Downto-The Hub
Sudbury was conceived as an industrial depot site of the Canadian Pacific Railway. However, during the excavation, several quantities of nickel and other minerals were found. This stimulated the development of first local industries like the timber trade and the city started growing around it, becoming the largest urban area in Northeastern Ontario.
As the city was developing, urban growth was constrained by the railway lines and the surrounding environment. This led to urban sprawl which has been spreading as a diffuse city. Additionally, in the Downtown area, the resident population has been moving out to the suburbs, depriving the Downtown area of vibrant social life. As a consequence of the way that the area evolves, there is a lack of spaces, over-depending of car for transport, long distances to get to work, to study, recreation, and interacting. Also, the disconnected ecological structure fragmented all of Greater Sudbury, isolating the Downtown from the rest of the city, leaving an urban void behind.
The future City of Sudbury will be the Northern Ontario hybrid environmental hub. A smart city of opportunities for local residents and immigrants that would provide education, new technological and environmental facilities, a circular metabolic system, and a cultural structure to activate the newly expanded Downtown to the citizens. In Fact, bringing the city Down-to the hub.
Following the UN sustainable development goals, Regarding innovation and knowledge, energy consumption, social equality, and sustainable communities. Moreover, the project would work as a resilient city which will guarantee proximity, urban facilities, and highquality open spaces to provide balanced interactions between society and the environment.
The Greater Sudbury proposal has been conceived as a macro-system of circuits that are integrated with the current structures and conditions. This macro-system develops five common threads: a new Sudbury core, business and investment opportunities, high-quality public spaces, environmental innovation, and sustainable transportation. The ecological circuit will connect open spaces, parks, and the new Downtown to improve and recover the ecological connectivity between them. Also, a recreational loop is related to current urban facilities and buildings, in order to activate dynamics. This new system will be linked to a cultural circuit which includes both cultural focal points and public cultural facilities.
On the other hand, the proposal includes a heritage circuit that associates every protected building with future projects. As well, it will be connected with a commercial circuit that promotes economic growth and social interaction. Finally, in order to integrate the whole system, a transport circuit offers both public and private transportation options aligned with the sustainable necessities of the future.
The master plan is located between the railways infrastructure and the current Downtown, where the largest undeveloped parcel creates a vast opportunity for connecting the historical memory, predominant dynamics, and a new ecological structure to evolve the centre as a new hub.
This expanded centre will change the relationship among the sprawl zones which have been isolated from the Downtown. Using the huge industrial land, new mixed-use zones are created to attract more people and workers to the centre. This hub includes living areas, an extended university campus with commercial and research-related zones, cultural and recreational spaces and a new agricultural research complex. All of these, connected by a sustainable transportation system as a new extended trail network, bike and bus lanes, and tram rails.
The environmental structure will connect the current dynamics, the main natural elements, and the future development area, in order to build a circuit which improves the urban tissue, protects the natural resources and promotes urban life. The proposed open space structure will generate a network composed by 2.691 square feet of new local and community parks and, a Linear park along the railways, which highlights on its trace some public spaces as The Memorial and river park, the Tom Davis and Worthington Square and the new Memorial Railway and Ramsay Lake-front Park.
The new cultural circuit will include both, pre-existing and projected facilities as The Junction and Place des Arts, the new Sudbury Railway History Museum, the Aboriginal Heritage Museum and underground galleries. This new system will be connected to the new downtown galleries and greenery areas through the promenade paths in order to activate the public space on it.
The living areas are, on one hand, to promote a 24/7 downtown for a new living population living nearby future activities and urban life. Besides, both old and new residential, commerce and service use, will reactivate the core by decreasing long distances between its citizens and urban facilities. And, on the other hand, creating a new living concept with local timber made typologies, providing food facilities, rooftop farming, and community gardens. Allowing the community to produce daily consumption integrating an internal metabolic system, which will integrate food production, water management and energy efficiency. Offering a circular economy, adapting spaces to work and living, in a mixed-use community.
The proposal is conceived over the concept of a circular metabolism, where production zones are integrated with public and private research farming systems for the agricultural and timber industry. The Agricultural Research Complex is meant to food production, herbs, and natural medical facilities. Evolving into technical agriculture as a dynamic living laboratory for innovation and education.
Educational institutions will get involved with stakeholders, encouraging innovative processes, meanwhile creating new integration networks between industry and academy. In addition, a new marketing supply chain, established by linking the farmer·s markets and food banks, with a new platform, commercializing and distributing the products, and finally being collected by waste management which will be driven by the Greater Sudbury Garbage and Recycling Program, to multiple facilities for being recycled, and reusing the raw material into the process.
An integrated transport system will also connect the whole area with more than 70.000 Ft bicycle lanes, 10.000 ft tram lanes, new avenues, an lntermodal Station, and multiple buses stop. In Fact, this will be the main circuits linker providing continuous uses through the whole downtown project every time.
Down-to the hub, will be finally the new integrated and sustainable community in north Ontario Urban design, architecture, landscape and smart infrastructure working together and creating a balanced urban framework. A bold approach to infrastructure integration, Positioning Sudbury as a leader in sustainable and resilient urbanism while responding to residents· aspirations to bring the centre back to life.
(Competitor's text)
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