Don’t miss out! Learning Tours for the Upcoming ACTION 2025 joint CIP & OPPI Conference

The CIP & OPPI conference team has been busy putting together a fantastic conference with 147 sessions for attendees to choose from. Make sure you register for the conference as it is 80% sold out as of March 24, 2025. 

New for this year, when you register for the conference, you will register for which sessions you want to attend. This includes concurrent sessions, workshops, and learning tours (previously known as guided excursions).

You can also add sessions after you have registered using your attendee portal. To login, you will enter in the email address you used to register for the conference and password. Should you not remember your password, there are instructions to reset it.

Once you have logged into your attendee portal, on the left-hand column you will see the option “Purchases,” from here you will see the ticket you purchased. Click on the ticket, and on the screen, you will see a blue box that says, “Purchase Additional Tickets,” which will populate all the learning tours and sessions available to you to select from and build your agenda. Please see the below for reference.


 
The following are the confirmed learning excursions taking place during the 3-day conference. Be sure to register soon, as they will sell out quickly!

SPECIAL PRE-CONFERENCE EVENT! July 7, 2025

Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve and Rouge National Urban Park: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
The Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve and Rouge National Urban Park provide two different agricultural land protection models on abutting properties. Guides will highlight effective and innovative approaches to farmland protection and management, integration with environmental systems, agricultural management of public land, as well as planning legislation aimed at fostering responsible land use planning (including the Greenbelt Plan). Excursion stops will provide an opportunity to get on the ground familiarity with the landscapes’ agricultural and environmental resources and the active recreational management framework providing access to experience and explore the area.
 
Day 1 – July 8, 2025

Innovative Adaptive Reuse in Heritage Planning: Municipal Incentives and Case Studies: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Adaptive reuse of heritage buildings is a cornerstone of sustainable urban development and cultural preservation. This presentation will focus on innovative examples of adaptive reuse, emphasizing the role of municipalities in encouraging these projects through incentives. Led by Meaghan Barrett and Eileen Costello from Aird & Berlis LLP and Phil Evans and Samantha Irvine from ERA Architects, the session will explore how legal, architectural, and planning frameworks work together to promote the reuse of heritage structures. Participants will also be treated to a guided tour of notable adaptive reuse projects in Toronto, offering real-world insights into how historic buildings have been transformed to meet modern needs.

Rethinking the traditional school site: 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is the largest in Canada, with over 600 properties across the City of Toronto on more than 5000 acres of land. Aging buildings, repair backlogs, and limited funding have challenged the TDSB to pursue new ideas about what school sites can look like and how they can better serve the communities surrounding them. These include looking at innovative approaches to design (such as schools in podiums of residential towers), increased collaboration with public sector partners, and leveraging the value of land to supply additional community uses. Toronto Lands Corporation (TDSB's land use planning and real estate agency) will lead this tour of existing and future school sites, showcasing innovative examples of mixed-use schools, as well as sites being planned and re-imagined to deliver new schools and other uses to serve the community.

Building a Downtown in the 905: 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
The Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) is an emerging downtown poised to be the financial, innovation and cultural centre of Vaughan. Major corporations and thousands of new residents are choosing the VMC because it’s a perfect balance between downtown Toronto and the Greater Toronto Region. No other location offers this blend of subway and rapid bus transit with equal access to downtown and the suburbs, Class A office space, and an urban lifestyle. Since the opening of the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension in December 2017, now ending at the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station, the VMC is on track to meet or exceed targets of 12,000 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of office space, and 750,000 square feet of new retail space by 2031. The VMC is being planned as a downtown that is transit-oriented, walkable, accessible, diverse, vibrant, green, and beautiful.

(Re)creating, Conserving, and Enhancing an Urban Wilderness: Port Lands, Cherry Beach and Tommy Thompson Park Cycle Tour: 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
The new Port Lands Flood Protection project, Cherry Beach and Tommy Thompson Park collectively represent an “urban wilderness” more than 500 hectares in size. This cycling tour in collaboration with TRCA will explore this unique urban conservation district and highlight its history, its contemporary context, and its future.

Toronto Chinatown West Walking Tour: 12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Chinatowns are integral pieces of the North American city, based on a history of exclusionary policies (i.e., Canada’s Chinese Exclusion Act 1923-1947), and yet today function as vibrant communities that support the local economy and tourism. Typically found in the heart of downtown areas where real estate pressures are acute, there is a growing Chinatown movement across the continent where local Chinatown advocacy groups are reclaiming Chinatown as a place for the community with culturally specific amenities and deeply affordable access to housing and the economy. The project team for the City of Toronto’s Chinatown Tomorrow initiative will lead a Chinatown West walking tour, highlighting important cultural heritage landmarks and past and present community-led initiatives in Toronto’s downtown Chinatown. The tour will speak to issues of identity, belonging, including addressing anti-Asian hate, inclusive planning practices, and innovations in community consultation.

Housing & Intensification Along Retail Streets - Mid-Rise Buildings in West Queen West: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 pm
Viable local retail. Beautiful tree-lined streets. Walkable neighbourhoods. Housing for everyone. Participants will tour one area of Toronto where discussion will focus on efforts and strategies to achieve all these goals. Intensification via recently built mid-rise buildings will be highlighted. Topics will include intensification in established areas, increasing housing supply, and creating great retail streets.

Union Station Enhancement Project Learning Tour: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Toronto’s Union Station is being transformed to increase network capacity and deliver two-way, all-day service to a rapidly growing regional population. These transformations include the construction of a new concourse spanning the distance from York to Bay Street, improved customer experience, and more accessibility in the station, all in a 30-meter-wide space, while ensuring existing operations are not impacted. This learning tour will provide access to one of the most complex transit projects in Canada.

Housing & Intensification Along Retail Streets - Mid-Rise Buildings in West Queen West: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Viable local retail. Beautiful tree-lined streets. Walkable neighbourhoods. Housing for everyone. Participants will tour one area of Toronto where discussion will focus on efforts and strategies to achieve all these goals. Intensification via recently built mid-rise buildings will be highlighted. Topics will include intensification in established areas, increasing housing supply, and creating great retail streets.

Day 2 – July 9, 2024

Accidental Wilderness - Origins and Ecology of Tommy Thompson Park: 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
This session is a 2–3-hour educational walking tour of Tommy Thompson Park in Toronto on Lake Ontario. It is an opportunity to experience the biodiversity outcomes of plants, birds, animals and fish that have been invited to rewild the man-made spit of rubble from the building of Toronto. The story of the park is shaped by CommunityACTION, where a dedicated group of citizens advocated to have the spit become a City Natural Park. The tour is about ClimateACTION, where the landscape has been rewilded through deliberate inACTION and limited intervention to create biodiversity in the face of climate change. The combined result is a unique man-made and natural heritage feature providing access to a broad range of users. Planners from across the country can learn about CommunityACTION and ClimateACTION within sight of the conference venue.

Design in Action: Transforming Community Through the Final Phases of the Redevelopment of Canada’s Largest Social Housing Neighbourhood (Regent Park): 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Once Canada’s largest social housing neighbourhood, Regent Park has transformed into a mixed-use, mixed-income community, capturing the attention of planners internationally. This walking tour will highlight how balancing design objectives can drive innovation and achieve high-quality outcomes that deliver significant public benefits.

Port Credit: Balancing transit-oriented development and urban village character to create a complete community: 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
This tour will lead participants through the heart of Port Credit, one of the most charming and livable communities along the Lake Ontario waterfront. The tour will showcase its vibrant commercial main street, its network of parks and green spaces, and the recent surge of development that is being spurred by major transit investments in the area.

The Value of Connected Networks: A mobile tour and workshop of Toronto’s cycling infrastructure: 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
A mobile tour and workshop along Toronto’s waterfront to the Port Lands, highlighting climate resiliency. The event features the newly re-naturalized mouth of the Don River, new transportation infrastructure, and parks and public spaces that will unlock the area for development of a vibrant new urban community.

Ziibiing Walking Tour: 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Toronto is a city shaped by water. Carved by glacial formations and divided by winding rivers, the unique geography benefited the Indigenous populations that used the land for hunting, fishing, and trade. But this changed with the arrival of European settlers who had more interventionist ideas about land use. Toronto’s founders buried many significant waterways and paved over spaces that held historic significance to the area’s earlier inhabitants.

Under the Gardiner, a Hidden Gem of Public Space is Emerging: 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
This mobile workshop will highlight an exciting transformation to create public space under an expressway. Participants will tour The Bentway’s completed Phase 1, and then “The Bentway Islands” a future park/public space. The tour will end at The Bentway’s Studio with the presentation of the Under Gardiner Public Realm Plan.

From the Ground Up: Supporting Toronto’s Vertical Villages: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
"From the Ground Up" is a participatory tour of Toronto’s new and upcoming skyscrapers and how they have been integrated into the urban fabric, focusing on the pedestrian and subterranean levels of the city. Participants will explore the extensive PATH network, connecting tall buildings to transportation hubs and retail spaces, while also learning how design and planning strategies promote sustainability, accessibility, and liveability. This tour provides a comprehensive look at how Toronto’s urban core is evolving through sustainable vertical urbanism.

The Meadoway: Reimagining Urban Green Spaces: 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Join us for a guided walking tour of The Meadoway, led by TRCA with Perkins & Will, a transformative urban green space project by the TRCA. Serving as a blueprint for urban revitalization and a key location for ecological education, The Meadoway reconnects communities, enhances biodiversity, and promotes sustainable living through its innovative green infrastructure. We will also look into the Meadoway Visualization Toolkit, which aims to amplify and celebrate this unique space through a compelling visual identity and narrative, and how it became a reality.

Creating a New Don River Valley – A Tour of the Port Lands Flood Protection Project & The Port Lands: A Mobile Workshop: 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
The Port Lands Flood Projection Project is about taking action to protect Toronto’s southeastern downtown area. This tour will provide an overview of the big moves, including the new streets, iconic bridges, park spaces and the new river valley, as well as a discussion about the new mixed-use community that will emerge in this unique setting.

Day 3 – July 10, 2025

PlazaPOV: highlighting the vital role strip plazas continue to play in Toronto's suburbs: 8:45 am – 1:45 p.m.
Toronto’s commercial strip plazas are facing growing redevelopment pressure. This walking tour along a section of Lawrence Avenue East, where strip plazas are common, will demonstrate how they contribute to a diverse economy, help suburban communities meet their daily needs, and continue to provide resiliency (including through the COVID-19 pandemic).

Honest Ed’s/Mirvish Village Site Tour: There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace!: 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Led by representatives from Westbank, the City of Toronto, and Urban Strategies, this tour will explore how the CIP Award-winning plans have translated into reality, including the unique approach to reimaging Mirvish Village’s rich history through affordable housing, fine grain/micro-retail, district energy, heritage conservation, and extensive public realm investments.

Confronting the Sexist City - a walking tour!: 8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Walk with us to confront the Sexist City! “Confronting the Sexist City” is a study focused on reimagining urban spaces to enhance opportunities for women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals. Study participants explored a 2.2 km stretch of Queen Street in Toronto, documenting their emotions and experiences under three themes: comfort, safety, and vibrancy. Join us for a presentation of the findings of the study including spatial mapping, drawings, photographs, and a guided tour that takes the participants on the same path of exploration. The tour will begin at Queen and Spadina and end at Queen and Yonge. During this interactive walking tour, participants will be given access to a mapping survey that will allow them to record their experience/critique of the public space while discussing the findings of the report.

Traditional Land Use – Modern Planning: 9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
This mobile workshop will visit the traditional village site of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Chosen according to Indigenous planning principles and for its strategic economic advantage, the community was forced to relocate by modern development patterns. Recognizing the importance of reconciliation, the City of Mississauga is rebuilding relationships.

Building Community Along Toronto's Waterfront: 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Located steps from the conference venue, the Lower Yonge and East Bayfront neighbourhoods are the first steps in an ambitious plan to transform Toronto's waterfront. Integrating community services into new high-rise neighbourhoods is critical to their success. This walking tour will share stories of these emerging communities through the lens of the One Yonge Community Recreation Centre and East Bayfront Community Centre. Integrated into high-rise, mixed-use developments, both facilities challenge conventional notions of community and serve to address the equity imbalance in the provision of community facilities in new high-rise communities through creative planning, context-specific design, and innovative procurement and delivery models.

On the Ground Tour of the City's Housing Now Program and Affordable Housing Projects in Toronto: 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Toronto’s Housing Now program is an ambitious initiative by the City of Toronto to unlock city-owned land for development of affordable, mixed-income, and transit-oriented communities. The goal is to create 65,000 new affordable rental homes by 2030, addressing the city's growing need for affordable housing while building vibrant, inclusive neighbourhoods. In this guided tour, participants will learn about the Housing Now programs, visit three different Housing Now sites and learn how public land is being transformed from 'lazy lands' to mixed-income, mixed-use communities.

Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods: Complete Communities in Toronto's History: 1:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.
Toronto's Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods projects have led to changes to the Official Plan and Zoning to support new housing forms and new commercial opportunities, but Toronto has a history of multiplexes, low-rise apartments, and retail stores in its established neighbourhoods. This walking tour explores that history.

Navigating Transformational Transit & TOCs in Toronto: A Walking Tour of the Ontario Line with Toronto City Planning: 12:45 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Join City and Provincial staff as we journey through west central Toronto to explore the under-construction Ontario Line and plans for fully integrated transit-oriented communities at three future stations. Learn about key challenges and opportunities when delivering transformational public projects in a built-up and complex urban and policy environment.

Waterfront Cycling Tour - The Big Moves!: 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Waterfront has become a major cycling destination with cycling infrastructure continuing to expand. City Planning will provide a guided cycling tour of the Big Moves along the waterfront starting with Bathurst Quay Common and moving to the east, ending at Leslie Lookout Park in the Port Lands.

For full details of the conference go to the ACTION 2025 website. Please note, pre-registration for ALL learning excursions are required; you can either purchase them when you are registering for the conference or purchase through the attendee portal.

We hope to see you at this year’s conference and please send an email to conference@ontarioplanners.ca with any questions you have on learning excursions!

Karenza Sutton-Bennett, PhD
Senior Manager, Education & Events