Toronto Sprawls: A History

by Lawrence Solomon

With a landmass of approximately 7000 square kilometres and a population of roughly five million, the Greater Toronto Area is Canada's largest metropolitan centre. How did a small nineteenth-century colonial capital become this sprawling urban giant, and how did government policies shape the contours of its landscape? In Toronto Sprawls , Lawrence Solomon examines the great migration from farms to the city that occurred in the last half of the nineteenth century. During this period, a disproportionate number of single women came to Toronto while, at the same time, immigration from abroad was swelling the city's urban boundaries. Labour unions were increasingly successful in recruiting urban workers in these years. Governments responded to these perceived threats with a series of policies designed to foster order. To promote single family dwellings conducive to the traditional family, buildings in high-density areas were razed and apartment buildings banned. To discourage returning First World War veterans from settling in cities, the government offered grants to spur rural settlement. These policies and others dispersed the city's population and promoted sprawl. An illuminating read, Toronto Sprawls makes a convincing case that urban sprawl in Toronto was caused not by market forces, but rather by policies and programs designed to disperse Toronto's urban population.

Genres: History

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2007

Reviews

[Brian Clement · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has some fairly useful information, all available from other sources, but handily compiled here in a form that zeroes specifically in on Toronto's suburban sprawl. Unfortunately, this is also a giant flaw, as with barely 70 pages of actual text and about 20 of footnotes, this is slim on content. The book doesn't start off well when the author essentially admits in the introduction that he hasn't bothered to research why similar sprawl occurred in other cities ("the story would be the same" isn't a good argument). The language used lays bare the book's ideological stance, which is fine, as it's useful to read opinionated work sometimes, but it at times becomes polemical. Despite correctly describing the way in which Toronto's government encouraged sprawl due to its members' 19th century Victorian-era moral attitudes that had them believing high urban density causes "moral degeneracy" and the desire to disperse the population and thus quash labour movements, it fails to make the connection that crushing labour movements is entirely playing to the interests of business, even if at the time the short-term effect is "uneconomic." The book correctly asserts that the Toronto suburbs were largely the product of government, and those suburbs then became an uncontrollable entity with a disproportionate level of political power. Some conclusions the book comes to, that the suburbs were a needless dispersal of population that created an imbalance of resource use, over reliance on automobile use, and widespread environmental problems, are certainly accurate. Other conclusions the book comes to, that deregulation of the modern housing market would reverse sprawl, are highly questionable and fail to take into account the radically different cultural, economic, and social environments of the modern world versus Toronto of 100 years ago. Preposterously, the book ends by suggesting that not only might sprawl reverse, but that disused suburban neighbourhoods would revert to farmland (??). There are no real-world examples or evidence offered to support this. If anything, the recent unregulated explosion of Air BnB properties offered by real estate "investors" would suggest otherwise.
Some useful info, but do more reading on the topic of Toronto's history and draw your own conclusions.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gobsmacking history of the forces brought to bear to make suburbia grow, against good design, good economics, and the desires of many a resident of them. Even as an avid urbanist, I was shocked at the depths we went to in order to foist these changes on society, and thankfully it is the thorough annotations of policies and political declarations that serve as receipts for what is otherwise almost too fantastical, or disheartening, to read. For anyone interested in the how or why of pushing suburbs on the masses, this is a hard to put down read.

[Cheryll Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading for any planning student.

[Paddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and well-researched argumenet for the role of government in promoting sprawl. A strong case for "market urbanism".