IN THE SUBURBS OF HISTORY Modernist Visions of the Urban Periphery In the 1960s, urban planners, architects, and city offcials – socialist and capitalist alike – chose the urban periphery as the site to test out new ideas in modernist architecture and planning. In the Suburbs of History examines the outskirts of Prague and a bedroom suburb of Toronto as sites for this experimental urban development. The book overcomes the divisions between East and West to reas- semble the shared histories of modern architecture and urbanism as they shaped and reshaped the periphery. Drawing on archives, inter- views, architectural journals, and site visits to the peripheries of Prague and Toronto, Steven Logan reveals the intertwined histories of capital- ist and socialist urban planning. From socialist utopias to the capitalist visions of the edge city, the his- tory of the suburbs is not simply a history of competing urban forms; rather, it is a history of alternatives that advocated collective solutions over the dominant model of single-family home ownership and car- dominated spaces. (Global Suburbanisms) steven logan is an adjunct faculty member at the Institute of Com- munication, Culture, Information and Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. GLOBAL SUBURBANISMS Series Editor: Roger Keil, York University Urbanization is at the core of the global economy today. Yet, crucially, suburbanization now dominates twenty-frst-century urban develop- ment. This book series is the frst to systematically take stock of world- wide developments in suburbanization and suburbanisms today. Drawing on methodological and analytical approaches from political economy, urban political ecology, and social and cultural geography, the series seeks to situate the complex processes of suburbanization as they pose challenges to policymakers, planners, and academics alike. For a list of the books published in this series see p. 227. STEVEN LOGAN In the Suburbs of History Modernist Visions of the Urban Periphery UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2021 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4875-0788-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-3715-9 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-2543-9 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4875-3714-2 (PDF) Global Suburbanisms _____________________________________________________________________________ Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: In the suburbs of history : modernist visions of the urban periphery / Steven Logan. Names: Logan, Steven, 1974– author. Series: Global suburbanisms. Description: Series statement: Global suburbanisms | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifers: Canadiana (print) 20200310054 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200310135 | ISBN 9781487525439 (paper) | ISBN 9781487507886 (cloth) | ISBN 9781487537159 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487537142 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Suburbs – Ontario – Toronto – History – 20th century. | LCSH: Suburbs – Czech Republic – Prague – History – 20th century. | LCSH: City planning – Ontario – Toronto – History – 20th century. | LCSH: City planning – Czech Republic – Prague – History – 20th century. | LCSH: National socialism and architecture – Ontario – Toronto. | LCSH: National socialism and architecture – Czech Republic – Prague. Classifcation: LCC HT352.C32 T67 2020 | DDC 307.7609713/541 – dc23 _____________________________________________________________________ CC-BY-NC-ND This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative License. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact University of Toronto Press. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support from the University of Toronto Libraries in making the open access version of this title available. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada Contents List of Illustrations vii Preface xi 1 Introduction: Crossing Divides 3 2 Looking for the Antithesis of the Suburb 21 3 Socialist Space 51 4 South City as a Work of Art in the Age of Mass-Produced Dwellings 87 5 Redesigning the Post-war Suburban Landscape 117 6 The “Total Image”: The Making of Willowdale Modern 147 Conclusion: Unearthing the Suburban Core 175 Notes 187 References 197 Index 213 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations 2.1 Layout of the Rabenhof apartment block in Vienna 26 2.2 Street in the Rabenhof apartment block in Vienna 27 2.3 Houses turned away from the street in Radburn 30 2.4 The pedestrian underpass for movement between the superblocks 31 2.5 Pathway through the common gardens of the Sunnyside Gardens superblock 32 2.6 Courtyard in the Phipps Garden Apartments in Sunnyside Gardens 33 2.7 Lijnbaan pedestrian shopping street in Rotterdam 39 2.8 View from the Vällingby town centre 40 2.9 The Pankrac district pedestrian area in Prague, designed by Jiří Lasovsk 43 2.10 Pedestrian entrance into the town centre megastructure in Cumbernauld 47 3.1 Family houses built for Baťa factory workers in Zlín 60 3.2 Villa in the Ořechovka garden suburb 61 3.3 Collective apartment building in Zlín 68 3.4 Aerial view of Solidarita 71 3.5 Pedestrian pathway in Solidarita 72 3.6 Hlavní třida boulevard in Poruba 73 3.7 Gateway leading into one of Poruba’s superblocks 73 3.8 The oblouk in Poruba 75 3.9 Aerial view of Invalidovna 78 3.10 Sídliště Lesná in Brno 79 3.11 The district centre of the Ďáblice sídliště 80 3.12 Invalidovna district centre 81 3.13 Crane urbanism in post-war Prague 81 4.1 The sídliště as work of art in the age of mass reproduction 88 viii Illustrations 4.2 The “streetscape” in the planned city of Etarea 89 4.3 Map of greater Prague showing the sídliště built between 1956 and 1986 91 4.4 South City, 1982 93 4.5 The view from the highway entering Prague from the south 95 4.6 The winning design in the South City competition 97 4.7 View to South City from across the artifcial lake in the Hostivař recreational area 98 4.8 Schema for South City’s urban plan 100 4.9 Typical “street” in today’s South City 107 4.10 Neglected above-ground pedestrian space in South City 107 4.11 Incomplete walkway system in South City 108 4.12 South City’s Central Park 108 4.13 Lasovsk’s plan for South City’s city centre, 1978 111 4.14 The in-between spaces in South City II-West 113 5.1 A Toronto suburban house from the interwar period 121 5.2 A typical post-war single-family house designed by CMHC 124 5.3 Detail from advertisement by Don Mills Developments Limited 128 5.4 The Don Mills town centre, designed by John C. Parkin 129 5.5 Flemingdon Park, Toronto 132 6.1 The mass-produced single-family house and the condominium tower of the post-suburban landscape, Toronto 146 6.2 Model for the redevelopment of Willowdale 148 6.3 The sprawling stretch of Yonge Street, late 1960s, slated for redevelopment 149 6.4 The skyscrapers of Willowdale from the south side of Canada’s busiest highway 150 6.5 Map of Metropolitan Toronto with proposed subcentres 154 6.6 R. Skelly’s plan for Willowdale, 1963 156 6.7 Detailed urban plan for the Yonge redevelopment area, 1968 159 6.8 Reimagining Yonge Street 161 6.9 Detail of the pedestrian-traffc nodes along Yonge Street 162 6.10 Rendering of the Civic Square farmer’s market, Willowdale 163 6.11 Condominiums and the low-rise fabric of the post-war period 169 6.12 North York City Centre 169 Illustrations ix 6.13 View inside the pedestrian arcade as part of the North York Civic Centre 170 6.14 Separating the suburb from the city on Willowdale’s ring road 171 6.15 Looking north from Sheppard Avenue and Yonge Street 172 7.1 The milíčovská “halda” (heap) in South City 176 This page intentionally left blank Preface “How did he wash up in the Czech Republic? I certainly wanted to know.” So asked one of this book’s anonymous reviewers. I took the comment in the jest and irony for which it was certainly intended, as the Czech Republic is a landlocked country. In his Czech history The Coasts of Bohemia, Derek Sayer reminds us that it was Shakespeare, in The Win- ter’s Tale, that gave Bohemia a shoreline. Sayer writes that “Czechs are inclined to see Shakespeare’s furnishing of their country with a coast- line as typical example of foreigners’ ignorance of their land.” If in more contemporary times there is a space that is not well under- stood outside of Czech circles it is the sídliště, as the Czech post-war socialist housing developments are known. My experiences with the sídliště began with my very frst visit to the Czech Republic in 2000, at the Sídliště Novodvorská, where a Canadian friend was living with his Czech girlfriend. But it was not until I met my future partner Hana, fol- lowed by my move to Prague in 2003 so that we could live together, that my understanding of socialism and its housing completely changed. Spending our frst year together in Letňany, another Prague housing development in the northern part of the city, our conversations often turned to our respective upbringings: mine, in a suburb of Toronto, and hers, in the new town of Havířov, just outside of the city of Ostrava. In these conversations, the seed of this comparative project began to germinate. It was not that our worlds were similar, but it was as if they were connected through the looking glass.