ALIMENTARY URBANISM
SHORTLISTED IN THE SUDBURY 2050 DESIGN COMPETITION.
Alimentary Urbanism begins with a simple but fundamental question: what would a city be like if its infrastructure was directed toward nourishing and supporting its population? Through a reframing of infrastructure not as tools of extraction and propagation of a fossil fuel economy but rather as transformative and focused on “people and kin before profits.” To translate these ideas into an urban design framework, this project envisions a thriving Sudbury by transforming its sites of extractive mining operations into a suite of regenerative economic practices: Food Cultivation; Energy Production: Reforestation and Timber Production; as well as new forms of education, healthcare, outreach, and recreation.
TEAM MEMBERS: Jesse LeCavalier, Michael Wideman, Conner Stevens, Jake Rosenwald, Jennifer Chau Tran
As a recent report found that Sudbury’s water infrastructure is not adequate beyond 2040, it is clear that Sudbury’s neighborhoods are in need of infrastructural upgrades. Alimentary Urbanism will support the well-being and individuality of local neighborhoods by using these upgrades to stimulate larger transformations.
By cataloging local needs and then expanding physical infrastructures to include social infrastructures, a series of catalytic nodes will become anchors for an expanded network of rail infrastructure. These new Spurs will distribute resources to each community and create new collective hubs in the process. A series of PRT Loops will create neighborhood- to-neighborhood connections. These Spurs and Loops will provide necessary physical and social infrastructure to support overall well-being but can be developed in a range of directions according to community needs and desires.
Organized by local groups, these spurs could function similarly to the Downtown Corridor Commons and create incentives to absorb living and economic functions in order to create more green space or they could remain as more minimal armatures to support local commerce, recreation, and healthcare.
For example, as populations age, it can be beneficial to support “naturally occurring retirement communities” (NORCs). However, for many, the prospect of living alone in a house that is too big is not always desirable. A local housing armature along a Spur would allow residents the option to stay in their neighborhood. Rather than putting their house “on the market,” they could sell it to the community which would then use those resources to invest in collective living, healthcare, and green space, transforming the neighborhood in the process.
The transformation of Downtown Sudbury is driven by the creation of two “Commons Corridors” that extend from the railyard to Elm along Durham and Minto. In Phase I of the project, these corridors begin as rail spurs that connect the Sudbury VIA station with the GOVA Transit Hub and the Rainbow Centre. Once established, these new lines will form development armatures for the core through a transfer of air rights from the blocks to the street. A survey of existing building stock will make recommendations about whether to renovate or decommission. Incentive protocols will encore individual buildings facing obsolescence to move operations into one of the new corridors and invest the resulting open space into a new network of collective uses, including winter gardens, year-round recreation, carbon-sink reforestation zones, and sites of local food production. As the scheme matures, these development armatures will support a diverse architectural language united through a consistent use of CLT technologies. This mature phase of the project includes a nimble Personal Rapid Transit loop to facilitate mobility thought the downtown core. The Commons Corridors will also deliver goods to the new public market at the Rainbow Centre that will in turn showcase this new regional economy and build on an already robust regional agriculture network. The expansion and refashioning of the rail network will also allow a transformation of existing rail lands into collective uses, including the yard between Lorne and Brady into a new Rail Park of bundled landscape strands. This park will function as carbon sink, botanical garden and public recreation while still integrating necessary train activity. Furthermore, the park integrates with the Elgin Street Greenway and Memorial Park to form a Green Cross for central Sudbury.
