Overall Principles: Shared, Sensitive, Small, & Inclusive
The proposed scheme cherishes values of sharing. Common spaces in the creative community are designed to exchange ideas and cultivate creativity, which will help lead to economic growth generated by the creative class1. Shared electric light vehicle systems are introduced as a more efficient and environmentally friendly transportation alternative for the city. Being sensitive refers to preemptive and timely local response to global challenges. The design of Sudbury Urban Core deals with climate emergency through carbon emission reduction initiatives and flooding issues through local stormwater management plans. Being small is an economic bottom-to-top space-making strategy, which will be reflected in the Space Makeover via Light Electric Vehicle Systems, Vertical Streetscape, and Floating Hut here. By integrating tangible interventions into the design, this approach addresses actual needs of space users directly. Inclusiveness intends to achieve a more cooperative urbanism by involving the public during the planning/design processes through a serials of engagement programs, such as Design Your Own Park and the Floating Hut. It also stresses the general importance of diversity. For instance, executing accessible design details for different ages, genders, and health conditions. Taken together, the aforementioned overall principles aim to create a prosperous, resilient, and vibrant urban center with a distinctive identity which also maintains equilibrium between global connection and local independence.
Design Concept
The design proposes a comprehensive landscape system approximately following the buried course of Nolin Creek and Junction Creek, and converts a portion of the existing railway yards to a railway park. An upgraded parkway has been extended from Elgin Street to Frood Road. The landscape system, the railway park, and the greenway form a green framework that weaves the city center to its unmatchable northern natural settings.
Main Ideas
Comprehensive Landscape System
The system comprises tree groves, waterscapes, and stone features, making reference to the city's natural heritages: "rugged landscapes", "thousands of lakes", and "northern forests." Besides its symbolical importance, this synthetic system boasts ecological, environmental, and social functions. It re-establishes the missing corridors between the Nolin Creek and Junction Creek, incorporates stormwater management strategies to treat runoff on-site, and provides urban dwellers outdoor space for an array of programs.
Creative Community
Located near the CPR Webbwood Yards, the creative community embraces research labs, art studios, academic institutions, start-ups, business incubators, and professional companies, encouraging researchers, artists, scholars, entrepreneurs, and practitioners to interact and inspire one another. It makes the main north-south street as a place for informal encounters to cultivate creativity, while also constructs a series of public facilities to support a more formal way of communication, namely the convention center, the public library, the art gallery, and the indigenous cultural center. Urban residents can live, work, socialize, enjoy, and entertain here in the community. Taking advantage of the rail infrastructures, the design, in the meantime, introduces a logistic center, aiming to initiating an education-research-production-distribution development model that serves as long-term economic driving forces. Finally, the creative community can collaborate with adjacent schools to offer youngsters career tutoring and engage with the elderly through training programs to update their skill sets.
Flexible Shared Mobility
Based on the existing parking lots mainly, a shared light electric vehicle network will move people around more easily, especially in cold seasons. The network can go beyond the downtown further to the New Sudbury Center and VIA Rail Junction Station. People can use car services through cellphone applications. At a macro level, the network contributes to reducing carbon emission, while at a micro level, it can enliven drab urban ambiance (refer to Space Makeover via Light Electric Vehicle System).
Featured Loop
The feature loop is enclosed by the new creative corridor and segments of Elm Street, Brady Street, and Paris Street. Locals and visitors can wander through a rich variety of hot spots that are categorized into three main themes: Events & Cultural Attractions, City Lifestyles, and Nature at Doorstep. Highlighted places include the train museum, the new arena, and the market complex (the former community arena). The loop is well connected to the nearby recreational facilities and is easily accessible from the surrounding neighborhoods including the proposed senior community (being built up on the former Sudbury Public Library).
Railway Park
The scheme decommissions major proportions of CPR Webbwood Yards and CPR Cartier Yards, turning them into an urban park that incorporates urban farms, plant nurseries, and botanical gardens. The park provides passive and active recreational opportunities for adults, seniors, and children; delivers fresh fruits, vegetables, street trees, and garden plants.
Public engagement
Meanwhile, the abovementioned park is just one of many scenarios of the future railway parks. The public is encouraged to take part in Design Your Own Park program. Small Interventions
Space Makeover via Shared Electric Light Vehicle System
The system is not only a measure for building a greener and smoother transportation network, but also a placemaking strategy for tactical activation of the parking lots where electric light vehicle stations are anchored. Shared light automobiles occupy less room and attract more pedestrians, making it conductive to changing parking spaces to a small plaza, parklet, or outdoor café.
Vertical Streetscape
Traditional streets tend to arrange sidewalks and planting zones horizontally with runoff being directed through catch basins. The vertical streetscape adopts rain gardens and porous paving techniques to arrange walking and planting systems in an upright manner that runoff will be filtered into the subgrade in the rain gardens. With beautiful landscapes, it has been proposed on the main north-south street in the creative community giving urban inhabitants delightful outdoor social areas and innovative cohorts inspiring spaces.
Floating Hut
The floating hut is a concept of offering movable spaces to maintain certain privacy and social distancing in the public realm. It is also an opportunity to involve design schemes from art and architectural students. Inspired by the indigenous shelter, the hut is a combination of covering, dividing, and seating elements, and working/ dining surfaces. It is suitable for individual uses and small group gatherings, and at the same time ideal for hotter and colder seasons. Distributed mainly along the creative corridor, it helps to prompt innovative conversations all year round.
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