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UrbanToronto is celebrating 20 YEARS throughout October with stories and images looking back over the last two decades. Today we begin with a look back at UrbanToronto itself and its evolution over the the period, the first of many in-depth articles to come this month.
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As one of the old-time members of the UrbanToronto Forum during its formative years — indeed, a great many of us have an interest in urban development in Toronto even predating the Forum — it gives me great pleasure to try and recount the history of UrbanToronto and its development over the past two decades, Please note that my recollection by no means offers a complete picture of the past, and after so many years my memory of events may very well be faulty. I beg readers for their forgiveness should I miss details that should have been mentioned, or worse, made inadvertent errors in my recollection. With that understanding in mind and without further ado, let’s dive into the early history of UT as I remember it!
Coming out from the deep recession of the early 1990s, development in the urban core of Toronto started to blossom again at the turn of the new millennium. It was during this time when CityPlace at the old railway lands was announced. Office development was still moribund, but there are also signs of change with the 20 storey high Maritime Life proposal at Yonge and Queen. The cultural sector in the city was starting to experience the first stirrings of Renaissance — modelled upon the success of trophy museum architecture catapulting cities onto the world stage (this is also known as the Bilbao Effect, after the impact Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao had on what was then a relatively unknown Basque city); and at the heels of the failed Olympic bid, all three levels of government had decided to — however tentatively — support revitalizing Toronto’s waterfront under the aegis of Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (TWRC, now Waterfront Toronto). This environment of heady change after a deep slumber provided fertile ground for urbanites in the city to gather and discuss development news and issues happening daily.
Even with the explosive growth of the internet as the preferred medium of public discourse since the mid-90s, there was no specific online meeting place for amateurs (and perhaps professionals) dedicated to Toronto architecture and development prior to UrbanToronto that I am aware of at the time. Those of us who were interested in Toronto development news in a web-forum setting came across and occupied our corner at the relatively new Skyscraperpage (SSP) and Skyscrapercity (SSC) forums. The sheer amount of development news in Toronto, along with an influx of members from our city soon created friction with other members on these forums and soon created impetus to build a space of our own.
One early SSP/SSC member in particular, Ryan, aka billycorgan19982 (named after the lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins), decided to take it upon himself to build a space dedicated to Toronto on the (now defunct) hosting service EZBoard in early 2002, and this new forum proved to be a draw for Torontonians from those more general forums. Given the origins of the new forum, it is natural that “Torontoskycraperforum” came to be the temporary moniker for our new home. Make no mistake though, it was a vibrant space that was not limited to skyscrapers fans! Our diverse, highly enthusiastic membership discussed architecture, urban planning, transportation, and other issues related to the city, and taught each other how to access sources of information (like city development reports) that were previously unknown to most members of the general public. The forum soon became the place to learn about development news in Toronto, driven purely by volunteers with a passion for the city, and often far ahead of coverage by traditional news sources.
Reflective of a wide-range of interests in the forum, a name change from Toronto Skyscraper Forum to UrbanToronto was made after a poll of members, and UT as we now know it was born! It was during these formative years that saw construction progress of the new Opera House, Frank Gehry’s Art Gallery of Ontario, Daniel Libeskind’s Royal Ontario Museum, all documented meticulously by members in our project threads. Forumers debated passionately over the merit of the then groundbreaking Neo-Modernist residential style from architectsAlliance, which generally shunned the extensive use of precast concrete prevalent in other projects at the time. Height enthusiasts cheered on as proposals like the Ritz-Carlton (renamed Trump Hotel, now St Regis) challenged the old bank towers for the title of the tallest building in the city. Transit fans may not have a lot to cheer for during those early years, but made up for the dearth of projects with arguments around the form and feasibility of transit projects and how they would compare against examples from other parts of the world. Initial design projects and competitions by the nascent Waterfront Toronto offered a glimpse of what’s in store for long-neglected areas of our city, such as the failed Ataratiri project in what is now the West Don Lands. It was truly a remarkable time, coincident with the urbanist sensibilities taking hold in Toronto at large during the early to mid-2000s.
The UrbanToronto Forum, like the city it calls home, has changed remarkably over the past two decades. The Forum has long outgrown the original EZBoard limitations, one of which was a built in capacity limit in posts that lead to the loss of the earliest musings on the forum; ownership of the Forum changed hands from Ryan to Ed Skira, an early member of the forum, and was subsumed into the broader UT organization offering professional coverage of Toronto development news. While Forum members come and go, we are proud of the history of the forum, and how it had served — and will continue to serve — as the home for everyone passionate about this city region.
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Alvin Ying is a one of UrbanToronto's earliest Forum members and a moderator on the site. He currently lives in Mississaugaand, when not on UrbanToronto, works at Toronto Metropolitan University.
UrbanToronto will return tomorrow with another story celebrating 20 YEARS. A second look back at transit over the period, this time on regional plans, will appear next week. In the meantime, check back often to our front page and Forum to keep an eye on all the current and emerging trends, and you can always leave your comments in the space below.
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Thank you to the companies joining UrbanToronto to celebrate our 20 years in business.
