Reshaping Toronto's Waterfront

by Gene Desfor, Jennefer Laidley (Editor)

Overview

Large-scale development is once again putting Toronto's waterfront at the leading edge of change. As in other cities around the world, policymakers, planners, and developers are envisioning the waterfront as a space of promise and a prime location for massive investments. Currently, the waterfront is being marketed as a crucial territorial wedge for economic ascendancy in globally competitive urban areas.

Reshaping Toronto's Waterfront analyses how and why 'problem spaces' on the waterfront have become 'opportunity spaces' during the past hundred and fifty years. Contributors with diverse areas of expertise illuminate processes of development and provide fresh analyses of the intermingling of nature and society as they appear in both physical forms and institutional arrangements, which define and produce change. Reshaping Toronto's Waterfront is a fundamental resource for understanding the waterfront as a dynamic space that is neither fully tamed nor wholly uncontrolled.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442610019
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	05/07/2011
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Gene Desfor is a professor emeritus and senior scholar in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Jennefer Laidley holds an MES in Urban Planning from the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures vii

List of Tables ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 3

Part 1 Forging the Industrial waterfront

1 Planning for Change: Harbour Commissions, Civil Engineers, and Large-Scale Manipulation of Nature Michael Moir 23

2 Establishing the Toronto Harbour Commission and Its 1912 Waterfront Development Plan Gene Desfor Lucian Vesalon Jennefer Laidley 49

3 From Liability to Profitability: How Disease, Fear, and Medical Science Cleaned Up the Marshes of Ashbridge's Bay Paul S.B. Jackson 75

4 From Feast to Famine: Shipbuilding and the 1912 Waterfront Development Plan Michael Moir 97

5 A Social History of a Changing Environment: The Don River Valley, 1910-1931 Jennifer Bonnell 123

6 Boundaries and Connectivity: The Lower Don River and Ashbridge's Bay Tenley Conway 151

7 Networks of Power: Toronto's Waterfront Energy Systems from 1840 to 1970 Scott Prudham Gunter Gad Richard anderson 175

Part 2 Shaping the Post-Industrial Waterfront

8 Creating an Environment for Change: The 'Ecosystem Approach' and the Olympics on Toronto's Waterfront Jennefer Laidley 203

9 From Harbour Commission to Port Authority: Institutionalizing the Federal Government's Role in Waterfront Development Christopher Sanderson Pierrefilion 224

10 Cleaning Up on the Waterfront: Development of Contaminated Sites Hon Q. Lu Gene Desfor 245

11 Who's in Charge? Jurisdictional Gridlock and the Genesis of Waterfront Toronto Gabriel Eidelman 263

12 Public-Private Sector Alliances in Sustainable Waterfront Revitalization: Policy, Planning, and Design in the West Don Lands Susannah Bunce 287

13 Socio-ecological Change in the Nineteenth and Twenty-first Centuries: The Lower Don River Gene Desfor Jennifer Bonnell 305

References 327

Contributors 371

Index 373

What People are Saying About This

Alan Broadbent

‘Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront takes a useful and interesting look at the complexity and great promise of city building. By traversing time and a range of practical considerations, the authors illuminate just how hard it is to transform a city, and just how possible!’

Editorial Reviews

‘Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront offers a comprehensive overview of the city’s ever-changing shoreline. Readers will learn about the monumental decisions and socio-economic pressures that have transformed Toronto’s waterfront for over two hundred years. They will also be reminded of the territorial battles between all levels of government that have been going on for over a century, and most disturbingly, continue to be played out to this day. If we want to know how Toronto’s lakeshore has ended up in its current state, we have to learn from the mistakes and successes that dot its history. Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront is a good place to get your history lesson.’—Matthew Blackett, publisher, Spacing

‘The book provides an insightful historical sketch and critical analysis of the variegated socio-natural processes of waterfront development to urban historians, scholars of urban environmental history, urbanists, city planners, scholars of local politics, students as well as activists.’

—Thorben Wieditz, Urban Studies vol 51:04:2014

‘Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront takes a useful and interesting look at the complexity and great promise of city building. By traversing time and a range of practical considerations, the authors illuminate just how hard it is to transform a city, and just how possible!’—Alan Broadbent, author of Urban Nation and chairman of the Avana Capital Corporation and the Maytree Foundation

From the Publisher

‘Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront offers a comprehensive overview of the city’s ever-changing shoreline. Readers will learn about the monumental decisions and socio-economic pressures that have transformed Toronto’s waterfront for over two hundred years. They will also be reminded of the territorial battles between all levels of government that have been going on for over a century, and most disturbingly, continue to be played out to this day. If we want to know how Toronto’s lakeshore has ended up in its current state, we have to learn from the mistakes and successes that dot its history. Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront is a good place to get your history lesson.’

Matthew Blackett

‘The book provides an insightful historical sketch and critical analysis of the variegated socio-natural processes of waterfront development to urban historians, scholars of urban environmental history, urbanists, city planners, scholars of local politics, students as well as activists.’

Urban Studies vol 51:04:2014 - Thorben Wieditz

‘The book provides an insightful historical sketch and critical analysis of the variegated socio-natural processes of waterfront development to urban historians, scholars of urban environmental history, urbanists, city planners, scholars of local politics, students as well as activists.’

Urban Studies vol 51:04:2014 - Thorben Wieditz