Tower Renewal Blog

Tower Renewal Partnership: revitalizing communities through research, advocacy, and action

 

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The Tower Renewal Partnership is an initiative working to transform Southern Ontario’s remarkable stock of post-war apartment towers into more complete communities, resilient housing stock and healthy places, fully integrated into our growing cities.

Nearly one million people in the Greater Toronto Area live in approximately 2,000 concrete residential tower blocks which were built between 1945 and 1984. These towers were originally intended to promote social progress, alleviate pressures on infrastructure and services in crowded downtown cores, and provide residents with access to green space.

Today, these towers make up the majority of affordable rental stock in Toronto – one of the most unaffordable housing markets in Canada. However, these communities also face significant challenges. Most of the buildings themselves are in poor repair, lack services and amenities, and perform far below today’s standards for energy efficiency – with impacts on resident health, comfort and safety. In many of these neighbourhoods, residents also experience barriers to lifestyle and economic opportunities, poor access to nutritious food, inadequate transit connections, and limited commercial and community amenities.

Tower Renewal is a bold strategy which aims at transforming these apartment neighbourhoods into vibrant, economically-diverse, low-carbon communities.

The Tower Renewal Partnership is a collaboration between the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal, Maytree and DKGI. Working with a dynamic network, TRP engages in research, advocacy and implementation of innovative urban transformation – bringing together best-in-class practices in energy retrofit, planning policy, green financing and social entrepreneurship to build more complete communities in apartment tower neighbourhoods across the GTA and beyond.

The Tower Renewal Partnership has relied on a broad network of supporting partners, including: the City of Toronto, Toronto Public Health, United Way Toronto and York Region, the Government of Ontario, Evergreen, Toronto Atmospheric Fund, Metcalf Foundation, Atkinson Foundation, and the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Our technical project partners include NBLC and Transsolar KlimaEngineering.

For more information contact:

Graeme Stewart
Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal
graemes@eraarch.ca

Hadley Nelles
Maytree
hnelles@maytree.com