Urban Strategies led a multidisciplinary team of consultants on Phase I of the Eglinton East Light Rail Transit (EELRT) Planning study. The 14.9 km (9.3 mile) corridor extends from Kennedy Station to Malvern Town Centre and comprises 22 stations, 6 connections to existing and planned transit lines, and improved local transit access to over 40,000 residents who live within walking distance of the corridor.
The introduction of LRT will bring transformative opportunities to an underserved area of Toronto and is designed to catalyze the advancement of community development objectives throughout the corridor. Although improved connectivity – from, to and within Scarborough – is a primary objective of the EELRT, our approach considers the physical, social, and economic spaces around the transit infrastructure as the critical elements that will determine project success.
The study involves creating a vision for the corridor, a public realm concept plan, and supporting strategies to guide change and ultimately leverage the transit investment to foster more complete communities along the line. As part of the community engagement program, we led a series of four immersive consultations – full-day working sessions at four locations along the corridor. During these sessions, we hosted a series of working sessions with the City and local stakeholders, as well as public open houses and pin-ups of materials at the end of the day. C3 (our social development sub-consultant) conducted additional outreach with a number local organizations (Residents’ Associations, Neighbourhood Improvement Area Roundtables, the Local Champions Project, and the Tower Renewal Partnership) to ground truth our ideas.
