The Meadoway is an ambitious city-building initiative that stretches across 34 densely populated neighborhoods from the Don River to Rouge National Urban Park in the Greater Toronto Area. Transforming barren mowed grass into hundreds of acres of vibrant meadow habitat, The Meadoway will feature 10 miles of multiuse trails and critical ecosystem connections for Toronto’s unique ravine system.
A core component of The Meadoway is community engagement and education to ensure long-term support of this new greenspace. As the result of a unique partnership with local school boards, more than 2,000 students take part in activities in the corridor each year. Urban gardens, nature viewing stations, and new pedestrian bridges over waterways offer opportunities for residents and visitors to experience The Meadoway in a variety of ways.
Scheduled to be completed by fall 2024, The Meadoway will become one of the largest linear parks in Canada and aims to inspire Meadoways in utility corridors across the country.
| Infrastructure Type | Utility Corridor |
| Status | Advocacy & Design |
| Opening | November 2024 |
| Size | 494 acres, 9.94 miles |
| Design Team | Perkins + Will, Dillon Consulting, FUTURE LANDSCAPES Design + Visualization Inc. |
| Management | Toronto and Region Conservation Authority in partnership with the City of Toronto |
| Project Leader | Lisa Turnbull |
Hydro corridors are ubiquitous in cities, and The Meadoway is a new way of thinking about them as sites of recreation, connectivity, wildlife habitat, animal migration and a unique melding of human and natural landscape. “It’s an industrial reuse project,” says Corey Wells, also a Senior Project Manager at TRCA.
Metropolis catches up with the High Line Network, a consortium of North American reuse projects that has been sharing notes and best practices through the pandemic.
The High Line Network announced on Monday that 15 new members are joining their group of nonprofit infrastructure reuse projects.
