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UrbanToronto is celebrating 20 YEARS throughout October with stories and images looking back over the last two decades. Today we continue our looks back at architecture and planning over the period, the third of our deep dives.
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Building With a Vision: Secondary Plans and Master Plans
Toronto’s last two decades have been defined by an unprecedented period of growth, not just in terms of population and the economy, but also in our built environment. The sheer number of completed projects in the past 20 years has dwarfed most other cities across North America. In the face of such rampant growth, urban planners in both public and private spheres are faced with the enormous challenge of how to manage it. In particular, larger tracts of lands and properties that could be redeveloped into new neighbourhoods need some form of control or future vision to ensure that quality of life is maintained. That is where secondary plans and master plans come in, two planning tools that have profoundly shaped Toronto’s urban fabric over the past two decades.
Secondary plans are amendments to the City’s Official Plan, the all-encompassing document that guides land use planning and development across the city, which are drafted by City planners in consultation with local residents, developers, and professionals. Secondary plans focus on a specific area or neighbourhood that has the potential for growth or redevelopment, and provide a policy framework that determines the desired land use, density, built form, infrastructure, and public realm that can be built within its boundaries. Master plans go one step further, honing in on a specific property or group of properties, and setting out in a bit more detail the massing and heights of the buildings, their specific uses, and the public realm in between. These are typically drafted by private owners, and are codified as zoning by-laws and Official Plan amendments when approved by the City.
The frustration of the grand visions presented in secondary plans and master plans is that usually they have a timeline of 20 years or more to be fully realized. Most often these plans are built out one piece at a time, but things can change along the way, resulting in revisions to the plan or abandonment of the plan altogether. However, we are fortunate enough here in Toronto to have several secondary plans and master plans that have now been fully built out or are currently nearing completion. As part of our 20th anniversary retrospective, we are taking a look back at several of the most significant and influential plans from the past two decades.
CityPlace
The CityPlace neighbourhood currently holds the title as the largest master plan in Toronto. Stretching between Bathurst Street and Blue Jays Way, from Front Street to Lake Shore Boulevard, the master plan covers roughly 18 hectares and includes 30 residential towers, the 8-hectare Canoe Landing Park, two new schools, a library, a community centre, and over 18,000 residents. The development has completely redefined Toronto’s skyline, extending its cluster of tall towers in the core westward from the CN Tower.
The project is built on former railway lands owned by the Canada Lands Company, which were purchased by Concord Adex in 1997 and which presented what was essentially a blank slate brownfield site on which to build. The first building in CityPlace was completed in 2002, and it has grown at a fairly steady pace since then, with the final buildings, known as Concord Canada House, currently under construction. Impressively, the final product has stayed quite true to the original master plan. Slight modifications have been made to the heights and massing of each individual block over the years, but the street network, public realm, and general built form is aligned with the original design intent.
CityPlace has been both criticized and lauded as a model community. On the one hand, critics have pointed to its overwhelming quantity of one-bedroom units and its largely monotonous glass aesthetic, claiming that the neighbourhood is not conducive for family living and lacks character. On the other hand, proponents point out that the community is thriving, with lively streets, parks, and restaurants filled with locals, using CityPlace as an example of a successful complete community and a precedent for high-rise urban living. Regardless of your thoughts on CityPlace, it is remarkable to see a virtually completed master plan at this scale, a brand new high-rise community built from scratch that is now all but fully realized more than 20 years later.
Liberty Village
In 2000, the master plan for Liberty Village was approved by the City and work began on transforming the former industrial site into a mixed-use community. There are several pieces to the Liberty Village neighbourhood, but the master plan in question covered the eastern portion of the area, stretching from Strachan Avenue in the east to Hanna Avenue in the west, sandwiched between the two branches of the rail corridor. It includes a large townhouse development, 15 towers, several low-rise retail buildings, and a central park. The first buildings were completed around 2002, with several large developments filling out the area over the years until the last few towers wrapped up construction in 2022. With a population near zero at the beginning of construction, it is now home to nearly 10,000 residents.
Much like CityPlace, the Liberty Village master plan follows closely the original blueprint drawn up more than 20 years ago. Also much like CityPlace, the towers that ended up being built are a bit taller and denser than what was anticipated, due to the hot real estate market that ramped up over the years. However, unlike CityPlace, Liberty Village has largely been panned as a failure in urban planning.
While it is a good example of the revitalization of a brownfield site, it has suffered from lack of transit options connecting it to the rest of the city, relying chiefly on the King streetcar. The original master plan called for a new GO station on the north side of the neighbourhood; now more than 20 years later, construction on this station is only slated to begin in 2024 as part of the remnants of John Tory's SmartTrack plans. It was not until 2021 that a pedestrian bridge was constructed to connect Liberty Village to King Street to the north, providing slight relief for pedestrians forced to walk around to Strachan or Atlantic to exit the neighbourhood. The road network has also been flagged as inadequate and frequently causes a backlog of traffic.
Another issue with Liberty Village was the segregation of uses, following in the footsteps of twentieth-century planning principles. The early townhouses and towers did not incorporate any commercial or retail uses, creating a strictly residential district and a separate retail and business district. Whereas the towers of CityPlace are lined with grade-level retail, only the newer towers in Liberty Village incorporate businesses, creating streetscapes that are less lively and urban than they could have been. Twenty years on, Liberty Village is a bustling neighbourhood, but its legacy is widely viewed as a missed opportunity in good city building.
King-Spadina Secondary Plan
The first of “the Kings” that we will be covering, the King-Spadina Secondary Plan came into effect in 1996 as a way to encourage development of the area west of downtown, bounded roughly by University, Front, Bathurst, and Queen. The impact was beyond what anyone had ever imagined. Development took off almost immediately and accelerated rapidly, particularly within the past 15 years. When the secondary plan came into effect, less than 1,000 people lived in the neighbourhood; today, it is home to over 30,000 residents and counting.
The story of King-Spadina, however, is a cautionary one in city planning. The original secondary plan intentionally loosened restrictions on what could be built and avoided putting any limits on density, instead dictating that development should respect the existing collection of heritage structures and should be compatible with the existing built form. For all intents and purposes, this meant mid-rise development, but no hard limits were imposed.
It did not take long for development pressure to mount, particularly in the district east of Spadina, prompting the City to do a comprehensive review of the secondary plan in 2005 followed by a built form study in 2008. The first tall tower was completed in the neighbourhood in 2010 when the TIFF Bell Lightbox and Festival Tower opened its doors. Though it was granted a higher density allowance because it was providing a cultural amenity with TIFF, the Festival Tower opened the floodgates for the myriad of towers that would follow.
With towers now the precedent, the City updated its policy directions in 2017 and revised its secondary plan in 2019 to match the tower neighbourhood that now exists in the east precinct of King-Spadina, while also creating the King-Spadina Heritage Conservation District as a way to protect the area’s now-threatened heritage character. On the one hand, the King-Spadina secondary plan is a huge success, heralding unprecedented development and investment in a previously derelict neighbourhood. On the other hand, what is now built was not at all what the City had originally intended, and it has had to scramble to keep pace with development. Issues like the lack of public space — flagged in the 2005 study — and the lack of reliable transit were never fully addressed. Recent attempts like the failed Rail Deck Park project and the successful King Street Transit Priority program were introduced to tackle these issues, and more solutions are coming with the Ontario Line, but these problems have not stemmed the flow of rapid development to the area, with many more towers coming down through the development pipeline.
King-Parliament Secondary Plan
The King-Parliament Secondary Plan, the eastern counterpart of “the Kings” was also introduced in 1996 and, just like King-Spadina, provided loosened restrictions as a way to encourage development in the largely industrial neighbourhood east of downtown. King-Parliament covers the area bounded roughly by Jarvis, Queen, the Don River, and the rail corridor, and much like King-Spadina, it has experienced significant growth over the past two decades, exploding to a population close to 20,000.
While the King-Parliament area has seen significant development activity over the past 20 years, it has progressed at a slightly gentler pace than its sister King, prompting less of a frenzied response from developers and city planners alike. Only recently has it really accelerated, with the City conducting a secondary plan review in 2021 and bringing in the St Lawrence District Heritage Conservation District to protect the heritage character of the neighbourhood. While the intent of the built form in the original secondary plan was similar to King-Spadina in that it had to respect the existing heritage and was mainly intended to be mid-rise, there was more space to work with and towers were more seamlessly integrated into the plan, where today it is now considered more of a mixed tower and mid-rise neighbourhood.
There are several unique aspects that differentiate King-Parliament from King-Spadina. First, there were many residents already living nearby in the St Lawrence Neighbourhood when the secondary plan came into effect, leading to a more vocal and engaged response from the local community. Also contained within the secondary plan is the Distillery District and the West Don Lands, two special areas that had their own master plans associated with them and which were both redeveloped with very distinct uses. The King-Parliament district also contains the original ten blocks of the old Town of York, a significant historical area for the city.
These unique aspects have led to a more mixed redevelopment of the area in terms of land use and built form. Rather than the intense cluster of towers that sprouted up in King-Spadina, development of King-Parliament has been more evenly distributed and better integrated with the existing built form. The West Don Lands master plan, partially built for the 2015 Pan Am Games, brought a significant new public space along with predominantly mid-rise development, while the Distillery District integrated towers within a unique historic landmark, creating one of the most popular destinations in the city for tourists and locals alike. The redevelopment of King-Parliament is largely considered a success, and continues to progress at a rapid pace today.
Regent Park
How often do we get to witness the replacement of a master plan with another master plan? Regent Park was a social housing development built in the 1940s and 50s, created from scratch by razing a huge area of existing residences bounded by Parliament Street, Gerrard Street, River Street, and Shuter Street, and replacing it with Modernist housing blocks. This was largely considered a failure, a legacy of ineffective mid-century planning policies, and so the decision was made in the early 2000s to knock it all down and start over again. In 2003, the City of Toronto officially approved the initiative, and construction got underway around 2007.
This time around, the City set out with the intent of doing things in more of a responsible way than it did in the 1950s. It worked closely with the community to ensure relocation and return of residents to the neighbourhood was done smoothly, and it phased the redevelopment to avoid demolishing everything at once. The Regent Park master plan also proposed to introduce a mix of uses, integrating market rental and condominium units among the social housing units, and incorporating much more retail, cultural, community, and commercial spaces. It also prioritized building the large central parks and community amenities in the early phases to foster and enhance the sense of community in the neighbourhood. Once fully built out, Regent Park will be home to around 15,000 residents.
The first two phases of the master plan are now finished, with Phase 3 wrapping up in 2024. Phase 4 and 5 are in planning, which will round out the neighbourhood in the next decade. So far, critics are cautiously calling Regent Park a success, though it is still a bit too early to determine if the mix of social and market housing has reached its intended goals. Regardless, the current built form has followed the master plan closely, but much like all of the plans mentioned above, market conditions have increased the height and density of the blocks over the years. The most recent iterations of the future Phases 4 and 5, originally intended to be predominantly mid-rise, now close to double the gross floor area and unit count of the original master plan, which will be incorporated in a series of mid-rises and towers.
The Regent Park model was unique to Toronto when it was first introduced. Its distinguishing feature is the integration of subsidized and market housing, and it has almost become a social experiment, trying to undo the harm of twentieth-century planning by focusing on building a diverse neighbourhood and by mixing a variety of uses to create a complete community. It is a model that the City is now replicating in many other TCHC communities across the city, so time will tell if this precedent-setting master plan is ultimately a success, or if another master plan will eventually replace it in another 50 years.
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That concludes our retrospective of influential secondary plans and master plans in Toronto over the past 20 years. UrbanToronto will return tomorrow with another story celebrating 20 YEARS. In the meantime, check back often to our front page and Forum to keep an eye on all the current and emerging trends, and you can always leave your comments in the space below.
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