Lessons from Dutch on reviving waterfront - Canadian Architecture News

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Lessons from Dutch on reviving waterfront

Archiseek / Canada / News / 2007 / January 20

Did developers want to build a curtain of condo towers along the Amsterdam waterfront, a la Toronto? Of course they did. The city, in a bold move, simply said, "No." There may be lessons in this as we stumble toward transforming the Toronto port lands. Like Toronto, Amsterdam is a port town; after the Second World War, when workers punched a canal to the North Sea, the east waterfront, connected to Holland's inland sea, fell into disuse. The last big shipping line closed in 1975. People moved into the abandoned warehouses and hitched their houseboats to the deserted quays.

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