Toronto Adopts Five Infrastructure Strategies for Downtown Core Growth

Toronto adopted five infrastructure strategies covering community facilities, parks and public realm, mobility, energy and water under its TOcore Downtown Plan to ensure timely infrastructure provision for growth.

Plans in peer cities set multi-decade roadmaps

Denver City Council officially adopted the 2025 Downtown Area Plan, establishing a 20-year roadmap through 2045 for major public and private investment in the urban core. Victoria's new Downtown Core Area Plan replaces the previous framework to guide growth and development over the next 30 years with updated land use, transportation and sustainability policies. The Downtown Austin Strategic Initiative was approved to coordinate infrastructure, mobility, arts and economic development projects including the I-35 cap-and-stitch and Project Connect.

These adopted frameworks in Denver, Victoria and Austin reflect parallel efforts to sequence investment in downtown cores facing sustained population and development pressure. Toronto's five strategies under TOcore align with this pattern by naming discrete sectors for coordinated delivery rather than leaving infrastructure responses to individual project approvals.

Digital connectivity forms part of the infrastructure mix

Beanfield Metroconnect operates wired broadband infrastructure specifically in and around Toronto's downtown core, while the City of Toronto possesses untapped fiber-optic assets capable of building its own network. ConnectTO, approved by Toronto City Council in 2021, aims to close the city's persistent digital divide by modernizing public Wi-Fi across 100+ facilities and stewarding resources for a citywide broadband network. Canada's national Connectivity Strategy targets 95% of Canadians having access to high-speed internet by 2026 and 100% by 2030, leveraging over $1 billion in public and private partnerships for 20,000+ km of new fiber. New municipal and regional fiber projects in downtown cores like Great Barrington, Rockport and Campbell River now offer symmetrical speeds up to 1 gigabit per second with options for 10 Gbps custom coverage.

The combination of existing private operators, municipal dark fiber holdings and the ConnectTO program positions Toronto to layer digital infrastructure onto the five TOcore strategies already adopted. Cities such as Great Barrington, Rockport and Campbell River demonstrate that smaller-scale fiber builds can reach 1 Gbps symmetrical service, offering a benchmark for what expanded municipal assets in Toronto could achieve once activated.

City staff will continue to advance the five TOcore strategies through capital budgeting and coordination with private providers already active in the downtown core.