Designing Cultural Commons 2.0 explores emerging models of public space in response to the growing demand for social infrastructure in Toronto’s downtown neighbourhoods. The lecture presents research conducted over the past year on three key urban interventions—The Bentway, STACKT Market, and Plaza POPS—each offering a distinct typological response to underutilized urban land. These precedents, activated through infrastructural reuse, temporary installations, and public-private partnerships, represent spatial forms including linear infrastructures, nodal sites, and temporal fields. While distinct in form and context, all three are united by their role as cultural commons: spaces that rely on collective stewardship, multifunctionality, and curated activation.
Using a framework developed in the publication Staged Urbanism (El Khafif, 2009), the lecture analyzes the spatial, programmatic, and organizational structures of each case. This tripartite lens reveals the deeper cultural, economic, and social dynamics at play, with particular attention to how these projects are implemented, sustained, and replicated. Emphasis is placed on the hybrid governance and stakeholder ecosystems that enable negotiation between top-down policy and bottom-up initiatives.
Research for this lecture includes analytical mappings, graphic and photographic documentation, site visits, and expert interviews. A central insight emerged from a conversation with urban designer Ken Greenberg, highlighting the catalytic nature of The Bentway—not simply as a space reclaimed from infrastructure, but as a socially generative platform driven by integrated programming and curatorial vision. Similar dynamics are observed at Stacked Market and Plaza POPS, where economic revitalization and community cohesion are achieved through temporal occupation and adaptive reuse. These projects signal a shift in urban practice toward curatorial models that reframe the commons as sites of cultural production and social negotiation. Together, they contribute a critical chapter to the author’s ongoing research and forthcoming publication On Urban Prototyping.
Learn more about the first half Dr. El Khafif’s lecture here.
About the speaker
Mona El Khafif is an architect, urban designer, and educator, currently serving as Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Urban Design at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Her work operates at the intersection of urban design, architecture, and place-making, with a particular focus on typological, temporal, and collaborative design strategies. El Khafif has taught and conducted research internationally, with previous academic appointments at TU Vienna, Tulane University, the California College of the Arts, and the University of Waterloo, where she co-founded the school’s DATAlab. In 2024, she was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, where she conducted research for her current book project, On Urban Prototyping. She holds a professional degree in architecture from RWTH Aachen and a doctorate in urban design from TU Vienna. Through her firm, SCALESHIFT, she collaborates with Ila Berman on urban interventions and installations.
