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The National Film Board of Canada Presents
The concrete residential highrise
is the most commonly built form of the last century.
Now decades old,
these highrises are aging and falling into disrepair.
They've been labeled as failed social experiments
from the modernist era.
So some
are being torn down.
A few are renovated.
Most are simply left to decay.
GREATER TORONTO, 2000 RESIDENTIAL HIGHRISES
In this Toronto suburban highrise,
we've brought together highrise residents
with architects and animators
to re-imagine these vertical homes
and the spaces around them.
ONE MILLIONth TOWER
If you drive by,
you may just see a highrise building that looks ugly,
but for us, this is our home.
Beside the building I live in,
there is a tennis court that is very dangerous.
I think this space has huge potential.
A nice, shallow, wide staircase.
So many people pass through that area,
and if we could almost change the circulation
so that people go down through that space
and then up and out,
it would always feel kind of active.
So you'd always have people going to school,
people going to the mall.
If you can present a vision for a neighbourhood
that works for children,
it's probably going to work for everybody else.
Everything else, kind of follows.
Behind our building,
we have this beautiful ravine,
which has bushes and the Humber River.
It's just incredible space there which is sitting there,
it's just nothing, it just feels blank.
I enjoy gardening and when I see this empty space,
I'm sad to see that we could do something
to make it better.
With flowers, pavement, a lot of gardens,
to make it more lively.
And flowers to make it beautiful,
because this is an amazing space.
Just like the garden,
the building could be more colourful.
And green!
Yeah, it would be amazing if the buildings
are more green, they are more eco-friendly.
The building is so "bleh"!
You know, it's like when you come here,
you don't feel happy.
At least with colour,
you'll feel more lively coming here.
You know and it will say
"Yeah, come in! Welcome!"
We have a lot of new immigrants.
They come and go.
But if we had a garden, maybe people
would want to put roots down here.
The party room has been used for a church,
as well as a beauty salon.
We have all these things happening
in such a small little space.
And now, it's being used for a dance program
that I basically facilitate.
It's called "Youth Dance For Change".
And we practice hip-hop, r & b, soca and reggae.
Because the parking lot
is in between the two buildings,
it's pretty hard for people to connect,
to even, you know, build fellowship.
It could be used for many things.
Like, cause it's such a common spot,
the plan was to actually
get a farmers market there.
Like, you could easily build an addition,
like a two-storey addition that would come out here
and fill out this space.
It could totally be dedicated to community programming.
Our neighbourhood is dense.
Denser than most of the sections of downtown.
We really need some place to sell stuff,
to get together,
to really really build a community.
When I think about the whole neighbourhood,
we have nineteen towers,
that's about nineteen or twenty thousand people.
And there's no connection.
It just feels like we have very limited connectivity
to all different places.
Like, from the buildings to the ravine,
or from one building to one other building.
It just feels like each tower
is in a different continent itself.
So, it's like we're trying to make bridges
between different towers.
But if we have accessible pedestrian-ways
or bicycle lanes,
so that our kids and the elder people
can go around and stroll around,
then maybe, we can connect.
As we say, that the whole world is connected now,
our world around in the neighbourhood
will be connected.