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UrbanToronto has partnered with the Council on Vertical Urbanism (CVU, formerly the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) to launch a 2026 walking tour series examining how transit infrastructure and urban development have shaped Toronto’s growth. These public tours explore the city at street level, connecting major transit nodes with the buildings and neighbourhoods that have emerged around them. Among the offerings, a transit-focused route along the Yonge Street corridor, supported by UrbanToronto, anchors the series.
Organized by CVU’s Canada office, the 2026 program runs from late May through October, 2026, with evening departures scheduled across multiple dates, allowing participants to experience the city during active hours. Each tour is structured as a guided walk through key sites, pairing historical context with present-day conditions to illustrate how Toronto’s built form has evolved. The series is designed to engage both industry professionals and curious residents.
"Transit-oriented development shapes Toronto's most dynamic downtown neighbourhoods, where transit and towers grow up together," said a CVU representative. "These tours are an opportunity to understand how the city is being built and who's shaping it. We're proud to partner with UrbanToronto to get people out into the urban classroom, the best venue for understanding how that relationship works on the ground.”
UrbanToronto’s contribution comes through Transit+Towers: Transit-Oriented Development in Toronto, a two-hour walking tour that examines how rapid transit investment has influenced growth along the Yonge Street corridor. Framed as a continuous case study stretching back to the subway’s 1954 debut, the route connects a sequence of sites where infrastructure and development have intersected in different ways over time, revealing how density, land use, and investment patterns have responded to transit access.
Beginning at Union Station’s Great Hall and proceeding north to Yonge and Eglinton, the tour follows a five-stop route that moves through distinct phases of city-building. Early stops highlight the role of legacy infrastructure and adaptive reuse, from the regional hub at Union to the evolving block at College Park, while Bloor-Yonge introduces the complexities of large-scale redevelopment in a high-demand node. Farther north, St Clair presents a shift in built form and architectural expression, before the tour concludes at Eglinton, where new towers reflect intensification tied to Eglinton Line 5.
Across these stops, the tour explores the forces that shape transit-oriented development beyond planning policy alone. Participants are guided through examples of projects delayed or reshaped by financial pressures, sites where heritage considerations have influenced outcomes, and areas where construction activity has preceded the arrival of new transit service. With active construction sites, recently completed buildings, and emerging clusters all visible along the route, the experience offers a grounded look at how transit and development interact in practice across one of Toronto’s most important corridors.
Complementing the transit-focused walk, CVU is also offering From the Ground Up: The PATH and Pedestrian Toronto, a tour centred on the city’s extensive underground network and its relationship to the public realm above. Beginning at Toronto City Hall, the route examines how roughly 30km of interconnected concourses, tunnels, and indoor spaces support daily movement through the downtown core, while also shaping how streets, plazas, and building entrances are designed at grade.
Tours for Transit+Towers are scheduled across six dates from late May through October, with all departures from Union Station set for 5:30 PM:
- Thursday, May 28
- Tuesday, June 30
- Thursday, July 23
- Tuesday, August 18
- Thursday, September 17
- Tuesday, October 20
Tickets can be purchased here. Participants are responsible for their own TTC fare(s). As the tour is planned for 2 hours, it should be accomplishable with one TTC fare as long as you're paying by Presto or a credit card.
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UrbanToronto's research and data service, UTPro, provides comprehensive data on construction projects in the Greater Golden Horseshoe—from proposal through to completion. Other services include Instant Reports, downloadable snapshots based on location, and a daily subscription newsletter, New Development Insider, that tracks projects from initial application.
