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Perfect City author Joe Berridge discusses why he believes Toronto is both “too big” and “too small”
Perfect City author Joe Berridge discusses why he believes Toronto is both “too big” and “too small”
June 4, 2019
Melissa Daly-Buajitti, CBRE
Over the past eight months, mid-career professionals from a variety of disciplines in Toronto city-building have been imagining the future of Mount Dennis. Organized into three teams, they form the Curtner Leadership Class of 2019.
On May 21, they gathered to share their visions and implementation strategies with the public. ULI Toronto hosted this community presentation in a church at Weston and Eglinton, across from the historic Kodak Heights industrial park that Metrolinx is in the process of developing into Mount Dennis Station + Maintenance and Storage Facility.
The Curtner Leadership Program is an annual thought-leadership initiative focused on “solving real land use challenges within a defined region of Toronto District involving key stakeholders from the private, public, and non-profit community sectors.”
This year’s call to action has been: “How can the community vision of an Eco-neighbourhood be achieved over the coming years as Mount Dennis becomes a major transit hub and focus of redevelopment?,” which can be contextualized with the following points:
Acknowledging that this transit investment will catalyze redevelopment in Mount Dennis, the teams explored how such development might be oriented to support the MDCA’s “Net Zero” aspirations.
Mount Dennis has a population of 13,593 (2016 Census data), with over 25% defined as low income, and 44% speaking non-English mother-tongue languages. The total housing stock consists of 5,386 dwellings (68% apartments, 32% house-form structures). Considering these factors, gentrification was a central focus across the teams. An underlying question they each seemed to tackle could be framed as “how might we leverage this moment of growth to secure further investment in the neighbourhood while protecting the interests of existing residents and business owners?”
During the Q&A, focus shifted to strategies for ground-up community action. One audience member drew attention to Ontario’s current political climate, and asked how citizens can work to hold developers accountable in a time when the tools that have previously been used to do so are being taken away. A core theme that resonated in the answers was “early organization” – that a community should establish its objectives as soon as possible, be it to influence policy-level decisions or negotiate with developers in the early planning stages of a project.
Responding to these sentiments, former City of Toronto Chief Planner, Paul Bedford, (who led this program and moderated the event) noted that the need to “speak with one voice” had been a key message of the evening. Pragmatic in nature, this statement leaves us to reflect on the relationship between consensus and activism as well as the ethics of advocating for those who cannot afford to participate when consensus is being built.
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