Cities 27 (2010) 103–113

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Cities

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‘More Toronto, naturally’ but ‘too strange for Orangeville’: De-universalizingNew Urbanism in Greater Toronto

Susan MooreBartlett School of Planning, University College London, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 23 February 2009Accepted 14 October 2009Available online 28 November 2009

Keywords:CanadaCitiesSuburbsNew UrbanismHousing

0264-2751/$ - see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.cities.2009.10.004

E-mail address: susan.moore@ucl.ac.uk1 See New Urbanism Timeline at www.nutimeline.n

Utilizing the empirical study of four ‘New Urbanist’ housing schemes, this paper seeks to unpack theemergence, legitimisation, contestation and subsequent hybridisation of New Urbanism in urban andsuburban Toronto. Conceptually, the paper builds on the observation that in order to understand the cir-culation of New Urbanism as a global movement, it is necessary to first de-universalize the processes; toview it as a globally circulated idea that crucially is co-constituted by the practices of situated interpre-tative communities of development and planning actors. The situated complexities of New Urbanist pro-duction in Greater Toronto are used as a critical lens to understand the constrained dynamism of theregional development and building culture which is relationally assembled through regulatory, industryand ideological practices. New Urbanism is re-positioned as a localized and politicized housing responseto suburban growth management and urban intensification agendas that is unevenly supported in termsof market acceptance, historical precedence, technocratic planning and product design flexibility.

� 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The planning and design movement known as the New Urban-ism has increasingly become a social and material force, both with-in the development industry and the arenas of urban policy. Theself-promotion of New Urbanism as the pre-ordained ‘end state’of a process of trial and error in architecture and planning1 to attaintruths of ‘good city’ form has obscured the reality that New Urban-ism is but one of many possible approaches to urban form and de-sign available to address the situated development conditions of agiven time and place. In Toronto, twinned political efforts focusedon the importance of ‘managing’ suburban growth, while intensify-ing and redeveloping disused urban land, have supported the exper-imentation with the New Urbanism. The movement’s influence hasnow clearly extended from the suburban greenfield context to thatof the city centre, with the production of large-scale master-plannedresidential developments on brownfield sites. Indeed, on the surface,Toronto appears to be yet another locality where the seemingly glo-bal reach of this planning and design movement, characterised bythe revival of ‘traditionalist’ architecture and design principles topromote ‘‘compact, mixed-use, walkable, and reasonably self-con-tained communities” (Grant, 2006, p. 3) has taken hold. But NewUrbanism’s reach is more ubiquitous in Toronto’s development cul-ture than the prima facie design presence suggests.

ll rights reserved.

et.

Toronto’s unique social, political and economic dynamics, pastand present, have – and continue to – influence the rationalisationof New Urbanism as constitutive of the ‘good city’ and ‘good plan-ning’ or ‘responsible building’. The questions that emerge are howand why this particular rationalisation has occurred within Toron-to? Why now? (cf. McCann, 1995; Falconer Al-Hindi and Till, 2001;Grant, 2006). In posing these questions, the intent of this paper isneither to discredit, nor promote New Urbanism, but rather tounderstand how it has emerged, been legitimated and invariablycontested, within and through the regulatory and cultural con-straints on new private housing provision in the Toronto region.This paper thus attempts to demonstrate how the assumption thatToronto has been enveloped by a global movement belies the spec-ificity of the practices of housing producers operating in this con-text. It is argued that the activities, decisions, perceptions andinteractions of these development actors constitute, rather thanmerely affect, the emergence, legitimisation and hybridisation ofNew Urbanism in-and-around Toronto.

The empirical basis of this analysis is a study of four master-planned communities in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA): two lo-cated on brownfield sites in the City of Toronto; and two locatedon greenfield sites in the suburban fringe. Fifty-seven semi-struc-tured interviews were undertaken with key development actors(public and private) involved in the conception, planning anddelivery of each of the project sites. Conceptually, the paper drawson a relational approach, which focuses on the constraint-basednature of developer practices in the production, rather thanconsumption, of New Urbanism projects. In so doing, it argues that

104 S. Moore / Cities 27 (2010) 103–113

despite the apparent universalization and diffusion as a globalplanning and design movement and network (cf. Thompson-Fawc-ett, 2003), New Urbanism, like all forms of building provision, is aninherently situated social and messy process (cf. Farmer and Guy,2002). The seeming coherence of its accepted conventions andprinciples (like the Congress for the New Urbanism Charter) ob-scures the situated hybridity of contestation, conflict, collabora-tion, and alternatives that prefigure the translation of ideas,materials, techniques and approaches into accepted practice.

3

Toronto’s ‘sprawling’ development trajectory

The ‘Greater Toronto Area’ (GTA) is the largest and fastest grow-ing metropolitan region in Canada, with a 2006 Census populationof 5.6 million people. Toronto is widely considered to be one of themost multi-cultural metropolitan regions in the world (cf. Woodand Gilbert, 2005) and for a period during the 1990s often topped‘quality of life’ league tables for the best place to live and work (e.g.Fortune Magazine 1996; UN-Habitat 2004). The adage of the ‘citythat works’ became a popular way to describe Toronto for the pro-gressive urban reforms it delivered throughout the late 1960s andearly 1970s. This positive press heralded Toronto for ‘its progres-sive social policies, particularly in the area of housing; for its clean,safe streets; for its state-of-the-art public transportation; for its re-formed metropolitan government; and consistently, for its atmo-sphere of ethnic and racial harmony’ (Croucher, 1997, p. 320). Allof these claims of ‘Toronto the good’2 were largely made knownthrough the contextualization of Toronto in relation to ‘other’ NorthAmerican cities, primarily those in the United States which hadincreasingly suffered from urban decentralization and the hollowingout of their urban centres. In contrast, Toronto’s suburbs did notemerge as the exclusive domain of the middle classes; the city main-tained a residential stronghold amongst the upper, middle andworking class populations. This is not to say that Metropolitan Tor-onto (formed in 1953 which integrated the City of Toronto and thefive surrounding municipalities into a federated municipal form)did not experience a period of stagnation in terms of employmentand population, which by the mid 1980s had been increasing inareas outside of ‘Metro’. Sprawling development patterns (cf. Solo-mon, 2007; Sewell, 2009) throughout the GTA have long been a sub-ject of academic, bureaucratic, professional and environmentaldebate but this concern has largely rested on the emergent fear ofeconomic, social and environmental decline (Isin, 1998).

These fears remain, and ‘sprawl’, particularly defined by resi-dential development patterns and pressures, has become a majorpolitical platform upon which local and provincial agendas havecalled for new urban reforms to ‘stop sprawl’ and facilitate com-pact growth (Bunce, 2004). This climate of a perceived need forsystemic changes to how and where residential development andits supporting infrastructure are planned, designed and built hasgiven way to a wave of support throughout political and economiccircles, including contingents of the development and buildingindustry, for re-using derelict and under-utilized urban land. Whilethis is the case, large tracts of greenfield lands are still being devel-oped into extensive housing tracts. In the late 1980s the popularityof New Urbanism in the United States (particularly communitiesplanned by Andres Duany) began to influence private developers

2 Following Milroy et al. (1998) Toronto in the 1960s known as ‘Toronto the Good’in reference to its reputation for being safe and clean, while in the 1970s the city wasoften called ‘the city that works’ because unlike many of its American counterparts,the downtown had not been gutted and city services still functioned effectively.However, the first recorded reference to ‘Toronto the Good’ occurred in the 1880sfollowing the religiously motivated civic reforms to clean up the city championed byMayor William Howland. See Solomon (2007) for a more comprehensive historicalunpacking of ‘Toronto the Good’.

and public officials looking for alternatives to the sprawling natureof suburban housing in the GTA. Several experiments with NewUrbanism received planning permission in the early-to-mid1990s; and by the early 2000s the proliferation of housing develop-ments throughout the GTA that had taken cues from the early NewUrbanist prototypes had burgeoned. More recently, experimenta-tion with New Urbanism extended from the suburban context intothe city, and with this has come the blurring of the hitherto essen-tialised division of Toronto’s regional homebuilding industry into‘greenfield’ and ‘brownfield’ producers, products and markets.New-build construction within the City of Toronto has increasedin recent years, with over 30% of all new construction occurringwithin the current boundaries of the city (Hemson ConsultingLtd., 2003).3 Nevertheless, debates surrounding sprawl and housingdensities in Toronto abound (cf. Bourne, 2001; Vipond, 2000; Gor-don, 2002; Gordon and Vipond, 2005; Skaburskis, 2006) with the sig-nificance of New Urbanism underscored by the GTA’s notoriety asthe largest concentration of New Urbanist projects in the world (Ste-uteville, 2000; Gordon and Taminga, 2002; Skaburskis, 2006).

Large scale, comprehensively planned ‘communities’ hold a par-ticularly salient place in Toronto’s planning and development his-tory. Don Mills, constructed in the mid-1950s is often compared toLevittown, Long Island as the exemplar response to the post-warhousing demand and a reaction to poor quality homes created aspart of an immigration-fuelled construction boom (Sewell, 1993;Martin, 2003). Unlike Levittown, however, Don Mills was con-ceived as a total community or new town not merely a showcaseof mass housing production capabilities. Despite its visionary incli-nations to promote an inclusive design encouraging a range ofhousing forms and prices while maximizing the amenities of publicopen space, the Don Mills model became the default form of sub-urban development (Martin, 2003; Sewell, 1993). Communitieslike Don Mills located on the urban periphery of Toronto, at onceredefined sprawl and epitomised it. Seen in striking opposition tothe processes under which the ‘city’ organically grew around smallunserviced, scattered developments (Harris, 2004) these new townprojects were conceived as ‘tidy’ and ‘carefully planned’. Sprawlwas re-positioned as a threat to the domestic bliss and privateproperty values (McMahon and Miller, 1998) that municipal plan-ning and development control could achieve, but there was also aninherent aesthetic qualification that it was not sprawl if it was acarefully planned ‘community’. These early suburban develop-ments of the 1950s and 1960s share an uncanny similarity in ap-proach to the conceptualisation of sprawl as bad unless it iswell-planned sprawl suggested by New Urbanists (cf. Grant,2006, p. xvii).

There is a growing commitment amongst public bodies and pri-vate development interests within the GTA to make the suburbsless like the suburbs. Sceptics, however, question the feasibilityof the outer suburbs4 intensifying enough to mirror the ideal epito-mised in the older, well-loved Toronto neighbourhoods, which wereonce also considered desolate suburbs (Gorrie, 2002). The influenceof the automobile on the design of residential spaces has, for somecritics, pre-empted any opportunity to redesign and redevelopsprawling suburbs. But suburbanisation is not only occurring inthe suburbs. The city itself is demonstrating characteristics usually

While a significant proportion of the new build can be identified as mediumdensity single and stacked townhouses that mimic the vernacular of the adjacentolder Toronto neighbourhoods, the majority of the statistics for new build arecurrently comprised by the rapid completion of high-rise condominium towerswithin the City of Toronto.

4 By contrast, the ‘inner suburbs’ of Toronto have experienced significant decline insocio-economic vitality (cf. Murdie, 1998; CMHC, 2007), wherein a largely outdatedhousing stock constituted by post-war suburban housing tracts and public housingdevelopments has deteriorated and employment has continued to deindustrialise andextend into the more affluent outer suburbs.

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attributed to ‘suburban’ consumption and preferences. Rather thansuburbanisation through multiplication-by-subdivision; re-develop-ment, urban intensification and regeneration pursuits have intro-duced a suburban ethic in the city. The boom in condominiumdevelopment and big-box and car-oriented retail centres coupledwith the influx of large-scale single-family infill housing develop-ment schemes on brownfield lands has prompted observations thatdevelopment practices and policies in the city are ‘suburbanising’ (cf.Keil in Gorrie, 2002). The urbanisation of the suburbs or the subur-banisation of the urban may seem little more than semantics, butthere is no doubt that the GTA is a city region in transition. Any fearsthat Toronto’s downtown could ‘hollow out’ in the way that Ameri-can cities did in the late 1960s and 1970s are certainly unfounded.Toronto remains vibrant and steadily growing. The land availabilitywithin the City, largely due to de-industrialisation, suggests that itcould accommodate a growth of 540,000–660,000 people over thenext 30 years or even one million people, as forecasted by the cur-rent Official Plan. Yet, between 1996 and 2001, the area surroundingthe City of Toronto grew at an average 17%, which was more thanfour times the rate of the city’s growth (Carey, 2002). These growthpressures worry politicians and planners, that Toronto’s infrastruc-ture, community facilities, emergency and social security systemswill not be able to deal with the projected increase in a dispersedpopulation.

Thus, the identification of ‘sprawl’ as a bad thing has had a longhistory in Toronto’s urban evolution and the various responses tothe perceived problems facing suburbia and the central city alike– lack of affordable housing, crumbling infrastructure, congestion– have in the last decade become part of smart growth-style agen-das. With attention focused on regaining lost accolades for urbanefficiency, the importance of ‘managing’ suburban growth andintensifying land use in cities and towns has forced Toronto andarea municipalities to institute a step-change in development pol-icy and practice. These changes are not equally welcomed by alllocalities. This is roughly the context within which the develop-ment actors, public and private, involved in creating new housingschemes operate and reproduce. Competing conceptualisations ofwhat it means to be a ‘good city’ within the regulatory, institu-tional and cultural constraints of the 21st century ‘suburban’metropolis are being played out in Toronto’s development land-scape. Toronto’s past, present and future are intricately bound upin processes of rationalisation of what constitutes good planning.New Urbanism in Toronto may not be the radical break from mod-ernist regulatory controls its proponents attest it to be, rather itsproliferation in-and-around Toronto illustrates the extent to whicha continuity of situated concerns for how city and suburb (can, doand should) co-exist persists. It is, perhaps, this continuity thatsupports New Urbanist-inspired housing as the de facto expressionof creativity and innovation in the current development and regu-latory context of the GTA.

New Urbanism in Toronto

The manifestation of New Urbanism in both suburb and city iswell reflected in four empirical case studies drawn from a larger re-search project on New Urbanism in Toronto completed in late2005. These are profiled briefly below. By examining the narrativesof production5 for each of these case studies it is argued that the

5 For the purposes of this research, the focus is on the often overlooked production,rather than consumption of New Urbanism. Considerable literature exits on the latter;some is theoretical – but largely practical in scope, and highly polarized intocompeting perspectives of promoters and detractors of the Movement. As such, realdebate on the impact of New Urbanism’s normalisation and proliferation (in a varietyof national, local and regional contexts) has been relatively limited in the human andurban geography literature.

meaning of New Urbanism has been conceptualised, reproducedand normalised, and at times questioned and contested, by the hous-ing producers involved. Together this analysis illustrates the dyna-mism and situated nature of the processes of building productionexperienced and enabled by the producers. All development activitymust exist within an active, yet situated, cultural, institutional andregulatory context. New Urbanism is unique in its attempt to exploitand develop flexibility within the conventions of modern develop-ment practice and policy, but this revolutionary propensity has notemerged unscathed or unaltered. Each of the case studies outlinedbelow demonstrates the tendency for New Urbanist visions to betransformed into something of a hybrid of process and form (seeMap 1).

Cornell, Town of Markham

Cornell was originally conceived in 1988 as an affordable hous-ing demonstration project on 500 acres of government land maderedundant from the shelved proposal for a second major interna-tional airport. The Province spearheaded the scheme to showcasewhat private developers and builders could do to improve theaffordability and availability of the range of housing types and ten-ures. A joint venture between the Province of Ontario and theTown of Markham was formally initiated in 1989 to undertakethe demonstration project. Early results proved lack-lustre, andprompted a competitive search for new urban development anddesign ideas with a specific interest in, the then relatively un-known, New Urbanism. In 1992 the Miami-based firm of DPZ(Duany Plater-Zyberk and Associates) was hired to provide theconceptual vision for a New Urbanist community in Markham.The draft plan approval for the development of 10,000 units andan anticipated population of 30,000 was granted in 1994 which in-volved an exhaustive process of regulatory amendments in orderto permit the alternative design and development standards fornew ‘traditional town’ features not previously incorporated intolarge-scale housing developments in Markham or elsewhere inthe Toronto region (see Figs. 1 and 2).

A series of successive changes in government severely impactedthe development trajectory of Cornell as an affordable housingdemonstration project. Most notably in 1995 the election of theProgressive Conservative Party radically undercut all social andaffordable housing programs and initiatives and promoted the sell-ing of redundant provincially-owned lands and projects to privateinterests. The government also transferred previously government-sponsored programs and funding responsibilities to ill-preparedand under resourced local municipalities. Thus, in 1996, the Cor-nell lands were sold to a private development consortium, LawDevelopment Group, who agreed to maintain the New Urbanismof DPZ’s conceptual plans and to meet the site-specific regulations(including the secondary plan, zoning by-law and design guid-ance). Under this management structure, Phase 1 of Cornell wasconstructed by four homebuilders. Poor management and coordi-nation plagued the first phase and it proved to be a financial fail-ure. The first 1100–1300 homes sold well however, and an earlypopulation of approximately 3000 residents moved in. A lengthyperiod of inactivity in building occurred over the next few yearswith new phases only resuming construction in 2002–2003. De-spite the early intentions for Cornell as a demonstration project fal-tering it has nonetheless been used as a ‘test site’ by developers(and the municipality) for developing and marketing new housingproducts.

‘Cornell is an opportunity for developers and builders to testthese products because Cornell as a community accepts thistype of product very well and also this product fits very wellinto a rear-lane based environment. So they want to try a lot

Map 1. Greater Toronto Area, showing general location of four case studies.

Fig. 1. Neotraditional designs with minimum setback. Fig. 2. Coach-house unit over rear detached garage.

106 S. Moore / Cities 27 (2010) 103–113

of different things in Cornell because they think that a lot ofthese products are what they are going to be building in tenyears and they want to get it right...’ (Interview Senior Munici-pal Planner)

‘Cornell has the power to in part, influence everything else thatgets built in the GTA’ (Interview Homebuilder)

The current challenge for Cornell proponents is to maintain itsoriginal all rear-lane based design in the wake of wider acceptance(and copying) of the higher density products it initially showcasedto the local marketplace. The developers and builders are awarethat this formulaic characteristic of Cornell is what maintains itsuniqueness and price premium but they are increasingly cognisant

of the need to diversify the Cornell ‘product’ to maintain competi-tiveness in an increasingly normalised market for New Urbanist-inspired design features in what are otherwise conventionalschemes. In support of maintaining the ‘vision’ the Town of Mark-ham has codified New Urbanism as a strategic planning approachfor all new development in the Town and actively promotes itselfas ‘Canada’s Centre of Excellence for New Urbanism’. The Town’sformalisation of New Urbanism as its planning doctrine has influ-enced the acceptance of developers and consumers to this formof housing in the localized context. The ‘branding’ of Markhamwith the New Urbanist label has been a conscious political decisionto which the market actors have been hesitant yet still willing toadhere. The degrees to which developers and builders are willing

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to undertake a New Urbanist project in Markham, indeed withinCornell, is reflective of the perceived risks associated with sellingto a known market niche, in a supportive planning regime, versusattempting it in an unproven market and political climate else-where (as reflected in the next case study).

Fig. 3. Rear loaded attached garage.

Fig. 4. Rear streetscape showing mix of garage/storage shed options.

Montgomery Village, Town of Orangeville

Located in the Town of Orangeville 80 km northwest of down-town Toronto, Montgomery Village is, along with Cornell, consid-ered one of the first New Urbanist developments in Canada. Thesite comprises a 250-acre parcel of land owned by the River OaksGroup,6 who brought forward the idea of using the land as a pilotproject to introduce what was then referred to as ‘neo-traditional’design into the area. Urban Strategies Inc.7 was retained in the early1990s to drive the creative design of the new scheme, which in-cluded the introduction of alternative design standards. The newforms included more than 600 homes proposed within and along-side a mixed-use neighbourhood centre or ‘Main Street’ built fol-lowing a 19th century grid pattern and architectural designfeatures. The original draft plan approved in 1993 consisted of sin-gle detached homes, semi-detached homes and town houses all ofwhich incorporated front porches, rear laneway access and de-tached rear garages. The early intention of the developer was tomarket Montgomery Village as Canada’s first ‘tele-community’;but with the downturn of the economy in the early-1990s recessionperiod the scheme faltered from an economic viewpoint, and nei-ther the technological element nor the neo-traditional vision sur-vived intact. Only a fraction of the originally intended ‘Village’homes were constructed to the original specifications. River OaksGroup eventually sold off its remaining building plots within thepre-approved draft plan of subdivision to a locally-based builderwho in each successive phase of the development altered the de-sign, type, size and number of homes further and further away fromthe New Urbanist vision. In particular, the builder was grantedplanning permission to maintain the rear laneway access road butto attach the garages to the rear of the homes or to give purchasersthe option of no garage, but still rear laneway access.

The result is a confused collection of homes with detached andattached rear garages or no garages but small storage sheds locatednext to a rear driveway or parking pad (see Figs. 3 and 4). The lossof the original vision has meant that, at the time of study, Mont-gomery Village consisted of a small grid based ‘snapshot’ of the ori-ginal plan, within which the proposed mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented Main Street concept has given way to all residential atincreasingly lower densities8 and in the final phase of productionhas completely reverted back to conventional designs with widelot frontages and attached front-facing three and four car garages.

The suggestion has been made that New Urbanism was just ‘toostrange’ for Orangeville and its failure was due to the fact that theidea was never completely validated in the marketplace nor withinthe institutional response of the municipality (which resisted mostof the alternative design and development standards required toaccommodate the lot layout and rear-lane access roads). The result

6 River Oaks Group is a family-owned developer/builder that has been in operationfor over 45 years. The second generation management of the company is currentlydirected by the son of the original owner, whose idea it was to use the Orangevilleproperty as a pilot project for neo-traditional design. In conversation with the currentdirector, it was clear that he considers himself and his company to be an ‘urban’operator (as opposed to suburban) and is motivated to complete only ‘higher order’projects in city environments and markets.

7 Formerly known as Berridge, Lewinberg, Greenberg, Dark and Gabor.8 The original plan envisioned 750 dwellings but the actual number constructed

over subsequent phases is only 429 consisting of 274 singles and 155 townhouseswith the final 80 homes in phase 5 reverting back to conventional frontloaded (norear laneway or garage) product.

precipitated the compromising of the New Urbanist vision beyondrecognition. Interestingly, the development process of Montgom-ery Village actually seemed to re-legitimise conventional suburbanhousing development in the local real estate market. The snapshotof New Urbanism found in the original phase of the developmentprovided a ‘straw man’ for local builders of conventional housingtracts to point to as too small, too dense and out of tune withthe local market. Resistance to change has plagued MontgomeryVillage since its inception. Municipal engineering and public worksstaff’s reluctance to approve the alternative design standards forrear laneways and garages, in particular provoked resistance. Inthe intervening years since the standards were introduced theyhave been significantly ‘relaxed’. The resistance to the New Urban-ist form from some municipal staff and politicians and several localresidents led one design consultant to remark that ‘a developerwould have to have rocks in their head to go to Orangeville to makea New Urbanist project’ and summarised the situation as ‘peopledid not believe in the village qualities of the proposed develop-ment, it was just a suburban subdivision that was weird’ (Inter-view Planning and Design Consultant).

The Beach, City of Toronto

Located on the site of the former Greenwood Raceway, TheBeach development is directly west of the Toronto neighbourhoodvariably known as the ‘Beach’ or ‘Beaches’ by local residents. Lo-cated on a prime piece of real estate, the development opportunityavailable to developers willing to remediate the brownfield site inthe early-to-mid 1990s was considerable. After a failed purchaseby the River Oaks Group (i.e. same developer responsible forMontgomery Village) the 36-hectare site was sold to Metrus Devel-

108 S. Moore / Cities 27 (2010) 103–113

opment Inc., the largest land development company in Canada.Demolition of the raceway structures began in 1995 and continuedfor 36 months with the one of the largest and most technologicallyadvanced land remediation processes of its time in Canada. The de-sign consultants hired by Metrus (MBTW Group) set about design-ing a scheme that met with the City’s stated desire for the racewaylands to be better connected with ‘significant areas’ of the city. Thevision, although not ostensibly labeled by its designers as NewUrbanism, shared many of the principles espoused within themovement, including porches and verandas, narrow lots, trafficcalmed streets, rear laneway access, detached rear garages, andmultiple pedestrian pathways (see Figs. 5 and 6). Delivery of thisdesign vision was implemented by Metrus, Daniels Group andTribute Homes (the latter, hitherto almost exclusively associatedwith ‘greenfield’ housing schemes in more suburban contexts ofthe GTA). The emphasis of design was placed on mimicking or cap-turing the ‘essence’ of the neighbouring and locally-coveted Bea-ches community and real estate market. Despite these efforts thedevelopment was conspicuous due to its newness and quicklygained the moniker of ‘Pleasantville’ or the ‘Plywood Palaces’ by lo-cal residents.

To City officials and the development/design team, The Beach‘works’ because of its simplicity and predetermined intent toreconnect the grid system of streets north of the racetrack landswith the new development thus reconnecting pedestrian passagethrough to the adjacent waterfront. The irony of The Beach’s suc-cess is that its size and location are the exception rather than therule in Toronto’s new development profile, thus making it difficultto replicate this model of development elsewhere in the city (i.e. onsmaller scale, infill re-development projects).

Fig. 5. Pedestrian pathways.

Fig. 6. Large homes with porches and verandas.

‘Finding a hundred acres in the city and having the opportunityto develop it in this comprehensive a way is not going to hap-pen very often’ (Interview, Former Area Planning Director, Cityof Toronto).

Nonetheless from a planning perspective, The Beach ‘fit’ in withthe Official Plan by virtue of its ability to extend the vernacular andfunctional elements of Toronto onto disused lands, and was there-fore ‘easy to plan’ (Interview Former Area Planning Director, City ofToronto). The planning consultant hired by the developer re-marked in fact that ‘it was really a no-brainer, you could put achimpanzee in a cage to design that plan’ (Interview Planning Con-sultant). Thus The Beach’s replication of the established street andblock fabric –as a key way to promote pedestrian-oriented neigh-bourhoods re-connected to the existing urban streetscape – legiti-mized this New Urbanism simply as more Toronto. Additionally,the mixing of housing types, design for a variety of tenure options,conceptualisation of mixed-use buildings on the main arterial roadand developing special multi-unit buildings overlooking Lake On-tario were all undertaken as part of a strategic effort to capitalizeon the wider Beaches neighbourhood’s reputation as the ‘closestthing to small town living in the big city’ (Interview Former CityCouncillor).

The Beach development was not conflict-free, but it is notewor-thy that the most contentious issues with the project related toresident interaction within and between the two Beach neighbour-hoods– the new and the old. The localized contestation is signifi-cant to mention here not for what it was about, but for what itwas not about. Political opposition and area resident reaction inthe planning and development stages were nearly non-existent.There were the requisite public meetings, and resident groupsdid mobilize around land use issues (i.e. siting of a gambling facil-ity, size of park, etc.). However, at no stage were the form and de-sign of the residential component of the project challenged in aformal sense. Again, the rationalisation of this development as anaturalistic continuation of the existing urban fabric largely facili-tated the political acceptance of the new development, aided by itsdesign coherence with the local vernacular. Yet, the existence ofcommunity backlash to the newcomers suggests that design con-sideration for local meaning can only go so far in achieving localintegration. While the neo-Victorian designs were based in localhistory and context, the popular meaning of this ‘packaging’ hasfor the most part been erased and replaced with new definitionsof community and identity beyond that which is read-off fromthe architectural or aesthetic form.

King West Village, City of Toronto

Located in the south-western quadrant of the City of Toronto ina former heavy industry area, the 35-acre Massey-Fergusson man-ufacturing lands lay abandoned for nearly 10 years after the com-pany declared bankruptcy in 1986. This site was partiallydeveloped in 1997 into what is known as King West Village. Situ-ated on a series of oddly shaped parcels of land to the north andsouth of King Street West, the lands are adjacent to major rail linesleading into and out of the city. Despite its unlikely location for anew residential community situated so close to former and currentindustrial uses, and with its northern property line bounded by thegrounds of a large mental health and addiction institution, KingWest Village has developed into a trendy urban village. This hasbeen undertaken through the environmental remediation of thelands, the transformation of old industrial sites into new loft build-ings and the re-development of vacant lands into high-rise condo-minium towers and medium-density three and four-storey stackedtownhouses. Similar to The Beach development origins, the City’sobjective with King West Village was to integrate and extend the

Fig. 8. Rear laneway access and integral garages.

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urban fabric of the surrounding area onto the site. The 10-year per-iod during which the lands lay dormant and minimally re-devel-oped (save for car sales lots), were pre-occupied by a series ofplanning and zoning regulatory changes which attempted to grap-ple with the tension the former City of Toronto was experiencingbetween preserving industrial and employment lands or allowingthem to be developed by residential and commercial interests, if,and as, the market dictated. King West Village largely culminatedthrough the introduction of a ‘wait and see’ flexible zoning initia-tive that designated the Massey-Ferguson lands as ‘Industrial–Res-idential’, which in the 1990s gave way to an even more flexibleinitiative which effectively relaxed all zoning and density restric-tions in this part of the city. This move essentially enabled, withthe exception of any noxious industrial uses, any residential, com-mercial or light industrial use in any combination and mix as longas developers adhered to built form and heritage preservationguidelines. The City largely views the growth of King West Villageas part of the ‘ripple effect’ from this initiative. In some respects,then, the vision for King West Village was legitimised in a regula-tory sense, long before it was conceptualised in the plans and de-signs of the private developers.

The two primary developer/builders involved (Urbancorp andPlazacorp) loosely attempted to mimic the residential characterof the surrounding neighbourhood, but neither contends that itwas their intention to design a New Urbanist community, as such.Nevertheless, the development incorporated the revival of neo-Victorian and Georgian architectural features, utilized narrow rearlaneways and garages, and promoted neighbourhood interactionthrough the incorporation of front porches and communal amenityareas (see Figs. 7 and 8).

While the developers arguably had rather short-sighted designaspirations – founded more on selling units than creating commu-nity – the physical form of the development is a compact, medium-density streetscape of stacked townhouse condominium unitswhich accommodates a mix of household compositions, lifestylesand income levels. Whereas the intention of The Beach was to res-onate with the local reputation of the area as ‘small town living inthe big city’, King West Village’s creators promoted the realities ofurban lifestyles in the city. Their marketing staff used the city as aselling feature and relied on potential buyers already ‘knowing thecity’ and capitalizing on the convenience of urban amenities. Manyof these purchasers were not the anticipated urban professionalsingles, but young families, and other households returning fromthe suburbs, to live in what was at the time a more affordable partof the city. King West Village has become a ‘best practice’ examplefor mid-to-high-density urban housing forms supportive of landintensification, urban quality of life, mixed affordability and a pub-lic transport supported live-work balance. It has also come to epit-

Fig. 7. Stacked townhouse condo-units.

omise the perceived ‘infusion of people returning to downtownliving’ (Interview Design Consultant) and the gentrification of thearea. For some critics, however, the development in King Westhas been too haphazard with not enough attention paid to themaking of ‘neighbourhoods’ or the comprehensive design evidentin The Beach.

Legitimization of New Urbanism in City and Suburb

While it could be argued that each development process dis-cussed above constituted a series of chance events, it is possibleto identify how New Urbanism was differentially conceptualised,standardised, implemented and transformed across the study sites.In a purely regulatory sense, the Ontario Planning Act 1990 legiti-mised each project in terms of providing flexibility in the legalinterpretation of planning and zoning possibilities. Yet process-wise, each project involved a unique choreography of public–pri-vate interactions amongst regulators, policy-makers, financiers,developers, bureaucrats, designers and marketers involved in theGTA’s development system. While idealized interpretations of the‘development process’ reflect this rational action approach, thedevelopment narratives of the producers involved in each of thesesites tell quite different stories about how from within a structuredsystem, a series of dynamic and flexible scenarios or processes ofbecoming took place, and how the individual and collective devel-opment actors found different ways of maximizing the chances ofmeeting their own intentions with varying degrees of success.

Both greenfield sites (Cornell and Montgomery Village) soughtvalidation from a market and regulatory standpoint by employinga positivistic approach. There was the proposition of a ‘problem’(affordable and sustainable housing crisis); a ‘test site’ was se-lected; and an experiment was devised to test the hypothesis thatsomething ‘better’ than the current norm in housing developmentwas possible. It was also intended that both would demonstratethat doing something better is possible within the existing operat-ing framework of the building market. Like any experiment, thedevelopment actors attempted to anticipate externalities. But inan uncontrolled environment many external forces were at work,including climate, financial risk and uncertainty, oscillating sup-ply–demand and changing political agendas. By contrast, the twobrownfield sites (The Beach and King West Village) did not seeklegitimacy through experimentation but through ‘sure things’ –that is to say through the re-naturalization of the disused landsinto the pre-existing organicism or vernacular of the idealized late19th/early 20th century urban fabric of the city. In these develop-ments, it was not necessary to propose the ‘vision’ as an alterna-

110 S. Moore / Cities 27 (2010) 103–113

tive, nor proposition it as the future of all urban housing develop-ments; rather the aims were to mimic the existing city, which wasalready accepted and legitimised.

Unpacking how these legitimation processes occurred involveda much closer examination of the practices of development actors.The thematic categories of regulatory practice, industry practiceand ideological practice are used below to unpack the materialand cultural practices engaged within and between structuresand norms of development processes (cf. Amin and Thrift, 2002;Maclaran, 2003). The mediation between choices available, collec-tive values and the ability to act reflects the contingent nature ofthe processes of residential development within which these ac-tors operated.

Regulatory practice

Those publicly representing the interests of private housingdevelopers and builders in Toronto generally feel that these indus-try actors operate within a highly regulated and taxation-basedsystem. The relationship between type and distribution of urbanform and the costs of maintaining it (publicly through taxation,and privately through fuel and energy costs) has been at the coreof several major urban political reforms under successive provin-cial governments. However, in looking more closely at regulatoryconstraints on development practices, a contradiction emerges.The push for compact growth and the desire for change in or to‘the system’ is tempered by a candid admission that neither thepublic nor private actors really want change. This is becausechange will disrupt the business-as-usual code of understanding,or ‘‘engineered certainty” (Amin and Thrift, 2002, p. 26) that hasemerged within and between the development industry and itsregulators. For example, whilst producers will argue that conven-tional (suburban) zoning and building standards do not yield adiversity of character and place desired within a New Urbanistdevelopment, these same frameworks have allowed homebuildersto deliver increasingly standardised housing ‘types’ and layouts.

‘All you have to do is let a traffic engineer tell you that snowploughs must have bigger turning radii, the roads have got tobe wider and you find yourself delivering the same formulawe got stuck with in the 1980s’ (Interview PlanningConsultant).

Nonetheless, the technical tools provided through the zoningsystem, also codify a degree of security should a New Urbanist vi-sion fail to perform in the marketplace. Flexible zoning in several ofthe cases was introduced to enable the developer/builder to pro-duce either commercial or residential uses according to market de-mand. Consequently, the degree to which a local planningauthority accepts its role in facilitating risk minimization for devel-opers (via speedy planning permission and less intra-institutional/cross-departmental conflict) proved instrumental in both Cornell’seventual success and the dissolution of Montgomery Village’s NewUrbanist vision.

Whilst the common perception is that New Urbanism demandsa radical re-think of municipal planning systems, the evidencefrom the case studies suggests that little more was needed thana tweaking of the zoning restrictions to allow for greater flexibilityand a reshuffling of responsibility within the municipal organisa-tion structure (e.g. Markham altered its internal administrativestructure to enable all relevant departments to report to the samecommissioner; the result was the inability of a single departmentor staff member to ‘roadblock’ an entire scheme). However, theexistence of such flexibility leaves the creativity of future develop-ments subject to the degree of risk a developer or builder is willing

to accept and can result in the majority of plans reverting to lowestcommon denominator New Urbanism (i.e. least creative, but mostmarketable and price-tested design option). This has led to whatmany would refer to as cherry-picked or facsimile versions ofNew Urbanism proliferating throughout the GTA.

In addition, the fee system imposed on developers to pay forvarious types of capital works and municipal services to supportnew development which is enshrined in municipal (local and re-gional) by-laws and the policies of Public and Catholic schoolboards is similarly contradictory in intent and effect. Developmentcharging, as a planning control mechanism, has been cited acrossall the cases as a severe disincentive to New Urbanism. Take forexample the following scenario – a homebuilder wishes to buildtown homes with a rear lane and detached rear garage, abovewhich the builder wants to incorporate an ancillary living unit.This secondary unit is defined as a separate unit from the houseand as such levied a separate development charge. The effect isthat the builder has to pay twice for what could only legally be soldas a single unit. A similar scenario was recounted for the challengesof developing multi-unit ‘quad’ designs, which occupy the samearea of land as two semi-detached units but provide four house-hold units. The development charge costing formula currently ineffect at the time of study did not account for the intensified landuse and density accommodated by such designs, thus the extracharge per unit discouraged developers/builders from implement-ing such designs. The result was that innovative multi-unit, mixedtenure forms were constructed only where – despite higher landcosts to the developer – the potential volume of units could bemaximized to obtain the most profit. In locations (like Montgom-ery Village) where there is little economic incentive and minimaldevelopment charges, a developer will not take the risk of failingto sell a higher density multi-unit dwelling if there is a guaranteedsale for low-density, detached dwellings. This has led some to con-clude that the current system is designed to finance low-densitygrowth while reducing the financial risk to municipalities (Tomaltyand Skaburskis, 1997; Blais, 1996). So, while in theory develop-ment charges are considered as a means to foster more compacturban form by encouraging land owners to consider the privateand social cost/benefits of development when making choicesabout location and density, the current formula does not differen-tiate a unit-to-land ratio nor does it calculate the estimated level ofinfrastructure and services a specific development will incur. Thisprovokes the developers’ point that the current system is onewhich penalises new developers for the inefficiencies of olderdevelopment which places equal, if not more, stress on the effi-ciency of the urban management system than new growth.

With more plans and schemes based on ‘community’ orienta-tion the question arises as to whether or not public policy is lead-ing the market or merely responding to it. The case studies (withthe exception perhaps of Cornell) demonstrated how public plan-ning and zoning documents are increasingly written to fit the pri-vate development team’s leadership in terms of vision and design.Moreover, the debates surrounding development charges andsmarter growth as a policy response further blur the archetypalroles attributed to the sides of the ‘development game’. The sug-gestion was clearly articulated by both public and private intereststhat a culture of mutually consented predictability and certainty,which has developed between municipalities, developers andbuilders, works against the possibility of deep-rooted changes tothe regulatory context. In short, the regulatory climate of Torontohas enabled engineered certainty for producers of new housing.The influence of New Urbanism on this framework has been theinstituting of greater flexibility in existing and new zoning regula-tions to safeguard public and private interests against poor marketperformance. This ‘tweaking’ has not radically altered a reliance onthe private sector to deliver innovation in design. This same indus-

S. Moore / Cities 27 (2010) 103–113 111

try however actively campaigns against the current system of reg-ulatory and taxation burdens, which it cites as hindering innova-tion. Yet, if this regulatory context were significantly altered, thedevelopment industry would not be able to maintain business-as-usual.

Fig. 9. Cornell detached home.

Fig. 10. Toronto semi-detached infill in vicinity of The Beach.

Industry practice

Developers and builders contend that they are ‘giving custom-ers what they want’, but that they are doing so within the con-straints imposed by high land costs and highly regulated systemwhich results in market distortions and effectively dictates whichhousing types and designs are taken up over available alternatives(cf. Evans, 1991). Homes in the discourse of planning and develop-ment are inevitably reduced to ‘products’ analogous to any otherproduct – particularly the automobile. Developers and buildersinterviewed stated repeatedly that production itself requires stan-dardisation in order to make the product affordable to build andsell. The importance of standardising materials, designs, and lay-outs in all new housing developments in the GTA has perhaps pro-moted the new cookie-cutter tracts, wherein the superficial designtreatments associated with New Urbanism have been replicated enmasse. Whilst purists of New Urbanist development see these rep-lications as facsimiles,9 there are those involved in Cornell who wishto modify the design and layout of the ‘real thing’ in order to be morecompetitive with the facsimile versions available in the mainstreammarket. Developers are arguing that the market is now demanding adiversification of housing products in New Urbanist developments(away from the rear-lane based product and away from the small,narrower homes with detached rear garages). Andres Duany is oftencited as the yardstick by which to measure a given development’sNew Urbanism-factor and many developers/builders are quick tocontend that Duany himself is not against larger homes with frontloaded garages. Interestingly, developers have picked up on Duany’spromotion of the transect (cf. Duany and Talen, 2002; Duany, 2002)as a justification for calls to diversify their product. The transectmodel is interpreted by development actors to mean that as a planmoves out from the central neighbourhood, where densities are highand laneways dominant, and a mix of uses prevails, it gradually fansout into less dense, larger homes where the size and configuration ofthe lot makes it economically and aesthetically possible for frontdriveways and garages to be accommodated in ‘unique’ ways (i.e.meaning re-attached, front loaded). In Duany’s words: ‘urban look-ing at the core and suburban at the edge’ (Warson, 2001). Conflictsbetween different builders involved in the newer phases of Cornellhave arisen in relation to this point because some producers who be-came involved in Cornell precisely for the premiums enabled by theparticularity of the all rear-lane based design see the calls for diver-sification as jeopardising their ability to sell more expensive andinnovative units which maintain the original vision. The ultimatefear is the dilution of the product type to the point where it is onlymarginally distinguishable from other (conventional) developments.

One could argue that the industry as a whole is increasinglyamenable to building at higher densities while maintaining orencouraging elements of ‘community’ that both municipalitiesand designers want. The market popularity of higher density hous-ing products, such as townhouses, both within the City boundariesand outside, suggest that greenfield developers are becoming morefamiliar with an ‘urban product’ and therefore the context of theland on which it is located is becoming less of a concern. Figs. 9and 10 illustrate the similarities between suburban greenfielddevelopment and urban infill development.

9 Or what Grant (2006, p. 168) refers to as ‘faux new urbanism’.

This explains the increasing prevalence of large formerly green-field-only development companies and builders becoming moreactive in mixed-use, ‘urban’ projects.10 The result in Toronto hasbeen such that nearly any new subdivision (suburban or urban)has bits and pieces of New Urbanism.

10 Some ‘urban’ developers and builders welcome the competition and see it as aform of ‘free advertising’ for their own products, which they feel are superior indesign, functionality and lifestyle because of their decidedly ‘urban’ intuition andexperience (Interview, Developer Builder).

112 S. Moore / Cities 27 (2010) 103–113

‘. . . the municipal planners got a kind of ‘facsimile’ New Urban-ism that they felt was good enough’ (Interview Planning andDesign Consultant).

Yet the facsimile or hybrid versions of New Urbanism are hav-ing impacts on the long-term feasibility of the so-called ‘pure’examples which must contend with the same or similar marketconstraints as the diversified product-based developments. Themarketing and promotions angle seized by the proponents of Cor-nell over other facsimile New Urbanist developments in Markhamis that consumers are buying more than the house (i.e. ‘product’) –they are buying into the concept of neighbourhood and commu-nity. The competition has come down to a question of which devel-opments embody ‘community’ more effectively. As a keymarketing consultant remarked:

‘. . .typically in Toronto it has been builder fighting builder on aproduct by product basis that has typically been the way themarket worked here. Only now has ‘community’ come to theforefront on front loaded as well as rear-loaded product – onlynow is community being pursued in the American style ofmarketing.’

The community emphasis has gone beyond mere marketing ofhomes to the wholesale re-branding of development and buildingcompanies. Many now refer to themselves not as homebuildersbut as community builders. But the ability of these ‘communitybuilders’ to push the envelope in terms of design is heavily con-strained by the standardised nature of many of the materials andconstruction techniques employed in large-scale housing develop-ments. New Urbanist, facsimile, or conventional development alike– all depend on the same efficiency ratio to appraise the feasibilityof committing to a plan for a new community. A formulaic stan-dard for measuring the efficiency of all plans based on the ratioof saleable lot frontage is common practice. The logic is that streetscost a given amount to construct per metre and the revenue side ofany development is only appreciable in terms of saleable lot front-age. Design and planning consultants are thus asked to calculatethe ratio of the length of lots to the length of street with the result-ing metric indicative of whether or not the plan is efficient. Theideal metric is a ratio of 2:1 – that is a saleable lot frontage twicethe length of the street is considered ‘the developer’s dream, nowaste. . . just perfect’ (Interview Architectural Consultant). Whatthis means in design terms however is that the developer’s idealplan consists of long streets with no corners and high numbersof houses uninterrupted by ‘events’ such as corner stores, cafes,parks etc. Thus even in a New Urbanist development (arguablyintended to mimic traditional early 20th century neighbourhoodsreplete with such ‘events’), this standardised formula based onmodern volume housebuilding practices is nonethelessperpetuated.

So in terms of industry practice, the institutionalisation of flex-ibility via the hybridization of New Urbanism is significant. Inter-views revealed the blurring and merging of urban and suburbanmarkets and development actors, and the re-branding of the resi-dential development industry as ‘community building’. Compro-mise, consensus and flexibility in regulatory and industrystandards and approaches were highlighted as a means of reducingdeveloper financial risk. This has initiated a tendency of public andprivate development actors to implicitly, or even unconsciously,support the production of a facsimile version of New Urbanism –based on stylistic attributes, which market interests are alreadyconvinced would sell based on past trends. This suggests that theproduction and proliferation of New Urbanism in Toronto has beena function of the relations between market acceptability, historical

precedence and the technocratic considerations of design feasibil-ity, rather than a revolutionary design or regulatory breakthrough.

Ideological practice

The personal and professional conceptualisations of what con-stitutes New Urbanism by public and private development inter-ests interviewed demonstrated quite dramatically how each actoruses the ambiguity of New Urbanism. This involved the oscillationbetween material (e.g. design features) and social parameters (e.g.community) while still maintaining or reproducing the matter-of-fact discourse of ‘the market’ and the determining role played byhigh land costs and market savvy municipal councils in the actual-isation of specific housing designs and community plans. Thismanifested itself most strongly through opinions of Andres Duanyand of New Urbanism as being ‘suburban’ by nature, which in turngave rise to an equally palpable ‘urban’ backlash to the suggestionthat New Urbanism was a suburbanising force at work within thecity proper. In short, what was seen by many greenfield housingdevelopers as a revolution in suburban land development and pro-gressive municipal planning (i.e. planning in line with the market)was viewed as ‘old news’ and passé, or merely the common sense‘continuation of the existing urban fabric’ (Interview, Former AreaPlanning, City of Toronto) by many of the self-proclaimed urbanprofessionals and practitioners. However, not all greenfield devel-opment actors felt that municipal adoption of a New Urbanist ap-proach to planning (as per the Town of Markham) is progressive.Rather they felt that it is suppressive, in that whilst as an urban de-sign approach it is positive, the dogmatic standards for individualdesign elements (such as rear lanes and detached garages) tiesthe hands of developers and builders both creatively and econom-ically. The same issue did not arise in the two brownfield cases be-cause rear-lane housing forms not only pre-existed in these partsof the city (Hess, 2008) but their existence was the primary plan-ning basis for extending this housing form into the re-developmentareas.

Conclusions

The case studies examined in this paper demonstrate that theuniversalistic label of ‘New Urbanism’ obscures the institutionalarrangements and inherent tensions and contradictions that con-stitute, rather than merely affect, situated forms of building provi-sion. Developing New Urbanist ‘products’ is by-and-large stillconsidered by developers (and municipalities) in the GTA as riskierthan other forms of housing development (cf. Gyourko andRybczynski, 2000). However, the perceived risks are decreasingwith the reproduction and hybridisation of so-called New Urbanistdesign ‘features’ in otherwise conventional housing schemes. Mar-ket acceptance is clearly localized, with urban markets still lessapprehensive of compact urban forms than suburban markets,hence a delicate balance is sought by developers seeking to beinnovative within the engineered certainty of conforming to ac-cepted market and regulatory norms. The pressure to standardisein New Urbanist projects, thus, exists alongside attempts to ‘test’new products. This tension has spurred pressures to diversify whatcounts as New Urbanism, exacerbating debates over maintainingthe original ‘vision’ or modifying what is on offer in order maxi-mize market competiveness. Both positions have, so far, beenfinancially successful in the GTA, wherein maintaining the rearlaneway based vision secures price premiums in a niche market,while diversifying the product secures a larger proportion of themainstream market by New Urbanism-supportive developers.The fragmentation of what counts as New Urbanism is, indeed,complicating the already fuzzy dichotomy between so-called

S. Moore / Cities 27 (2010) 103–113 113

‘greenfield’ and ‘brownfield’ development processes, projects andactors; at once reinforcing and blurring an urban–suburban dividein Toronto’s housebuilding market and building industry. Whereas,New Urbanism in the suburban context is often interpreted as asprawl-conscious (even radical) attempt to put the urban in thesuburban; in the city, it is either viewed as a matter-of-courseextension of the urban fabric or more subversively as an unwel-come suburbanising influence.

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