Streetscaping:
The Roads Home

Everything in a neighbourhood begins at the street level, so when you’re recreating a neighbourhood from the ground up, details matter: how wide should the road be? How wide does it have to be? What kind of surface could it have? Where are the trees? What are the trees? What kind of streetlight best combines aesthetics and safety?

While work is progressing on several key arteries in East Village, the work on Confluence Way is particularly eye-catching. The street and sidewalk appear to share the same surfacing – small, carefully-placed cobblestones – beautifully and carefully designed to separate foot and vehicle traffic. In fact, the small "cobblestones" arrive from the factory in palette-sized sections nearly two feet long. Installation is considerably less painstaking than if each paver went in one at a time, and when it comes time to make road repairs or access utilities below, pavers can easily be removed and replaced, avoiding the traditional scarring process of digging up and repaving asphalt.