Healthy Communities Planning
Award for Planning Excellence Merit
2020
Project Name:Nom du projet : Port Credit West Village (Brightwater)
Company:compagnie : Urban Strategies
The jury members commended Mississauga Brightwater Waterfront Master Plan for its emphasis on creating a Healthy Communities Charter to guide its work. Embedded are nine planning principles to support a vibrant, healthy urban community: regenerate a brownfield site, implement the vision of inspiration of Port Credit, deliver a waterfront campus experience, provide a varied public realm experience, re-establish connections to Mississauga's waterfront, achieve a sensitive neighbourhood transition, deliver a range of housing types and tenures, provide diverse retail and commercial opportunities, and establish a fine-grain street and block structure. The charter was founded and complemented by the principles of Low Impact Development, criteria for LEED certification for various buildings, Energy Star Certification, geothermal energy and photovoltaic cells, and the One Planet Living Sustainability framework.
Extensive use of graphics, icons, infographics, and colour to tie together different portions of the master plan, as well as clear action-oriented language, created ease of use for all audiences. The economically viable site remediation strategy that organized land uses, built form, density and open space according to existing conditions constituted the innovative side of the project. Improvements through the design, objectives, and implementation were made throughout the entire public engagement process to address concerns related to open space, land use, programing, built form, and urban design. The partnership between the local and regional governments and agencies made these community improvements possible.
Overall, the project delivered on a series of objectives for a Healthy City, defined as "one that is continually creating and improving those physical and social environments and expanding those community resources, which enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and in developing to their maximum potential," (WHO definition of a Healthy City, 1998).