Planning for what nature, in whose city? Climate resilience and ecological imaginaries in the Port Lands Flood Protection Project

This paper examines the Port Lands Flood Protection Project, a flood mitigation, ecological naturalization, and climate change adaptation project located in Toronto, Canada’s Port Lands area. Previously a site of post-industrial economic decline, ecological dysfunction, and flood risk, the area is being remade into a modern mixed-use neighbourhood with a newly constructed river estuary and a significantly increased area of naturalized habitat and recreational green space. Drawing from research on climate change resilience, urban political ecology, restoration ecology, and public participation theory, this paper investigates how the contemporary ecological imaginaries of the Port Lands emerged, how they have defined and influenced the course of the Port Lands Flood Protection Project, and what actors and interests have directed and been served by these developments. This research finds that the planning and implementation of the Port Lands Flood Protection Project has been defined by a series of compromises made by the project’s proponents between competing imperatives of ecological restoration and economic development, and between demands for public participation and the directives of government and private sector partners. While the project is a remarkable improvement on the state of the Port Lands, the compromises that have defined the project’s direction also threaten to undermine aspects of the project’s democratic legitimacy and its ability to produce long-term resilience in the area.