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Town Planning, Housing and Public
Health, 1916
Thomas Adams, Town
Planning Adviser, Commission of Conservation
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At the seventh annual meeting of
the Commission of Conservation in Ottawa, Thomas Adams reports
on progress in town planning. He notes that the war has
curtailed work on civic improvement, but that planning will
benefit postwar readjustment when the time comes. He describes
the existing system of land development as “defective”
and identi-fies a “crying need” for agricultural
policy to ensure stability and permanent settlement in rural
areas. Province by province, he outlines the progress made
towards enacting town planning legislation and the application
of town planning principles in cities throughout Canada.
He concludes with a recommendation for a housing survey
that would contrib-ute to housing legislation in the provinces,
describes progress in raising public aware-ness of town
planning, and urges the provinces to create departments
of municipal affairs to deal with land valuation, taxation,
and assessment.
Present Scope for Practical Work
in
Improving Civic Conditions, 1916
Thomas Adams, Town
Planning Adviser, Commission of Conservation
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In a speech to the Civic Improvement
League conference in Ottawa, Thomas Adams identifies what
he considers the most urgent tasks for the league and for
planners in Canada. He recommends the creation of a department
of municipal affairs in each province, and outlines the
terms of a model Town Planning Act that each province could
adopt. He considers these two initiatives to be “the
most effective steps to secure safe-guards for civic development
after the war.” He also expresses concern about the
plan-ning of roads and transportation and the creation of
rural industries to ensure the successful settlement of
land throughout the country.
Civic Efficiency and Social Welfare
in
Planning of Land, 1917
W. F. Burditt, Chairman,
St. John, N.B., Town Planning Commission
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Burditt deplores the existing system
of subdividing and developing land, considering it inefficient
and wasteful, and the lack of overall control and planning
in creating new communities. Individuals develop land without
regard to the needs of the community as a whole, and thereby
create problems of congestion, obsolence and land use conflicts.
In particular, since land is generally bought and sold in
rectangular parcels, cities develop in a grid pattern, which
contributes to congestion – Burditt advocates diagonal
streets radiating out from the city centre to correct this
problem. He also describes the problem of rear alleys, where
property owners often construct cheap housing that leads
to overcrowding and the creation of slum areas. Burditt
concludes by describing town planning efforts in Saint John,
New Brunswick.
What It Means to Zone, 1926
John M. Kitchen, Assistant
Engineer on Zoning, Town Planning Commission of Ottawa
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In the 1920s, zoning was quite a
new idea and had not been adopted in all municipalities.
Kitchen stresses that one of the most important reasons
for zoning is to ensure that all houses receive sufficient
sunlight and air and thereby ensure the health of their
occu-pants. He also mentions the importance of protecting
property values by making land development more predictable.
He explains the classification of land by Home Districts
and Work Districts, and their further subclassification
by density of housing or intensity of use. Kitchen discusses
how zoning can control the siting of noxious land uses,
and how height restrictions and minimum yard requirements
fit into the classification system. He describes how a municipality
can go about creating a zoning ordinance and ends with a
list of the benefits of zoning to individuals and to municipalities
as a whole.
Community Planning in Canada, 1946
C.D. Howe, Minister
of Reconstruction and Supply
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In an article originally published
in the Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Can-ada,
C.D. Howe speaks of the development of “unplanned
urban fringe areas” during and after the war, and
the problem of extending services to these areas. A 1943
survey of cities and towns had discovered that very few
communities were carrying out planning or had adopted master
plans. In 1945, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation
had convened a conference in Ottawa on community planning;
as a result of this conference, the Community Planning Association
of Canada was formed to distribute non-technical information
about community planning to Canadians in all areas. Howe
stressed that community planning required public support
as well as professional competence to suc-ceed and reminded
architects of their potential role in community planning.
Towards Better Communities, 1950
W. Harold Clark, President,
Community Planning Association
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The address of the president of the
Community Planning Association to the 1950 annual conference
sets planning in the postwar context, when the country’s
priorities were still on military defence. Clark deplores
the “identical strawberry boxes” (modest bungalows)
being built in the suburbs and calls for more attention
to be paid to the quality of life in new developments. He
discusses the recently amended national housing legislation
and the opportunities it offers for good planning, and advocates
government subsidies for housing for low-income families,
which he recognizes cannot be built at a profit by pri-vate
developers. He also describes his experiences at the Twentieth
International Con-gress for Housing, held in Amsterdam in
September 1950, and his impressions of postwar reconstruction
in the Netherlands.
Toronto to Absorb Suburbs on April
15, 1953
New York Times, March 24, 1953
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This document consists of two newspaper
articles from the New York Times. The first describes the
creation of Metropolitan Toronto from the City of Toronto,
which at the time was made up of nine wards, and twelve
surrounding suburban municipalities—Mimico, New Toronto,
Long Branch, Swansea, Scarborough, York, North York, East
York, Etobi-coke, Leaside, Forest Hill, and Weston. The
new city had a population of 1.9 million. The reason for
the merger, which was dictated by the Ontario government,
was to ensure ef-ficiency in transportation and other services,
following the failure of agreements between the various
municipalities to lead to effective coordination. The second
article, which dates from 1956, predicts a boom in Toronto’s
population, which was expected to be 2.8 million in 1980,
largely because of high levels of immigration.
The Old City and the Angry Young
Woman, 1962
Hans Blumenfeld, Consultant,
Metro Toronto Planning Board
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This review of Jane Jacobs’s
The Death and Life of Great American Cities was first pub-lished
in the journal Continuous Learning. Blumenfeld points out
a number of inaccura-cies, invalid arguments, and unrealistic
prescriptions in Ms. Jacobs’s approach to safety,
zoning, urban density, and housing for the poor, while agreeing
with her about the value of mixing land uses, ensuring the
liveliness of sidewalk activity, and avoiding the whole-sale
destruction of city neighbourhoods in the name of slum clearance.
He praises her analysis of the complexity of the urban fabric,
but finds many of her recommendations simplistic. He notes
that the neighbourhood with which she is most familiar,
New York City’s Greenwich Village, is not a model
that can be applied readily to other areas, and that she
views the inner city and suburbs as separate worlds rather
than as parts of a whole. Nonetheless, Blumenfeld considers
the book thought-provoking and worthy of consideration by
all those concerned about the future of cities.
The Urgent Challenge of Urbanization,
1967
Lester B. Pearson, Prime
Minister of Canada
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The opening speech by the prime minister
at the Federal-Provincial Conference on Housing and Urban
Development in Ottawa states that “urbanization with
all its problems has become the dominant social and economic
condition of Canadian life.” Pearson notes that three-quarters
of the Canadian population lives in cities and identifies
the most urgent problems: lack of adequate housing for all,
overcrowding, traffic congestion, pollution, conflicting
land uses, decaying neighbourhoods and monotonous suburbs,
and urban poverty. He suggests that limited municipal tax
resources and the overlapping ju-risdictions of different
municipal organizations are to blame for many of these problems.
Pearson suggests that only the provincial and municipal
governments have the authority to reform the taxation system,
introduce regional planning, and bring about civic im-provements.
He concludes with a more detailed review of urban problems,
from housing to transportation and suggests some potential
solutions.
Urban Development, Ontario and Quebec:
Outline and Overview, 1968
L. S. Bourne and A. M. Baker
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This report, the first research paper
(Research Report #1) published by the Centre for Urban and
Community Studies, briefly describes urban development trends
in Ontario and Quebec up to 1968, using available census
data and growth estimates carried out by the authors. The
processes of urbanization, immigration, and natural increase
are described in terms of their effects on Ontario and Quebec.
The report also examines the shortcomings inherent in the
available statistical data and in the definitions used by
the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (now Statistics Canada).
Tables show the population of major centres in Ontario and
Quebec, and how those population figures changed be-tween
1941 and 1968, as well as comparisons between the regional
growth complexes of Ontario and Quebec in 1968.
The Politics of Urban Innovation,
1969
Lloyd Axworthy, Director,
Institute of Urban Studies, University of Winnipeg
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Axworthy analyses the reasons for
lack of change in the way cities are planned, built, and
managed. He attributes lack of progress to the lack of coordination
among govern-ments and government departments, a thicket
of rules and regulations that stifle creativ-ity, the irrelevance
of much academic work on urban issues, institutional inertia,
and a financial sector that fosters slums and discourages
entrepreneurship. He advocates a coordinated national policy
on housing, a secretariat attached to the Minister for Housing
to allow for the creation of new programs, and federal government
encouragement for innovation and experimentation in housing
initiatives. He calls on the federal government to clarify
its objectives for housing, renewal, transportation, and
economic development and adjust its policies on investment,
taxation, public works, land disposal research, and capital
assistance to meet those objectives. He also recommends
that the federal gov-ernment set priorities and sponsor
projects by private enterprise, universities, non-profit
groups, and others to encourage innovation.
Speech on Housing and Urban Affairs,
1972
Ron Basford, Minister
of State for Urban Affairs
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In an excerpt from Hansard, the Minister
of State for Urban Affairs describes the minis-try’s
mandate: “to co-ordinate the activities of the government
of Canada in estab-lishing co-operative relationships with
the provinces and their municipalities for the enhancement
of the human environment.” He makes a plea for greater
cooperation among all levels of government in solving urban
problems and describes the achievements of his ministry
to date, including consultations with the provinces and
many municipal governments and with Central Mortgage and
Housing Corporation on new approaches to housing. Basford
describes the Liberal government’s “colossal”
housing programs—in 1971 alone, 233,000 new units
were started and 200,000 completed—and attributes
the activity to the National Housing Act of 1964, which
spurred the creation of public housing.
HABITAT: The United Nations Conference
on Human Settlements, Vancouver, 1976
Pierre Elliott Trudeau,
Prime Minister of Canada
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In welcoming delegates to the conference,
Trudeau acknowledges the urgency of the need to make human
settlements more humane and prevent further deterioration
of the natural environment. Although the problems —
social stress, the loss of farmlands, envi-ronmental degradation,
the disorganization of transportation systems, the overconsump-tion
of energy — run so deep that solutions to them can
be only partial, technological developments hold out the
promise of some new solutions. The biggest and most urgent
problem of all is the growth of the earth’s human
population, which Trudeau expected to be six and a half
billion by 2006. He suggests that the only route to survival
is increased socialization. In other words, we need to love
one another enough to change the way we live and make use
of the world’s resources.
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