Why Richard Florida is dead wrong about Island airport expansion

“We need to open the lens a little wider to see the true devastation extending the runway at Billy Bishop would cause on the lakefrontFrom south Etobicoke to the Scarborough Bluffs and beyond, what is emerging all along the Toronto waterfront is one of the most remarkable transformations of its kind in North America or anywhere.The revitalization of a band of strategically located obsolescent lands is providing notable new and improved places for the public to enjoy: parks and trails, a linked series of neighbourhoods, places to live and work and places of recreation, repose and natural beauty.

It’s “cottage country” in the heart of the city for the many hundreds of thousands who can’t afford Muskoka or a plane ticket to more exotic resort destinations.

It’s also where Toronto is reinventing itself for the 21st century, adjusting to the city’s new southern face. Our waterfront is materializing not as a singular project but the collective work of generations of Torontonians, supported by the cumulative investments of all three levels of government and the private sector.

Its future contours are just starting to be visible as the many pieces fall into place along its length – from the promise of a revived Ontario Place/Exhibition Place, including the newly announced park, to the Music Garden shaped by Yoyo Ma and the Queens Quay Greenway currently under construction, to Sugar Beach and Sherbourne Common in the heart of the new East Bayfront neighbourhood, with George Brown College and $2.6 billion of private investment in progress – making it one of the largest such revitalization efforts in the world….”

Here’s a link to the full version of the article: Why Richard Florida is dead wrong about Island airport expansion