
Rx for Social Connection
February 3, 2025
What role can public space design and programming play in fostering connection and combating loneliness? The report Rx For Social Connection: Public space as a strategy to combat loneliness, released by The Bentway with partners Gehl (New York) and researchers from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (U of T) reveals the essential role […]
2023-2024 Annual Report
October 22, 2024
forward motion: a note from our leadership 2023-24 saw Toronto stepping into a new era of urban optimism, as we pushed through recent challenges together to embrace new leadership, new partnerships, and new civic potential. We’re so proud that The Bentway continued to shine as a beacon of our city’s imagination, inviting Torontonians to look […]

Public Art and Sustainability Initiative
October 9, 2024
Over the last several years The Bentway has been working to better understand our role as public space developers and operators, as well as arts professionals working in the midst of a climate emergency. In order to address the specific environmental challenges in public areas and in the presentation of public art works, in March […]

Dive Deeper into Beyond Concrete
August 30, 2023
The Bentway’s 2023 Beyond Concrete summer season explored the urban ecosystem beneath the Gardiner Expressway, where human-made infrastructure intertwines with flora and fauna. The relationship between concrete and nature is complex and interconnected. In this story series, we heard from experts around the world who engage with these themes in their daily work and have unique perspectives. […]

Live Magazine at The Bentway Street Summit
May 13, 2023
Live Magazine is a project by Frontier, a Toronto design studio, that offers smart distillations of stimulating gatherings. Each issue gives readers insight into an event’s most powerful ideas and conversations. This issue took place at the Bentway’s 2022 Street Summit, where we took to streets and public spaces to think with others about city life.

The Field Guide to Digital and/as Public Space
November 19, 2021
In early 2021 The Bentway launched the Digital and/as Public Space initiative, with the goal of exploring the interaction between digital and physical space in order to re-examine public space, overcome access barriers, promote civic engagement, and support community resilience in online, offline, and hybrid contexts. This project included eight micro-residencies that explored hybrid public realms and […]

Play Provocations
September 30, 2021
Play Provocations is an exploration of how to expand the definition of play, both who it is for and what it can do. An output of The Bentway’s Summer 2021 program, Playing in Public, the publication was created with Daily tous les jours, and both examines program learnings and suggests discoveries that can inform the work of others ‘playing’ in play.

Safe In Public Space
October 11, 2020
Presented in the height of the pandemic in 2020/21, Safe In Public Space worked to to broaden the definition of public safety to address new public health challenges presented by COVID, as well as systemic inequities that play out in our shared places.