Day: May 2nd
Time: 4pm
Start Location: Front steps of North Albion Collegiate, 2580 Kipling Ave.
End Location: Action For Neighbourhood Change, 2667 Kipling Ave.

As a follow up to last year’s Janes Walk – Towers on the Ravine, this year’s walk – North Kipling Stories, will feature youth and adults who live, work and play in this community sharing their stories.

The walk is part of the North Kipling Storymapping project, a partnership between MicroSkills, Jane’s Walk, the Centre for Digital Storytelling and TO Live with Culture.

In the late summer and early fall, ERA conducted an extensive survey of Tower Renewal efforts throughout the European Union.

With tower neighbourood refurbishment well underway in the EU for more than a decade, a host of projects showcase leading approaches to sustainable building renewal, community development and urban design. Better understanding these projects will help ensure the best results as Tower Renewal moves forward in Toronto.

In following posts, lessons learned from the UK, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Germany will be outlined.

A special thanks to the Swedish Consulate in Toronto, the German Trade Commission, the Clinton Foundation, and the C40 for their part in organizing this tour.

The following images are from selected projects examined on the tour. (All photos by Brendan Stewart and Graeme Stewart)

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On Monday September 21st, the Mayor’s Tower Renewal Opportunities Book was awarded the Toronto Urban Design Award of Excellence in the Vision and Masterplan category.

For more information, view the Fact Sheet and Jury Report, or visit the City’s Website.

Congratulations go to the full Tower Renewal team, including ERA Architects, The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, the City of Toronto, and countless local and international partners.

The Greater Toronto Area contains a heritage of nearly 1000 post-war concrete residential tower blocks located throughout the region.  The presence of this remarkable collection of modern housing represents an architectural, planning and construction legacy unique to North America. (For more on the history, visit here). This inheritance of high density neighbourhoods provide significant opportunities to create a sustainable, prosperous and connected region, able to meet the challenges of the 21st Century; accommodate growth, alleviate poverty and help grow the green economy.

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For well over a decade, Europe’s extensive heritage of tower block communities have experienced extensive renewal and neighbourhood reinvestment. A key aspect of this has been to provide tower neighbourhoods with the diversity and activity of a vibrant neighbourhood found in the city centre. Two key strategies in this regard have been the introduction of commerce as well as public space into areas previously conceived of as primarily residential.

The following photo collection, taken in 2006, documents a series of tower blocks throughout Western, Central and Eastern Europe, in various stages of renewal, achieved through both grass rootes initiative and large scale master planning.

For picture information and larger view, click fullscreen mode.

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The Concrete Tower in the Park is the perhaps the most definitive housing innovation of the 20th Century. Built in abundance in response to the housing shortages following the war, it has found a unique position in the housing stock of jurisdictions throughout the world.

Approaching their 40th, or in some cases 50th birthday, these utopic structures have begun to show their age.

The following photo collection, taken in 2006, documents a series of tower blocks throughout Western, Central and Eastern Europe, in various stages of repair.

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The idea of the tower in a genuine ‘park’ or ‘landscape’ setting was a popular notion during European reconstruction following the Second World War.

Modern towers offered what was felt to be the highest housing standard while access to an abundant and unobstructed natural landscape provided light and air, community recreation space and ‘breathing room’ in the context of high-density living. A highly desirable alternative to the difficult conditions found in post-war city centres, tower communities proliferated throughout Europe, and the world over, during the second half of the 20th Century. Continue Reading This Post

This past spring, the Design Exchange hosted Carrot City; an exhibition examining the potentials of achieving future food security, sustainable food networks and engaged communities through urban agriculture. Tower Renewal participated in this project, contributing research related to the potential for urban agriculture within Toronto’s post-war tower block communities.

The following is a review of the exhibition by Canadian Architect:

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This past May and June, Pinkcomma gallery in Boston hosted an exhibition on Concrete Toronto

Published in 2007, Concrete Toronto catalogued Toronto’s remarkable heritage of concrete builidngs built throughout the region in the booming 1960s and 70s’ - including it’s unique stock of tower blocks.

With a wealth of spectatular Concerete buildings in Boston, Pinkcomma and over,under architects are currently in the process of editing their own concrete compendium: Concrete Boston.

Follow these links for more information on the exhibition, Pinkcomma gallery and Over,Under Architects.

Day: May 3rd
Time: 11am
Start Location: North Kipling Community Centre, at 2 Rowntree Rd, Kipling and Rowntree Rd, North of Finch.
End Location: Albion Centre Food Court

A NOW Magazine article on the walk can be found here.

Photos from the walk by Jesse Colin Jackson

Perhaps the two physical features that distinguish Toronto are it’s extensive ravine system flowing throughout the city, and it’s heritage of nearly 1000 high-rise ‘tower in the park’ apartments found throughout the region. On Kipling Avenue, north of Finch, these two features merge, creating one of Toronto’s most unique neighbourhoods.

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Written by Julia Levitt on Worldchanging, April 23rd, 2009. Photo by Jesse Colin Jackson.

Could Toronto’s aging concrete high-rises be North America’s most promising new frontier for sustainable suburban development? A new City-backed plan is banking on it. The Mayor’s Tower Renewal aims to turn the greater Toronto metropolitan area’s 1960s apartment blocks into a 21st century resource, around which sustainable, walkable, mixed-use suburban hubs of community and economic opportunity can be built. In so doing, Toronto could create a model of successful density for the rest of the continent, and perhaps for the world.

To continue reading, clike here.

“..In Toronto…the continent’s private enterprise-dominated housing system, when coupled with a structure of strong regional planning  dedicated to the fostering of high-density ‘hot spots’ in the centre and periphery, succeeded in generating a landscape of massed towers and slabs in open space, almost rivaling the USSR in consistency and grandeur ”.

_ Miles Glendinning
Introduction to the Docomomo Journal 39

The Docomomo Journal’s 39th issue is dedicated to post-war mass housing. From the Docomomo lens of ‘documentation’ and ‘conservation’, the issue provides a varied perspective of this global phenomenon, including, among others, articles exploring the tower block legacies of France, Russia, Brazil, Singapore, as well as Toronto.

Toronto, an anomaly in North America, fits within the canon of aggressive tower block housing development found the world over. Built within the free market Canadian context, Toronto’s history of modern housing adds its unique contribution to this 20th Century story.

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Mayor’s Tower Renewal

Over the past year, E.R.A. Architects has been working with the City of Toronto to implement the Tower Renewal Project.

Beginning in Spring 2007, the City began working with E.R.A. and the University of Toronto to adapt the ideas of Tower Renewal into policy. The result is the Mayor’s Tower Renewal Opportunities Book, and the Mayor’s recommendations, which will be presented to the Executive Committee at the City of Toronto on September 2nd. It will be recommending that the City adopt Tower Renewal as a major policy objective, knitting together goals related to environmental sustainability, complete communities, economic development, infrastructure and growth.

The Opportunities Book, edited by E.R.A., compiles research conducted over the past several years by the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, (particularly the building science research of Dr. Ted Kesik and Ivan Saleff), and E.R.A., outlining in further detail some of the information that has been released on www.towerrenewal.com in the previous months.

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Map 1: Potential zones of Tower Renewal, in relation to existing and proposedrapid transit (yellow), priority neighbourhoods (grey), intensification zones (red), and natural systems (green). For full map, click here.

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The following series of analytical maps were developed over the last several years in partnership with the University of Toronto, E.R.A. Architects and the City of Toronto, in an ongoing effort to understand Toronto’s heritage of modern planned apartment neighbourhoods, and their evolving relationship to our dynamic city.

Beginning July 3rd, selected maps will be on display as part of Fringe Benefitsat the Design Exchange; an exhibit curated by the Editor of Canadian Architect, Ian Chodikoff.

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High-rise apartmens at Kipling and Steeles in north Etobicoke, overlooking the Humber Valley

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Written by Dale Duncan. This article first appeared in Eye Weekly, April 17th, 2008

Take a stroll down Kipling Avenue, just south of Steeles, and you’ll see a row of grand towers overlooking the Humber Valley that house the equivalent of half the population of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood within a few blocks. A total of 19 towers in all are home to roughly 13,000 people in this northern Etobicoke community, enough people to make up a small town. When governments express the importance of encouraging intensification to prevent suburban sprawl, this is the kind of city-building they’re talking about. At least in part.

The difference here is that much of the green space that surrounds these buildings is fenced off from neighbouring properties and often sits empty and unused. What’s more, a couple of small strip malls are all that is within walking distance for residents in need of amenities, including service centres and community hubs where people can linger, share ideas, build plans and seek help. Despite the density, getting around by car, for those who have one, is still the most convenient way to travel.

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Map 1: Toronto’s modern apartments with existing rapid transit

Map 2: Toronto’s modern apartments with the proposed rapid transit of ‘Transit City’

The legacy of modern planning has left us with a stock of high density housing and adjacent open space nearby to existing transit. As compared with the low-density suburbs with typify North America, this is an advantageous starting point for the creation of a connected and sustainable region.

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Bathurst and Steeles, late 1960s.

In the 1960’s, Steeles Avenue was the end of Metropolitan Toronto’s servicing area; the northern boundary of the region’s planned urbanization. North of Steeles, the rolling pastures were to remain as the area’s green belt, while in contrast, dense, mixed-use post-war communities emerged to the south.

Bathurst and Steeles emerged as a dense community containing nearly forty modern residential high-rises. Incorporated with the ravine, neighbourhood parks, elementary and secondary schools, churches and synagogues, shopping plazas and the cul-de sac’s of adjacent single family homes, the towers provided the bulk of housing for an area of over twenty thousand.

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Cenceptual framework of basic high-rise over-cladding strategy

With much of this high-rise housing stock now passing some 40 years of service, deterioration of the building envelope is widely evident as is these building’s increasing environmental impact on the region. Leaky sieves which pre-date building science, they require far more energy than necessary. It is time building performance was upgraded to the expectation’s of the 21st Century.

The single most effective strategy in reducing the ecological footprint of our stock of aging concrete residential towers is the application of thermal over-cladding.

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Toronto high-rises under construction in former farmers fields, early 1960’s

The idea of the tower in a genuine ‘park’ or ‘landscape’ setting was a popular notion after the Second World War. As a result, during the post-war boom in Toronto, a minimum of 60% open space around multiple dwellings was promoted as a best practice. If developers wanted larger buildings, they were to provide a greater ratio of open space to building footprint. The results are the large towers and 90% open space found across Toronto’s suburbs.

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Thorncliffe Park from the air, looking downtown, early 1970’s

Thorncliffe Park was a bold 1950s plan by the Town of Leaside to redevelop a former racetrack overlooking the Don River. Conceived in 1955 it was proposed to be the first apartment neighbourhood in Canada. Though breaking ground slightly after neighbouring Flemingdon Park, it was recognized internationally as an ambitious attempt to better organize population growth in response to the sprawl found in Toronto’s outer boroughs.

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The Bijlmermeer under construction, late 1960’s

Toronto can learn how its apartment neighbourhoods could evolve by looking at the successes of other cities. Take the Bijlmermeer for instance, a large tower block district outside of Amsterdam, reminiscent in certain respects to modern communities in Toronto.

Begun in 1966, the Bijlmermeer was an ambitious housing experiment built in vacant farmland south-east of the city. It was envisioned as a secondary centre for the region, and planned for 40 000 dwellings as well as 60 000 new jobs. It was promoted as Western Europe’s most completely functional satellite community.

However the plan was never fully realized. The jobs and amenities never came and it remained in a gradual process of decline for nearly 30 years. It was quickly dismissed as a planning and social failure.

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Comparison of tower districts in Moscow (top) and Toronto (bottom)

Next time you are in Chicago or Philadelphia try looking for an apartment tower neighbourhood outside the city core - the kind we have throughout Toronto. They’re rare in North American cities but common in other Commonwealth countries, like Australia, and they are an even more significant force in many European cities, such as Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and especially Moscow. Aspects of Toronto suburbs display a remarkable similarly of what can be witnessed across the globe.

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Aerial view of Jane and Finch, Courtesy of Lance Dutchak

Each area of the City has evolved with its own history. Take District 10 - the area we now know as Jane-Finch. The 1962 master plan proposed to transform the existing farm lots in the area into a complete community based on a set of principles that focused on employment, servicing, and social equity.

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Map 1: Toronto’s post-war apartment towers and rapid transit, overlaid with the wealthy ‘City #1’ (Grey) and intensification zones (Red).

Map 2: Toronto’s post-war apartment towers and rapid transit, overlaid with the impoverished ‘City #3’ (Grey) and Priority Neighbourhoods (Dark Grey).

Toronto is quickly becoming a polarized city. New research out of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto has revealed startling trends related to changing income distribution patterns across the city.

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Toronto’s modern high-rises are everywhere.

Housing hundreds of thousands, they are the backbone of our City. Yet what is their place in our collective identity? Though superficially homogenous, each have specific contexts and histories.

In the coming months, the Tower Renewal Artist Network will bring together those engaged in cultural production related these structures.

What do they mean to you?

Image Courtesy of Jesse Colin Jackson

In the 1960’s, high-rise towers were thought to be the best solution to meet the growing need for rental units, while efficiently organizing new housing with services. The resulting apartment neighbourhoods help us recognize how quickly the city evolves, and how each generation tries in different ways to address the challenges of growth, social and community needs. Take Crescent Town near Dawes Road and the Danforth.

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Potential green modifications to existing modern high-rises and their properties

The apartment slab buildings built during the 1960s and ‘70s are among the most energy inefficient housing types in the city; however, they may also be the best candidates for green retrofit. While their density aids other aspects of sustainability, this stock of apartment towers demands as much as 20 per cent more energy per square metre than a contemporary single-detached home. Certain efficiencies are gained from reduced land coverage and transit use, but the buildings themselves perform poorly.

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For Toronto, the most significant planning question may not be the form and placement of new density, but how to turn our enormous pockets of inherited high density into genuinely sustainable and complete communities.

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Flemingdon Park master plan, including housing, community facilities, commerce, employment and natural space, 1958

Toronto’s aging apartment neighbourhoods are not all the same. They are predominantly based on the idea of the tower-in-the-park; they have large simple tower blocks placed in abundant open space. But after that common denominator there are plenty of differences which provide each of these neighbourhoods with their own individual character.

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Data from CMHC, compiled by E.R.A. Architects and the University of Toronto

While Toronto’s current condo boom is the largest in North America, with 18,000 built last year across the GTA, it is dwarfed by the 1960’s post-war apartment boom. In 1968 alone 30,000 apartment units came on the market.

Contrary to common wisdom, the most significant legacy of modern suburbanization in Toronto is not the single family home, but multiple unit, high density dwellings. After the war, city planners and CMHC actively encouraged the development of modern apartment towers in the expanding region based on the tower-in-the-park typology. By the mid-1960s, at the peak of Toronto’s first mass housing boom, nearly 40% of the city’s housing stock and 77% of housing starts were apartments of this type. By the end of this boom, new “multiples” outpaced new single detached and semi-detached housing by a ratio of 2:1.

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Uno Prii Towers amid post-war bungalow, Jane Street, North of 401, late 1960s

What makes Toronto unique? One of the least recognized answers to that question is that Toronto has more high-rise buildings than any other city in North America, outside New York. The majority of these are concrete modern residential towers, built in the post-war boom of the 1960s and 70s.

Following the war, when most North America cities began sprawling without order, Toronto’s Metropolitan Government implemented a regional plan. Municipal and CMHC housing policies supported high density as a means to provide needed rental housing and contain growth. For the form of this high density, they overwhelmingly favoured the model of the “tower in the park”. Subsequently, the suburban apartment became the most popular form of housing for a period of twenty years, representing the overwhelming majority of housing starts. Unique to their European and American counterparts, these apartment neighbourhoods, which sprang up throughout the GTA, were privately financed and marketed as modern homes for a growing middle class.

The result is a hybrid suburban form, where typical tract housing sits next to tower complexes more reminiscent of peripheral Moscow or Belgrade than the suburbia on this side of the Atlantic. Toronto may be the only City worldwide where seas on bungalows and modern towers make up the typical suburban landscape.

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Welcome to the Toronto Tower Renewal blog.

The Tower Renewal Project is an initiative to re-examine Toronto’s  remarkable stock of modern residential high-rises, their heritage, neighbourhood histories, current place in our city, and future potential in a green and equitable Toronto.

Currently, Toronto Tower Renewal is a partnership between ERA Architects, the City of Toronto, CMHC, and the University of Toronto among others. The Project is envisioned as a series of programs and initiatives which will continue to grow in the years to come….

We hope to keep you up-to-date on progress, connect those with an interest in the topic, as well as provide a historical and contemporary perspective on modern apartment neighbourhoods built in Toronto, the GTA and internationally.

The Toronto area contains the second largest concentration of high-rise buildings in North America. The majority of these are modern concrete residential buildings, built during the City’s post-war expansion. The Tower Renewal Project is an initiative to re-examine these buildings’ remarkable heritage, neighbourhood histories, current place in our city, and future potential in a green and equitable Toronto. A growing list of partners include the City of Toronto, CMHC, and the University of Toronto, among others. Click here for more info about Tower Renewal.