The label of “Free Trade Zone” seems to most, concise, a zone being a demarcated piece of land and what happens in said zone? Trade. And how does this happen? With agreed upon freedoms, less regualtion, or monetary incentives. This position explores what happens when that space isn’t confined to its borders, when greed overtakes foresight, and when balance is crushed for profit.


    As powerful and rising nations compete for attention and presence from transnational corporations, they lower ethical standards in hopes to outlast and out perform competition with the constant bottom line of capital. This practice historically disenfranchises the working class, land, and often societal norms. Cutting corners from the urban and natural experience while distilling the base notions of travel and place, these parasitic, yet fiscally championed trade zones leach attention and resources from host cities and their constituents.


    In this context, Mississauga, Ontario was destined to become a Western 20th Century test bed from its incorporation in 1974, a time in which bordering Toronto was developing rapidly with construction of Pearson International Airport and Downtown Financial Districts. These circumstances allowed Toronto and Mississauga to develop around these two geographically distanced districts, each informed with a new vernacular. Vernacular of the downtown is one that could seemingly find itself in any metropolis cityscape, from Hong Kong to Singapore, repeated facades rising exponentially as lifeless extruded forms. The airport’s trade support region instead sees low building heights from airport ordinances and endless concrete and asphalt. This fast and loose co-development meant that planners, city officials, and residents had little time to comprehend the future implications or what these operationally oppositional architectural vernaculars would mean to the future of the city. The confluence of these factors and a desire for fast construction lead to the polyglot skylines and spralling, land hungry warehouse lots we see today with few existing legitimate districts. These spaces now bleed together, creating circumstances of edge friction between opposing land use, this friction is now a result that can be hacked.


    The region is also slated to see further scarcity and immense population growth over the next 20 years that will see it become an even more monotonous and placeless locale with projected shipping needs exploding proportionally. With land already overdeveloped and with a not yet aged out housing and infrastructure stock, supplementing the regions trade and international commerce is the point of leverage the city needs to address immediately. Edge conditions between the YYZ’s commercial corporate zone and suburbs, nature, and existing infrastructures are case studies on environmental disparity. The borders of the zone are often treated as foreboding, unwelcome guests that refuse to be insulated and sealed off from the world they deal to. Putting an end to the undefined and outlining districts is one of many points of leverage with the potential to redefine a place that has been left to the devices of underregulated corporate use for too long. Looking toward past typologies and hijacked governmental structures to inform this impromptu code switching and redefinition is a prioritized strategy to encounter these sites of tension.


    Although an undeniably complex system of global finance and trade, if clear catalysts can be easily identified, then why can’t more be introduced to alter and reroute the system. Rethinking this place in terms of what comes in and what that means can be propagated through algorithmic thinking. Introducing variables can theoretically change the meaning of the original input. By focusing on the goals of maximizing local financial kick back, increasing regulation of foreign trade economy, and reducing physical goods moved, possible variables include architectural fittings that can provide new incentives for digital capital and local partnerships. Building more may seem counter intuitive, however these interventions aim to put an end to the current status quo of this trade zone and outline a prototype for others. As Toronto and Mississauga were once test beds that lead to the current condition we must be open to offering them a novel, perhaps much more important place in the lineage of locality amongst a global network.


    Offering less destructive incentives and options that provide the potential to connect international and local economies and conditions of Mississauga is a desired outcome that will require a more complex, system based integration that extends beyond typologies, but they are a start. The totality of the situation and context of the position is not solely one of playing catch up, but more importantly one that plans ahead, manipulates, and hacks an existing condition for the betterment of local space and people. Borrowing from existing genres can manage some of the work, while mitigating their own inherent damage and unwanted connotation is much of the rest. There are transitions, many so stark they cannot be allowed to encroach any further under any circumstance, this is why a set of architectures seem a fitting response.