YZD: a runway becomes a boulevard. Toronto's next neighbourhood, or a 30-year site?

Bombardier’s last aircraft left Downsview in 2023, and what it left behind was a runway two kilometres long in the middle of North York, with two subway stations and a GO station on its edges.

Northcrest’s plan for the 370 acres is called YZD, after the airport’s code: seven neighbourhoods and 54,000 residents over thirty years and about $30 billion, in what has been called the largest urban redevelopment in North America. The project moved into construction this year. The proposal for the second district, Wilson, around the subway station at the southern tip, was due to the city early in 2026. The runway itself is being redesigned by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates as a pedestrian boulevard of parks, plazas and retail linking the old hangars to everything else.

It is the only place left in the city where a whole new district can be built from scratch, and the argument is less about whether than about pace: whether a thirty-year plan is prudence or a way of never quite arriving.

Sources: Connect CRE, YZD moves into construction · Toronto Life, the runway becomes a boulevard · The Globe and Mail, a $30-billion neighbourhood over three decades · Northcrest Developments