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UrbanToronto has partnered with the Council on Vertical Urbanism (CVU, formerly the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) for a 2026 walking tour series. The Transit+Towers: Transit-Oriented Development in Toronto public tours travel along the Yonge corridor from Union Station to Midtown, exploring how subway infrastructure and high-rise development have combined to transform Toronto over more than seven decades.
Organized by CVU’s Canada office, the evening series runs from late May through October, inviting both industry professionals and city-curious residents to experience the city during active hours. Guided stops combine historical insight with observations of present-day streets, buildings, and construction activity, turning the Yonge corridor into an open-air lesson in urban change.
“Transit-oriented development shapes Toronto's most dynamic downtown neighbourhoods, where transit and towers grow up together,” said Isaac Work of CVU. “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.”
Over two hours, participants will trace the effects of rapid transit on development along Yonge Street, from the subway’s opening in 1954 to the latest wave of intensification. The corridor offers a decades-long record of how access to transit has redirected investment, encouraged density, and altered the mix of uses surrounding Toronto’s stations.
Starting at Union Station’s Great Hall, the tour moves north through five snapshots of Toronto’s evolution: Union, College Park, Bloor–Yonge, St Clair, and Yonge and Eglinton. Together, the stops span the reuse of historic infrastructure, the challenges of redeveloping major interchange nodes, changing approaches to tower design, and a growing Midtown skyline shaped in anticipation of Eglinton Line 5.
The walk also considers the less predictable forces behind the skyline, including financing challenges that stall or alter projects, heritage considerations that shape new construction, and development that moves ahead before promised transit arrives. With cranes, completed towers, and emerging clusters visible along the way, participants can see how policy, economics, and infrastructure converge (and sometimes collide) on the ground.
CVU’s companion tour, From the Ground Up: The PATH and Pedestrian Toronto, shifts the focus below street level. Setting out from Toronto City Hall, the walk explores how the PATH’s roughly 30km of linked tunnels and concourses move people through the core while influencing the entrances, plazas, and streetscapes encountered above.
Three Transit+Towers walks remain in the 2026 series, each departing Union Station at 5:30 PM:
- Tuesday, August 18 — coming soon; reserve the last few tickets now!
- Thursday, September 17
- Tuesday, October 20
Tickets are available here. Attendees must cover their own TTC fare(s), though the two-hour itinerary should fit within a single fare when tapping with 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.
