Our Urban Futures: GTHA Scenario Set

Unlocking Our Urban Futures: A Practical Toolkit for Infrastructure Planning

With a need to build on available data sets, the project explored scenarios of the future in three Canadian regions: Calgary-Edmonton, the Greater Toronto Area, and Metro-Montréal. These scenarios explore how trends might shape our urban regions, and how we expect our infrastructure to mitigate or support our preferred futures.

The Process

The following scenarios were developed with the questionnaire input of a broad expert group consisting of GTHA municipal government, provincial and federal government, developers, planners, engineers, designers, architects, academic researchers, and community hubs. The contents of the scenarios are informed by the input of these experts and their interpretations of a set of 47 trends researched over the last six months.

The scenarios are as follows:

1. Global City: Continuation and growth (see page 5)

2. The Future is Corporate: Decline and collapse (see page 10)

3. A Lot for A Little: Limits and discipline (see page 15)

4. All That Glitters: Transformation (see page 20)

These scenarios will support the expert group in identifying a preferred vision for regional urban development and consequent opportunities and risks in the way we plan and invest in infrastructure. Responses from the expert group will be used to define promising actions to support future-ready infrastructure planning and investment.