniel and I. The students attended several community workshops and open houses and spent time getting to know and listening to the community that they were designing for, which is a rare and valuable experience, I think, for young designers. The students had the chance to start developing the sensitivities that are essential to navigating the complexities of working on public space that involved community feedback and design adjustments, and guidance from Daniel and I as well as my colleague at Guelph, Dr. Karen Landman, who has been instrumental to the project.

Involving the students also benefited the project in many ways. The students felt accountable to the community, and were motivated to continually refine their projects, which led to very high-quality work. We published the six concepts on our project website and had a one-month public commenting period. Having this range of options helped to promote the project within the community, but more importantly gave our working group more ideas and approaches to react to than would otherwise have been possible. Ultimately, there were aspects of each student’s project that were very well received, and these were integrated into the final design, that just opened. I think the project is so much stronger because of the student’s dedication and creativity.

Also, early in the process we connected with U of T professor Rafael Gomez, who has done work in the same community, and we then jumped on the opportunity to involve a team of graduate planning and business students through the Rotman CityLAB fellowship program. These students helped us develop research metrics for the public life, parking and economic impact studies that we are conducting. It was fantastic to see cross-pollination between two Universities, and three different disciplines, and this work will be invaluable for us as we measure the impact of the project and consider the possibilities of a broader program in future years.

8 80 Cities: Before the plazaPOPS project, what was your experience working in urbanism like?

Daniel Rotsztain: It was always about provoking discussion and sharing my love for the city through art. The All the Libraries project started when Rob Ford was Mayor and libraries were facing a lot of budgetary cuts. I remember seeing on twitter somewhere that if public libraries were proposed as a new idea today, they would be dismissed as a radical socialist ideal or something…. so the fact that we have them and they thrive in many of our communities is worth celebrating.

I also have believed strongly in the power arts bring to the urbanist narrative to communicate what is happening in cities. It’s something I want to continue to contribute to and encourage others to do so as well.

Brendan Stewart: Before joining the University, I practiced as a landscape architect and heritage planner with ERA Architects in Toronto and was involved with a number of public space projects including park and campus revitalizations, but my main interest and passion has always been working with communities on strategies to re-purpose under-utilized space in the inner suburbs. I worked actively on Tower Renewal projects for eight years, and was the landscape architect for two previous parking lot to community space conversion projects — the East Scarborough Storefront (a few kilometres east of our WexPOPS site) and Ridgeway Community Courts, a basketball court built on a parking lot in Mississauga. I’m interested in the mysterious power that can be created through a rich engagement process; how a group of people can come together and create something special that is enriching to people and communities. It takes long hours but it’s fun and so gratifying, and I love meeting new people.

8 80 Cities: What would you say is the biggest challenge for creating great public spaces?

Brendan Stewart: In design, people say that every great project has a great client. I think that’s true, but when we’re talking about public space, which I believe is so fundamentally important to the health of our culture and environment, I think it’s even more important to have a great process. A great process explores, challenges, and tests a range of ideas, perspectives and approaches, and builds bridges to a collective vision that best reflects the goals of the project. Public space is too valuable to not be vetted through an intensive public process.

I think we’re getting better at this, but too often our design processes have problems baked into them that don’t allow us to maximize their value. Often the designers / planners / facilitators who lead the process of creating public space are constrained by a generic approach that was committed to before the nature of the project was understood, and which may not be adequate to address the particular challenges of the project, or an approach that is isn’t flexible to allow the process to adapt to new opportunities that may arise.

8 80 Cities: Our last interviewee, Dr. Zhixi Zhuang, Associate Professor at Ryerson University’s School of urban and regional planning asks how you think we can construct a common ground to embrace diversity and difference to create inclusive spaces?

Daniel Rotsztain: I’d say by recognizing that most people want the same things – a good life, a strong community… But we all have different perspectives on how to get there. I don’t think it’s something we can reduce to an egalitarian approach. I’ve grown to not idealizing equality but recognizing that there are real differences and working with them has been helpful.

8 80 Cities: What question would you have for our next interviewee?

Daniel Rotsztain: I would ask how we can authentically engage with people who are not currently being engaged in the consultation process. I know this may sound like the previous question, but it’s a topic that’s worth discussing at length.

I think consultations can still just be lipstick on a pig… Even the language we sometimes use to promote consultations are confounding and it reminds me that there should be better ways to communicate with others about public spaces.

8 80 Cities: Thanks! Is there anything you’d like to add before we end off?

Daniel Rotsztain: Just on the note about working on community projects in a community that isn’t yours…. It’s a part of the DNA of the plazaPOPS project that we didn’t grow up in Wexford and don’t live there now, and it is also very much the nature of professional planners to work in communities that are not your own. Recognizing that there are local change makers is important. It’s also important not to shy away from who you are as you navigate this kind of work. Being honest about your identity matters. Being forward about who you are, the really great idea you bring and a grant to make it happen sets the tone for an authentic consultation.


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2019: WexPOPS

U of G plazaPOPS Green Space Project Makes Headlines

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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’s Fresh Air over the weekend to discuss the concept.

The idea was also explored by Global News Radio’s The Morning Show and by BlogTO and on Toronto.com.

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.

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2019: WexPOPS

Toronto strip malls are about to get more interesting

By Tanya Mok

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Hanging out in the parking lot of a Toronto strip mall may not be your idea of a good time, but it could be this summer.


The exterior of Wexford Heights Plaza (the Scarborough strip mall of film festival fame) just got a big upgrade thanks to a new initiative called plazaPOPS.

The project, which aims to transform the drab areas around suburban strip malls into vibrant community spaces, launched its pilot project WexPOPS today, transforming the plaza parking lot into a little green oasis.

Planters with over 300 plants, including blooming sunflowers and edible herbs, tables, and comfy seats complete with umbrellas and twinkle lights at night now sit on the asphalt across from the diner mainstay Wexford Restaurant.


“As the city densifies, a lot of these strip malls are going to be demolished,” says Daniel Rotsztain (known online as the Urban Geographer) whose Masters thesis was the jump-off point for PlazaPOPS.

“The project was born out of a desire to think about how to urbanize the inner suburbs while working with the existing vibrancy, instead of erasing what’s there.”



According to Rotsztain, the number-one request from local residents and businesses during the consultation process was a green space with more plants.

Led by University of Guelph professors Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman, the $75,000 is the first in what PlazaPOPS hopes will be more pop-up oases in BIAs across the city.

Funded by the Park People’s Public Space Incubator Grant and the City’s Kickstart grant, WexPOPS even has a restaurant directory at the pop-up, with a map that lists all the places to eat in the area.

If you’re heading to Taste of Lawrence this weekend, you’ll be able to see a stage for performances organized by Scarborough Arts, and a mural depicting food culture in the Wexford area by Toronto artist Echo Railton.

“The whole point of this is to support the local businesses while accomplishing city goals,” says Rotsztain. “Small businesses are so important to our identity and to lots of communities in the city.”

WexPOPS will sit at this corner of Warden and Lawrence until August 18.



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2019: WexPOPS

plazaPOPS coming to Wexford Heights Plaza

By Mike Adler

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As strip malls go, Wexford Heights Plaza is famous already.

It’s inspired a feature film, a documentary about its Wexford Restaurant, and an interactive walking tour.

Still, expect it to gain more notoriety this summer as it hosts plazaPOPS, an experiment in giving passersby something new to see and visit.

Launching at the Taste of Lawrence street festival in July, plazaPOPS lets the community comment on six potential designs — featuring a colossal loom, a stopover for birds, and a programmable community food truck, among other things — by April 12.

What’s chosen may be a hybrid, but plazaPOPS is a chance to try some possibilities for a retail model still common on Toronto’s suburban streets, says project co-lead Daniel Rotsztain.
Plazas are where small businesses set up in places like Wexford in Scarborough. They’re de facto community centres, places where people meet, he added.

Some plaza businesses are thriving, but others aren’t, and “blight is not good for anyone,” said Rotsztain, who has interviewed plaza owners, customers and business owners on what can be done.

Esthetic improvements were welcomed, he found, as long as they bring more people into the plaza. PlazaPOPS tries to do that, Rotsztain said.

PlazaPOPS in Scarborough tries ‘eye-catching’ design to boost business.

“The whole ethos of the project is supporting small businesses.”

Co-lead Brendan Stewart, a landscape architecture professor at University of Guelph, had his students provide the designs, Rotsztain got financial backing from the city and advocacy group Park People.

He secured unanimous support from the Wexford Heights Business Improvement Area, and the project is starting to look like it could be replicated on other suburban streets.

University of Toronto students are creating economic metrics to measure its success, Rotsztain said.

Anthony Kiriakou, who owns the plaza and the family-run diner bearing the neighbourhood’s name, believes plazaPOPS is good for business.
“I like something that’s eye-catching,” he said. “At least like this, you are on the map.”

The project will occupy eight to 10 parking spots, and while getting rid of parking can be “pretty tense,” Rotsztain said many business owners and customers would sacrifice a little.

Open houses for PlazaPOPS are coming to the Arab Community Centre of Toronto on April 12, from 4 to 8 p.m., and the Victoria Village Hub on April 13, from noon to 4 p.m


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PlazaPOPS is funded by the City of Toronto’s Main Street Recovery and Rebuild Initiative, as part of Government of Canada support through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario).

Research for plazaPOPS is funded through a SSHRC Partnership Development grant, in partnership with the City of Toronto and the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Design and Rural Development (SEDRD) in the Ontario Agricultural College.