Community Commons: Bridging Social Infrastructure

The enrichment of subcultures within a city creates a strong character for communities to thrive. Urban contexts have increasingly disinvested and disengaged from publicly accessible infrastructure—the physical spaces which bind the basis of civic life—in favour of privatized or exclusive spaces. This neglect has caused increasing polarization and weakened shared values, places, and communities. This thesis examines how to reactivate civic assets and underutilized publicly owned spaces to foster inclusion and celebrate existing shared community resources and programs within Toronto's neighbourhoods. The research will develop a central community common space and a physical network that encourages human-scale walkability and wayfinding to existing civic assets such as pedestrian laneways, NGOs, and publicly funded institutions. This thesis explores how a human-centred design approach can create visibility and transparency for local resources, both community members and visitors, to navigate within a neighbourhood.