Ghetto in the Sky
Suburban Toronto at night. Photo by Dennis Marciniak
In 1970, Toronto was in the throes of Apartment Fever; nearly 40 years later, we are paying for it, and dearly.
It seems like a cruel joke for a city that tries so hard to become a centre of good design, but concrete evidence of this mid-century orgy of high-rise construction exists in hard statistics: Toronto, with more than 1,700 completed high-rises, has the second largest number of skyscrapers in North America, most of these being the mid-century apartment blocks in question. For a more tangible sense of the situation, however, one only needs to walk down a random inner suburban thoroughfare, like Don Mills St. or Finch Ave.
The immediate impression is the striking banality of these apartment blocks, whose shabby air is instantly familiar to anyone from Vancouver or Sudbury. Toronto’s distinction lies in sheer numbers. On any given major avenue in Toronto’s outer boroughs—North York, Etobicoke, Scarborough—these buildings can line the street as far as the eye can see, 30-storey concrete slabs thrown haphazardly together with wind-blown voids in between, the only attempt at adornment being the brick facade (choice of red, brown, beige) and novel building shapes (Y or X). In other words, they are about as charming as Victorian mental wards.
Enter one of these buildings (note the ragtag curtains behind the windows) and one may encounters either a spartan but well-cared-for lobby—or a scene of squalor. But invariably one can smell curry or some other fragrant ethnic cooking, and white faces are hard to come by–these buildings may be eyesores, but a deeper problem is the fact that they’ve worked wonders in accomplishing segregation (racial and economic) and isolation.
A typical apartment block on Finch Ave. Photo by Lone Primate
City planners in the 1950s and 60s, newly liberated from Toronto’s Anglo-Saxon homeowner ethic, envisioned these planned communities as our ticket to the modern age. These towers were designed for upwardly mobile people (car owners, usually), who could commute to the city on the soon-to-be-constructed network of highways, and retreat to their comfortable quarters set among ravines. No where is this more apparent than the Don Valley Parkway, which winds through the Don River Valley and cuts through a jungle of apartment towers. Le Corbusier would have been proud.
Disregarding construction quality and design, this vision suffers from having zero versatility. What if the people who inhabit these buildings can’t afford to drive cars? What if they have families that have more than 3 members? In Flemingdon, North York’s first planned high-rise community whose hierarchical streets empties onto busy Eglington Ave., the answer is: “too bad, tough it”. Thus you see immigrant families gingerly walking on the narrow sidewalks (clearly an afterthought) inches from 80km/h traffic, returning from their weekly pilgrimage to the grocery store 20 minutes away, an impossible number of grocery bags dangling from their hands. The bursting-at-the-seams buses that traverse Eglington Ave. in the morning rush hour is also a pretty good indication.
Would a Paris-style riot break out here? Unlikely. But life in Toronto’s version of the banlieue seethes with its own discontent. Crime is often a problem, as is overcrowding; voter turnout is low. Many don’t feel like they have a stake in where they live, not to mention the city at large–which only makes sense when a trip downtown involves an arduous 30 minute bus ride and even a trip to the convenience store takes 20.
Recently there has been signs that the downtown “cultural renaissance” is finally bringing attention to these much-neglected areas. NOW reports on a recent city hall meeting where retro-fitting strategies were presented. Among the highlights are the proposal to retrofit these buildings for energy efficiency and to build community amenities in the flat expanses between buildings.
It’s a problem that even Jane Jacobs concedes to being difficult to solve, but these proposals have all the qualities that good solutions have: they are relatively cheap, non-destructive, and don’t require 2030s technology. Especially laudable is the recommendation that these buildings shouldn’t simply be razed. One, it wouldn’t make environmental sense, and two, many people have tried hard and succeeded in cultivating a delicate sense of community in these buildings, mainly in the form of trading services and bartering–invaluable for newcomers.
But why stop there? Dedicated transit ways would physically and psychologically bridge the gap between here and there, and a city funded rent voucher program may finally help to de-segregate these areas. They are eminently doable and do not require extra-terrestrial help. All it needs is political commitment from cash-rich higher-level governments. Sadly, that seems too much to count on.
The important thing to realize is that we may be at a cusp of a revolution in urban form. These vertical suburbs and single family houses in the outer suburbs have virtually been the only kinds of city accommodation built in the past 40 years. Past experience and grim energy projections mean that neither will work for us any more, but what’s there to replace them? Certainly the glass-skinned residential skyscrapers, whose two-bedroom layout instantly excludes larger families, are not the end-all answer. A new workable residential vernacular is urgently called for, and I have my fingers crossed.
Tags: Housing, Toronto
Desmond Bliek says:
Siqi,
From what I’ve heard, one of the goals of the recent light rail talk is to inject some more urbanity into the arteries that these towers line. It seems like a good idea, but wow, would you ever have to make some big changes in the ‘flat expanses’.
You might want to get in touch with Paul Hess (who’s at the UT Geography dept) as he’s doing a big study on the emergence and character of these landscapes, as well as the challenges they present. He’s also a pretty cool guy.
Cheers,
Des
June 15th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Liza says:
I grew up in Toronto, in a 70s apartment complex called “Crescent Town” that was supposed to be a vibrant community of highrises connected by walkways. In actuality, it had an oppressive, even menacing feeling, with the buildings scowling down on us like Soviet monoliths. They were also a powerful wind tunnel. I wonder about the worldview of people like me who grew up in places like this. It certainly isn’t uplifting.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:12 pm