YZD TREEWAY / FROM PLANES TO PEOPLE
Transforming the YZD Runway into a Landing for Community Life
For the 2026 YZD Runway Roadmap design guidelines competition, we imagined guiding principles that could underlie the creation of new communities and public realm for this emerging Toronto district on the decommissioned runway of the former Downsview Air Force Base. Our vision imagined a ‘Plant Time’ urbanism where living systems are given a head start, designed and phased to flourish across the decades of development that is planned around it.
From the nested scales of landing aircraft, we conceived principles that telescoped from big picture connectivity 100km above in the sky to granular detail at the 1:1 scale of the human on the ground. Machine-speed infrastructure is slowed down to nourish the sensory experience of everyday life.
The site’s history and landscape offer cues to imagine new communities that could emerge around a connected ‘Acropolis of Trees’, reimagining this vast linear space from one that had been dedicated to high-speed airplanes into a place for lingering and discovery, integrated with Indigenous perspectives and connection to nature.
This project was shortlisted but did not win the competition.
