A week of information and inspiration.
George Dark
An urban designer and landscape architect working with Urban Strategies, a full-service planning and urban design firm, based in Toronto. From a national park in Barbados to Toronto’s waterfront, George has led many of the firm’s largest, most complex projects.
Tuesday, October 27,
7 p.m. to 9 p.m.,
The Saskatoon Club,
417 21st Street East
Free admission
George Dark, FCSLA, ASLA, partner at Urban Strategies, is an urban designer, landscape architect and Fellow with the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects and a full member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. George has over 30 years of professional experience and since joining the firm in 1987 has led a variety of projects including new community plans, urban regeneration strategies, campus master plans, open space master plans, streetscape designs, design guidelines and public policy documents. George’s work focuses on the quality of urban environments and he regularly coordinates large groups of diverse professionals and excels at guiding projects through complex approval and consultation processes.
George has directed numerous new community master plan projects for communities in Oakville, Markham, and Windsor, Ontario as well as Providence, Rhode Island, and Sarasota County, Florida. George directed the award winning University of Toronto Open Space Master Plan. He led the Downtown Ottawa Urban Design Strategy 20/20 and the Downtown
Hamilton Design Strategy, which include frameworks for community improvement, targets for site-specific and precinct-wide actions as well as design guidelines to evaluate future developments. He completed the Bridgepoint Health Neighbourhood Redevelopment Plan and the Master Plan for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Both are
large institutional sites in the center of Toronto, to be redeveloped as complete neighbourhoods while re-integrating their current uses into the existing urban communities.
George is renowned for his unique style and skill at facilitation and the ability to forge consensus among various stakeholders. He recently led a series of successful visioning exercises, design charrettes and other consultation events for such projects as the Fort York Neighbourhood Master Plan, the Markham Centre and the King Street West Precinct, in Toronto, the Town Centre Master Plan in Stratford, PEI, the Youngstown, Ohio Civic Vision Plan and as part of the North Moncton, NB, Development Vision team.
George recently completed the Cornell University’s Comprehensive Campus Master Plan, the Public Space Framework for Toronto’s Central Waterfront, and an update of the Master Plan for the University of Ottawa, and has provided consulting services to the University of Minnesota. George also recently completed the Central Corridor Development Strategy for the new LRT in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is working on 7 station area plans along the line. Additional transit related work includes LRT station area plans for the communities of Lions Park, Brentwoopd and Banff Trail in Calgary.
George is a Board Member of the Toronto Parks Foundation; Chairman of the Board of the Evergreen Foundation, on the Honour Roll of the Toronto Region Conservation Authority and a Member of the City of Ottawa Design Review Panel.
Visit the Urban Strategies website