The Boom of Downtown Toronto: The History of our "Vertical City" and how we got here

[TheTigerMaster]

Here's an interesting video I'd like to share. Micheal Leckman explains the history of development in our city, including the late 1800s population boom, post-war apartment blocks and our current successful model of high rise development and why the condo boom is indicative of the health of our city.

 

[rdaner]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting. I have to say that DSAI does an excellent job with public outreach and education.

 

[Bill_TO]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[44 North]

Cool, thanks for posting this. I'm not going to watch it right yet, but I love multimedia explanations of Toronto's growth. One of the books I have on my shelf that all I'll always keep with me is called Boomtown - Metropolitan Toronto (a photographic record of two decades of growth). It's a compilation of aerial photos showing the growth between the 40s/50s and 60s/70s that I swindled from my hs way back when. I love aerial imagery, and the book is particularly good at showing the development of the boroughs and their centres.

 

[Armour]

What a crock of shite. Everyone knows that those cranes in the sky are a direct result of the leadership of the Ford brothers. They even said so during last year's Meryl election (as good of proof as anyone needs). Let's leave the facts up to the real experts.

 

[thecharioteer]

Good video, but not entirely historically accurate in its overview. The 40-foot bylaw in the mid-70's did not ban all tall buildings, it was a holding bylaw intended to create a pause until the new Central Area Plan came into effect. There were tall buildings constructed between this time and the mid-90's: all those condos on Bay Street, Bloor Street, Harbourfront, from the boom of the late 80's. The evolution is a bit more nuanced than laid out here.

 

[ksun]

Sort of related, I found this anti-Jacobs article which essentially says suburbs are good and dense cores kill families/babies
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/01/what-jane-jacobs-got-wrong-about-cities.html

Can't disagree more. Using extremely cases of HK and Manhattan is silly - there are plenty of dense Asian and European cities where families live happily; and Koreans or Singaporeans now have fewer kids not because they live in the expensive cities, but because they realize they don't HAVE to have kids to have a full life. Kids are expensive, true, but not because housing is expensive, but because education etc is expensive and that has nothing to do with urban or suburban living. More important, they lived in dense cities when birth rates were high too, when they were actually much poorer.