The Shape of the City: Toronto Struggles with Modern Planning

By John Sewell

Critics have long voiced concerns about the wisdom of living in cities and the effects of city life on physical and mental health. For a century, planners have tried to meet these issues. John Sewell traces changes in urban planning, from the pre-Depression garden cities to postwar modernism and a revival of interest in the streetscape grid. In this far-ranging review, Sewell recounts the arrival of modern city planning with its emphasis on lower densities, limited access streets, segregated uses, and considerable green space. He makes Toronto a case history, with its pioneering suburban development in Don Mills and its other planned communities, including Regent Park, St Jamestown, Thorncrest Village, and Bramalea. The heyday of the modern planning movement was in the 1940s to the 1960s, and the Don Mills concept was repeated in spirit and in style across Canada. Eventually, strong public reaction brought modern planning almost to a halt within the city of Toronto. The battles centred on saving the Old City Hall and stopping the Spadina Expressway. Sewell concludes that although the modernist approach remains ascendant in the suburbs, the City of Toronto has begun to replace it with alternatives that work. This is a reflective but vigorous statement by a committed urban reformer. Few Canadians are better suited to point the way towards city planning for the future.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080207409X
• ISBN13: 9780802074096
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A history of Toronto and of Urban Planning in general.

Ever wonder why Toronto is designed the way it is? This book gives you a thorough explanation that's easy to follow. Through former Toronto mayor John Sewell's effective writing, you will see the evolution of Urban Planning throughout his history of Toronto, and you will get a clear picture of where we are going, and where we ought to be going.

If you like Toronto...

Former Toronto mayor John Sewell switches from anecdotal experience (as in his excellent Up Against City Hall) to raw research for this book, an exhaustive look at urban planning in Toronto. Filled with fascinating diagrams of almost-built structures like the Toronto Pyramid and diagonal streets disecting Toronto's grid-like downtown, Sewell discusses many planning projects, both implemented and rejected. In-depth looks at Don Mills ("Canada's first corporate suburb") and St. Jamestown (a superblock requiring extensive demolition) overshadow discussion of the Eaton Centre proposal and the Spadina Expressway, significant projects that got scaled back in the end, and covered in much more detail in other books. For someone who does so much writing about Toronto (Sewell writes a weekly column on Toronto politics for eye Magazine), it's surprising that this is only his third book.