The Image of the Suburbs: Planning Urbanity in the Toronto Region

Katherine Joy Perrott

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Planning Department of Geography & Planning University of Toronto

The Image of the Suburbs: Planning Urbanity in the Toronto Region

Katherine Joy Perrott

Doctor of Philosophy, Planning

Department of Geography & Planning University of Toronto

2018 Abstract

This dissertation examines the discursive production of new developments and the reinvention of suburban image in the municipalities arcing around the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Planning policies promoting densification, alongside rising housing prices, and persistent concerns about car-dependence, set the context for aspirations of urbanity in planning and development. Discourses analyzed include transcripts of interviews with housing and community producers (planners, municipal councillors, and developers), the planning policies produced by government, and the marketing materials produced by the development industry. Studies examining the historic planning and promotion of the suburbs have shown the prominence placed on symbolic distinction from the city with references to nature, rurality and countryside, where residents are promised a healthy retreat, privacy, safety, and an ideal place to raise children. This dissertation argues that suburban planning and housing marketing discourses in the Toronto region reveal an emerging reversal in the suburban script that downplays the urban- suburban distinction and promotes a more urbane place image, representing a case study of broader contemporary efforts to urbanize the suburbs.

In the first of three empirical papers, the research shows how stacked and back-to-back townhouses are planned and promoted by intertwining discourses of suburban “evolution” and

“routes to maturity” through homeownership where smaller units offer a type of fix to market constraints, and young adults are produced as suburban-re-inventor subjects. The second paper demonstrates the importance of aesthetics and modern design in the discursive production of competitive and attractive world-class growth nodes and corridors as part of the ideological- political trajectory towards post-suburbanization. The third paper examines the gap that producers describe between the promises of compact city theory and the in-practice realities of car-dependence and separated land uses. While some marketing materials draw on the long- standing discursive production of the suburbs as the “best of both worlds,” producers describe the contemporary suburbs as increasingly compact in residential areas, but still car-dependent leading to concerns about being “squished-in” and stuck in traffic. Practitioner perspectives on the successes and challenges of current strategies signal the need for additional theories and policies, beyond residential densification, to resolve the challenges of the suburbs.

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Acknowledgments

I thank my supervisory committee members Katharine Rankin, Alan Walks, and Jill Grant for their guidance and encouragement, and for strengthening my research, analysis, and writing skills throughout this process. I am grateful for the time and feedback provided by my examiners, Ute Lehrer and Kanishka Goonewardena. I also appreciate the participation of Minelle Mahtani as a committee member during the comprehensive exam stage of my degree.

It has been a privilege to engage with these ideas, colleagues at the University of Toronto, and the scholars cited within these pages. It would not have been possible for me to undertake doctoral studies without the funding support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Government of Ontario’s Graduate Scholarship program, and grants from the Department of Geography & Planning.

In this research I have highlighted the roles and perspectives of practitioners, and I am thankful for the generosity of time and insights provided to me by the planners, development industry representatives, and municipal councillors in the region who are quoted in the dissertation anonymously. In preparation for the interviews, Erika Ivanic and Mary Bishop were willing subjects for me to test-drive the questionnaire. Marcy Burchfield provided helpful advice early on in the project. I appreciate Jielan Xu’s assistance with creating the study area map. Thanks to André Sorensen for sharing information that he and Paul Hess collected about condominium townhouses in the region, which informed my background knowledge. Thanks to Ingrid Mundel for lending me a transcription foot pedal and for connecting me with Barbara Harrison and the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute at the University of Guelph. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in the ‘After Suburbia: Extended Urbanization and Life on the Planet’s Periphery’ conference at York University, in October 2017. Bernadette Hanlon provided helpful comments as a discussant on the paper that forms Chapter Four of this dissertation, and I benefitted from feedback offered by conference participants. I presented the paper that forms Chapter Three at the Urban Affairs Association conference in April 2018 and I appreciate comments offered by session attendees.

I began the doctoral degree renting a 30th floor condo apartment in the Toronto core, then moved to a semi-detached in Truro, Nova Scotia, followed by a detached heritage house in Guelph,

Ontario, and finished writing my dissertation from a townhouse in a new urbanist suburb of Tampa, Florida. My exploration of housing types and the dialectics of urbanism and suburbanism has been not only academic, but lived. In each place, I have experienced the encouragement of the best colleagues and friends. Special thanks to Steph Gora, Carmen Teeple Hopkins, Dylan Simone, Raili Lakanen, Kat Snukal, Amy Buitenhuis, Beth Denaburg, Lauren Kepkeiwicz, Elizabeth Lord, Jeff Biggar, David Seitz, Laura Wilson, Anita Khanna, Heather Bergen, Clare and Jesse McMullen-Crummey, Seanna Davidson, Anne Mather, Elisabeth and Dan George, Natali Ciccarone and Justin Archibee, Ann McCoy, Shirly Eitans, Lucy Terrill, Stef Hoedt, Nuria Robles Evans, Wendy Salt, Bronwen Wolochatiuk, Emily Geertsma, and my Halifax planning crew, especially Gordon Smith, Steffen Käubler, Bruce Mans, Nathan Rogers, Andrew Kent, Sam Austin, and Michelle McCann.

Most of all I thank my family. I am deeply grateful for the boundless love and generosity of my parents, Karen and Joe. Thanks to my Perrott siblings, Kristen, Jer, Kim, and Jon, and their partners and children for providing outlets for fun and adventure while I was working towards this degree. I am also thankful for support from the Renkema family: Nelda and Matt, Kevin and Ashley, and specifically for Heidi’s transcription work. I am thankful every day for my brilliant daughter Roselle’s affection, joy, and insistence on taking breaks for playtime. Finally, but utmost, I thank my partner Justin for his patience, grounding, and camaraderie on this journey.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Table of Contents ...... vi

List of Tables ...... x

List of Figures ...... xi

List of Appendices ...... xiii

Chapter 1 Dissertation Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Urbanizing the suburbs? ...... 1

1.2 The “urban” and “suburban” ...... 5

1.3 Research objectives, questions, and argument ...... 9

1.4 Theoretical Approach ...... 12

1.4.1 “Culture and economy as mutually embedded” ...... 12

1.4.2 Discourse and governmentality ...... 13

1.4.3 The “dialectics of discourse” ...... 15

1.4.4 Place image ...... 19

1.4.5 Producing and selling place image ...... 22

1.5 The “suburban myth:” narratives and counter-narratives in the literature ...... 27

1.5.1 Marketing the “myth:” suburban advertising narratives ...... 29

1.5.2 Beyond the “myth:” the urbanization of the suburbs, new urbanism, and post- suburbia debates ...... 32

1.6 Toronto region study area, historical and contemporary contexts ...... 38

1.6.1 Study area ...... 39

1.6.2 Historic snapshot 1: Toronto’s post-war suburban expansion, “modernism,” “Fordism,” and “creeping conformity” (~late 1950s- early 1960s) ...... 46

1.6.3 Historic snapshot 2: “postmodernism,” “dispersed suburbanism,” “polycentrism,” and “wasted density” (~1980s – early 1990s) ...... 53

1.6.4 Historic snapshot 3: “new urbanism” influence (~late 1990s & 2000s) ...... 56 vi

1.6.5 Contemporary context snapshot ...... 59

1.6.5.1 Contemporary population and demographic trends ...... 59

1.6.5.2 Contemporary housing type trends ...... 63

1.6.5.3 Contemporary housing price trends ...... 66

1.6.5.4 Contemporary planning policy themes: transformation, evolution, urbanization ...... 69

1.6.5.5 Contemporary Snapshot Summary ...... 77

1.7 Structure of the Dissertation ...... 79

Chapter 2 Methods...... 81

2.1 Data and Research Methods ...... 81

2.2 Interviews ...... 81

2.2.1 Recruitment ...... 81

2.2.2 Interview Process ...... 83

2.2.3 Informed consent and ethical considerations ...... 86

2.2.4 Interview coding analysis ...... 86

2.3 Policy Analysis ...... 87

2.4 New-Build Housing Advertisement Analysis ...... 88

2.4.1 Contemporary Advertisement sampling ...... 88

2.4.2 Advertisement content analysis ...... 90

2.5 Housing construction data analysis ...... 93

2.6 Benefits of mixed data sources and methods ...... 93

Chapter 3 First Empirical Paper: Not Your Parents’ Suburban Home: Planning and Marketing Discourses on Homeownership of Stacked and Back-to-Back Townhouses in the “Grown Up” Suburbs around Toronto, Canada ...... 95

3.1 Introduction: Stacked and back-to-back townhouses as an emerging suburban homeownership alternative ...... 95

3.2 Natural progression and maturity in homeownership discourses ...... 105

3.3 Organic metaphor and nature in suburban planning and marketing discourses ...... 106 vii

3.4 Data and methods ...... 108

3.5 Findings ...... 110

3.5.1 Stacked townhouses as part of policy strategy for suburban densification ...... 110

3.5.2 The suburban housing “sweet spot” ...... 111

3.5.3 Stacked townhouse homeownership as affordable route to maturity for young adult investor subjects ...... 113

3.5.4 Stacked townhouses as “new” and “graduated” suburban housing ...... 115

3.5.5 Stacked “urban towns” and the “grown up” suburbs ...... 120

3.6 Conclusion ...... 126

Chapter 4 Second Empirical Paper: The Aesthetics of Post-Suburbanization in the Toronto Region ...... 129

4.1 Introduction ...... 129

4.2 Aesthetic governmentality and world class urbanity as a diffuse signifier ...... 132

4.3 Data and methods ...... 138

4.4 Toronto region study context: growth management, downtown condo-ism, and suburban intensification ...... 139

4.5 Post-suburban aesthetics: Region-wide findings ...... 144

4.6 Case one: Markham Centre ...... 148

4.7 Case two: Vaughan Metropolitan Centre ...... 152

4.8 Conclusions: Aesthetic governmentality and post-suburbanization ...... 157

Chapter 5 Third Empirical Paper: Building the “Best of Both” Urbanism and Suburbanism? Practitioner Perspectives on the Promises and Challenges of Planning Compact and Complete Communities ...... 160

5.1 Introduction: The interconnected promises of urbanity, density, and mobility options ..160

5.2 Urbanism, suburbanism, and the “in-between” ...... 165

5.3 Data and methods ...... 168

5.4 Planning and preferences for compact, complete communities in Canada & Toronto ...169

5.5 Findings ...... 173

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5.5.1 In between two worlds, but the best of both? ...... 173

5.5.2 Mobility options ...... 176

5.5.3 Amenity access ...... 179

5.5.4 Density and its discontents ...... 181

5.6 Mount Pleasant case study: Planning for a compact and complete greenfield community ...... 184

5.7 In-between suburbanisms, car-cramming, and the limits of density as destiny ...... 190

Chapter 6 Dissertation Conclusion: Reinventing the Suburbs: New Myths and Old Realities? Continuity-Discontinuity in Suburban Discourse ...... 194

6.1 Old and new “myths” in discourse, returning to Bourne with Lefebvre ...... 194

6.2 Arguments and contributions ...... 196

6.2.1 Dialectics of discourse: the temporalities of urbanism-suburbanism ...... 196

6.2.2 Urbanization, Suburbanization, or Post-suburbanization? ...... 204

6.2.3 “Urbanizing the suburbs” discourse and planning values ...... 207

6.3 Policy Implications ...... 210

6.4 Limits of the study and opportunities for future research ...... 211

6.4.1 Condominium townhouses and the production of private communities ...... 211

6.4.2 Higher density suburbs and well-being ...... 214

6.5 Final thoughts: the limits and possibilities of planning for “urbanity” in the suburbs ....215

References ...... 218

Appendices ...... 246

List of Tables

Table 1.1: Comparing population by Toronto-region municipalities 1996 & 2016...... 60

Table 1.2: 2016 Census Profile Data ...... 61

Table 1.3: Total existing housing stock enumerated in census year 2016 ...... 63

Table 2.1: Interviews by geographical location and interviewee category ...... 82

Table 2.2: Developments advertised in the Contemporary sample by municipal location and housing type ...... 89

Table 6.1: The dialectics urbanism-suburbanism discourse, building on Walks (2012a) with my addition of the temporality dimension ...... 197

List of Figures

Figure 1.1: Dissertation study area ...... 40

Figure 1.2: Lower tier, Local Municipalities and Upper tier, Regional Municipalities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area ...... 42

Figure 1.3: Built-up area, Toronto census metropolitan area ...... 44

Figure 1.4: Sample 1959 advertisement ...... 52

Figure 1.5: Three sample advertisements from 1989 ...... 56

Figure 1.6: Cornell, Markham streetscape ...... 57

Figure 1.7: Outdoor advertisement billboards for developments influenced by the principles of new urbanism in Markham ...... 58

Figure 1.8: Comparing two decades of population in the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA) ...... 59

Figure 1.9: New residential completions by housing type, annually from 1990- 2017 in the Toronto CMA municipalities, minus the City of Toronto ...... 65

Figure 1.10:. Percentage of new residential units completed by housing type from 1990 to 2017, showing the mix of new housing constructed in the “suburban” municipalities of the Toronto CMA, minus the City of Toronto ...... 66

Figure 1.11: Average price of all housing sales in the Greater Toronto Area, 2000- 2017...... 67

Figure 1.12: Average price of a new built single or semi detached house, by year, for the Toronto CMA, City of Toronto, Markham, Vaughan, and Brampton ...... 68

Figure 1.13: Percent change in average price of a new built single or semi detached house from 2008 to 2017, for the Toronto CMA, City of Toronto, Markham, Vaughan, and Brampton ...... 68

Figure 1.14: VIVA Now, Next campaign billboard in Markham ...... 76

Figure 1.15: VIVA Now, Next campaign billboard entering Vaughan ...... 76

Figure 2.1: Advertisement groupings based on initial interview categorization exercise ...... 85

Figure 2.2: New development magazines ...... 84

Figure 3.1: Developer’s rendering of stacked-back-to-back townhouses in Aurora ...... 97

Figure 3.2: Example cross section of a shared entry/stairwell stacked-back-to- back townhouse with underground parking ...... 98

Figure 3.3: Example cross sections of units in a direct walk-in/up stacked-back-to- back townhouse with integrated parking ...... 98

Figure 3.4: Proportional comparison of new housing unit in the GTA suburban municipalities ...... 99

Figure 3.5: Townhouse products are emerging as the suburban housing market “sweet spot” ...... 112

Figure 3.6: Advertisement billboard for stacked townhouses: ...... 117

Figure 3.7: Example advertisements for stacked and back-to-back townhouses that emphasize urbanity in their branding...... 121

Figure: 3.8: Comparison of location attributes coded as a percentage of the total sample for each housing type ...... 122

Figure 3.9: Outdoor advertisements for Oakvillage condominium apartments and stacked townhouses ...... 123

Figure 4.1: VIVA bus rapid transit promotion campaign showing the “now” and “next” vision for urban transformation...... 143

Figure 4.2: Emerging skyline of Markham Centre ...... 150

Figure 4.3: Screenshots from the VMC promotional video ...... 153

Figure 4.4: VMC transformation, office tower construction ...... 155

Figure 5.1: Mobility advertising appeals by housing type ...... 176

Figure 5.2 Percentage of developments marketing particular amenities, by housing type ...... 179

Figure 5.3: Mount Pleasant billboard by commercial node ...... 189

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List of Appendices

APPENDIX A: Information Letter and Interview Participant Consent Form ...... 246

APPENDIX B: Interview Guides ...... 250

APPENDIX C: Interview Codebook ...... 254

APPENDIX D: House Advertisement Codebook ...... 260

APEENDIX E: Summary of Findings for Interview Participants ...... 267

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Chapter 1

Dissertation Introduction

1.1 Urbanizing the suburbs?

“A-List Lifestyle, A-List Location…you’re going to love the convenient urban lifestyle.”1

“Urban lifestyle, tons of pubs and restaurants.”2

“Live central. Live city”3

Advertisements such as those above could easily be selling condominium apartments in a hip downtown neighbourhood; however, they represent the emerging tone used to market new housing developments in the Toronto suburbs including Aurora, Newmarket, and Brampton. A decade ago, the Province of Ontario established two plans to protect a 1.8-million-acre greenbelt and manage growth in the “Greater Golden Horseshoe” (GGH) region around the City of Toronto, by promoting higher density, transit-supportive, mixed use communities within and beyond the urban core. This dissertation examines how the policies, housing advertisements, and interview narratives of suburban producers (planners, housing developers, and municipal politicians) discursively rebrand and reinvent suburban municipalities around Toronto as “urbane” in the context of regional and global competition for residents, real estate sales, employers, and infrastructure investments. The combined impact of planning policies, and increased housing prices across the region establishes the contexts for different planning and development initiatives and narratives about suburban desirability to emerge.

The suburbs face an image problem; traditionally, mention of “suburbia” conjures images of sprawling, low-density, monotonous, car-dominated, landscapes designed for the middle class-

1 The Arbors, midrise apartments, Brookfield Residential, Aurora, New Condo Guide, 2015, v.19, pdf p.12. 2 Glenway, master planned community, Lakeview Homes and Andrin Homes, Newmarket, New Home Guide, 2015, v. 23(19), p. 53. 3 CityTowns, townhouses, Fieldgate Homes and Paradise Developments, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2015 v. 23(18), p. 50.

1 2 places that provide “little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like noplace in particular” (Kunstler 1993, p. 131). Such place images arising from a combination of abstract “myth” and material realities, have generated broad normative calls within urban planning theory and practice for the “urbanization,” “retrofit,” and “repair” of suburban “sprawl” (Dunham-Jones & Williamson, 2009; Tachieva, 2010) As Bourne (1996) has suggested, “the need to redesign the suburbs, both old and new, may well be the next frontier in urban research and planning” (p. 164).

In theorizing these new approaches to suburban planning, some scholars have highlighted consumer preferences for the accessibility and amenities of urban environments and the movement of residents. For example, Nelson (2013) has argued that suburbs will require “a certain level of urbanity” (p. 394) to succeed in a future where energy costs rise, employment lags, home financing is tightened, and consumers generally prefer urban lifestyles. Recent popular literature has declared the “end the suburbs” (Gallagher, 2013) and “the great inversion” (Ehrenhalt, 2013) of city and suburb as millennials and affluent baby boomers move to the gentrifying city. Fishman (2005) has depicted shifting mass residential waves in America, first from rural areas to urban centres, then from cities out to the suburbs, and most recently a wave of young adults, seniors and new immigrants back to inner cities. Ley (1996) has argued that since the 1960s counter-culture narrative devaluing the suburbs as homogenous and conformist, the Canadian middle class has preferred inner city living, even when housing is more expensive than in suburban locations. Middle class residents thus seek to distinguish their identities through the consumption of urban housing and symbols representing the “aestheticization of urbanity” (p. 299). Following this thread, emergent urbanity in the suburbs could be theorized as an extension of consumer choice for more urbane built forms and ways of life. Keil (2018) has critiqued theories of suburban change that only focus on the “symptomatic” expressions of consumer choice and resident behavior for reducing complex processes to technical issues (p. 81).

Other scholars have underscored the productive capacities of capital investments shifting between urban core and suburban locations at different periods of time as part of related processes of urbanization. Harvey (2001) has argued that one of the central contradictions of capitalism is the “overaccumulation” of capital that cannot be profitably invested in one industry or place and must shift into new sectors and/or locations. This can include capital shifting back to places that then undergo “creative destruction” in the built environment to make way for new

3 opportunities for profitability. In this view, re-valorization of urban cores is less about consumer preferences and the movement of people as it is about the movement of capital (Smith, 1979, 1996). The post-war rollout of mass suburbanization in North America can be considered through a Marxian lens as a “spatial fix” to the “contradiction” of capitalism where “surpluses” of capital and labour, no longer productive in war efforts and industries, were deployed in the construction of suburban landscapes (Harvey, 2001; Walker, 1981). The resulting suburban spaces were characterized by increasingly decentralized production: industrial and office parks were separated from low-density housing designed for the growing middle class to store and consume mass-produced goods, and systems of highways connected regions (Filion, 1999). Phelps (2015) has argued that the “extreme separation of land uses and the provision for automobility” that emerged to fix a contradiction of capitalism have themselves become barriers to further capital expansion (p. 40). For example, extra time, fuel and labour spent transporting items across dispersed landscapes can become a barrier to profitability, and similarly, houses constructed far from amenities and employment centres can lose appeal for buyers, and thus profitability for developers. The paradox of a spatial fix needing a new fix has resulted in both the return of capital back into the city and the emergence of new types of suburban forms, politics, and ideologies moving “toward a new, post-Fordist, post-suburban spatial fix” that would retain or return capital to reinvented suburban areas (Phelps, 2015, p. 36). Extending from this strand of the literature, urbanity in the suburbs could be theorized as the opening up of new avenues for profitability through denser built forms and diversified land uses in “suburban” locations at the metropolitan periphery. Keil (2018, p. 81) calls this a “systematic” approach that moves beyond the symptomatic to the processes and systems producing suburban expansion.

Renewed attention to the suburbs within urban studies has prompted calls to develop theory that integrates the growing complexity of suburbanization processes and suburbanism(s) as ways of life, where the suburban is not secondary or derivative to the urban, but is conceptualized as dialectically related with broader urbanization and global processes shaping society and space. (Harris & Lehrer, 2018; Keil, 2013; 2018). Keil (2018) has critiqued mainstream suburban studies for emphasizing “retrofit” and “rebuilding the suburbs” while “skipping the step of rethinking the suburbs (p. 74). Phelps has called for a broader theorization of suburban change that can speak to emergent planning, architecture, and urban design practices (Phelps, 2016).

This dissertation contributes to the wider response to these calls to rethink the suburbs with attention to the discursive practices of key actors (planners, politicians, developers) in governance, land, and infrastructure development processes, which are central dimensions “through which suburbanization is driven forward, redefined and through which globally diverse suburbanisms are engendered” (Keil, 2018, p. 63). As elaborated in Section 1.4, I ground my study in the process-oriented, systemic, and relational understanding of suburbanization and urbanization processes, highlighting the productive role of discourse and the influence of planners, politicians and developers over where capital flows. Schmid (2018) has linked the demand for “‘urban’ living working, and leisure” with both gentrification in the city core and the new demand for “urban spaces” in the “former urban periphery” (p. 91). As capital seeks out space for urbanity in the suburbs, producers (e.g. planners, developers, politicians) search for “new ways to construct urban landscapes that can provide the highly valued features of ‘urban life’ usually found in inner-city areas” such as density, access to transit, and urbane architectural design (Schmid, 2018, p. 91). Lefebvre (1970/2003) argued that the production of urban space is the central process through which capital is accumulated and extended. My approach recognizes the agency, contested subjectivities, and roles of residents and homebuyers in the social and cultural production of space, but does not stop at the “symptomatic” explanations for suburban change as a simple result of consumer choices; rather, I examine how urbane space and related subjectivities are discursively and “systematically” produced through contemporary suburbanization processes.

I begin this introductory chapter by discussing the variable and contested concepts “urban” and “suburban” and related terminology before outlining my research questions, and articulating my argument. I then discuss the body of theory informing my research approach into the dialectic and discursive production of suburban place and housing images. Next, I discuss the powerful discourse in the literature surrounding “the suburban myth,” the subsequent efforts to chart the “urbanization of the suburbs,” and key debates within the “post-suburbia” literature. From there, I describe my Toronto region study area, key historical moments in the region’s planning and development, and highlight elements of the contemporary context influencing the discourses of urbanity examined in this dissertation. In the final section of the Introduction I delineate the structure of the ensuing chapters.

1.2 The “urban” and “suburban”

The contested and variable uses of terminology related to the “urban,” “suburban,” and how these concepts are mobilized in and through processes of (post)suburbanization are explored throughout this dissertation. Four broad conceptual distinctions surround the use of these terms in the literature.

First, urban and suburban are used as descriptors, of bounded physical entities or places. As physical entities or places, urban and suburban areas are often defined in the literature according to political boundaries between a central city and its surrounding municipalities. In this model, suburban areas or suburbs have distinct political status or identities but maintain economic relationships with the central city, along with consistent commuting activity between the areas. For example, Masotti and Hadden (1974) define “suburbia” as “the politically separate but economically dependent communities located within commuting range of the central city” (p. 3). Despite decades of debate over these terms and their meanings, Nicolaides and Wiese (2006) still find practical value in this political-functional definition, where suburban areas are “beyond the central city limits […] within commuting distance and social orbit of the older core” (p. 9). For the purposes of the Canadian Census, since the 1970s Statistics Canada has made a high-level distinction between urban and rural areas based on population and form, where the term “urban” denotes settlements of at least 1,000 people and a minimum population density of 400 per square kilometre. In defining Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) and Census Agglomerations (CAs), the agency considers the economic functions and social connections that people generally make across a region, stating that the larger the central city, the larger the influence it exerts on the surrounding area. In some analyses conducted within the agency, further distinction is made between core and urban-fringe areas (which could be generally considered “suburban”) and rural-fringe areas (which are considered rural but which still fall within a CMA) (Puderer, 2009).

In the second sense, urban and suburban constitute descriptors of cultural meaning, such as qualities and characteristics of ways of life (e.g. sociological or lifestyle properties) or places (e.g. morphological, or aesthetic properties). “Urbane” is an adjective signaling “urban” qualities and can be applied to places, buildings, and lifestyles, carrying cultural connotations of a “polished” manner (Merriam-Webster, 2018). Urbanity refers broadly to the characteristics and qualities associated with “the urban,” and the state of being urbane (Merriam-Webster, 2018).

The terms “urban,” “urbane,” “urbanity” and “suburban” carry cultural meaning as signifiers of particular built forms and aesthetic qualities, particularly in the planning and architecture literature (Forsyth, 2012). When applied to social life, “urbanism” and “suburbanism,” carry cultural meaning as signifiers of different ways of life associated with particular places, especially in the human geography and sociology literature. For example, Wirth (1938) characterized life in urban areas as distinct from that in rural areas due to the more disorganized and even alienating social contexts found in urban regions. With a similar urban-rural continuum in mind, Fava (1956) examined rural-like “neighbouring” practices to be characteristic of “suburbanism” as a way of life. Conversely, Gans (1991) and Marshall (1973) rejected the idea that distinct ways of life might be associated with specific places, asserting instead that demographic markers such as class and age impact social structures more than place. The role of place in shaping ways of life evokes debates in the literature on “environmental determinism” or “spatial fetishism” and speaks to how scholars interpret the socio-spatial dialectic. Many human geographers reject causal interpretations but recognize relationships between social and spatial processes nonetheless: “just are there are no purely spatial processes, neither are there any non- spatial social processes” (Massey, 1984, p. 52, cited in Pacione, 2009, p. 23). Different meanings are culturally assigned to places and lifestyles through this relationship between space and society; these assignations lead people to “intuit” or “know” an urban area as such when they see one (Hall, 2006). Drummond and Labbé (2013) argued that notions of the “suburban,” whether based on reality or popular culture and myth, have real impacts on everyday life, how residents view themselves, and the types of policies and plans enacted for suburban areas. They suggest that close study of everyday life in a diversity of global suburban realities is required for understanding ways of life at the intersection of a blurred urban and suburban divide.

In a third usage, urbanism and suburbanism as ways of life are related to urbanization and suburbanization processes: urbanism and suburbanism constitute productive forces in dialectical tension resulting in a range of urban and suburban places and ways of life Walks (2012a). This approach employs Lefebvre’s (1970/2003) work to conceptualize a productive dialectical tension in which suburbanism is “urbanism’s internal ever-present anti-thesis” (p. 1472). Walks outlines six dimensions through which forces of centrality, difference, and functionality produce different properties of urbanism and suburbanism. Properties of urbanism include clustering, connectivity, plurality, multi-functionality, and an orientation to public life, whereas properties of suburbanism

7 include dispersion, political subordination, separation (e.g. in land use), social segregation, automobile dependence, and an orientation to private life. Walks emphasizes that these properties, far from being static, interact dynamically in the production of space. In this conceptualization, properties of urbanism and suburbanism can be found in both urban and suburban areas and can produce new hybrid spaces, ways of life, and forms of political consciousness. Recent research has operationalized this theory of “suburbanism” as a way of life characterized by detached dwellings, single-occupancy, homeownership, and car-dependence (Moos & Mendez, 2015).

In a fourth, related sense, urbanization, suburbanization, and post-suburbanization are terms describing processes of urban growth and represent theories about how, why, and where growth occurs, the broad processes shaping the production of urban space, and the processes of change by which the qualities of a place become more or less urbane or suburban. For theorists emphasizing this view, the processes shaping suburbanization or “post-suburbanization” are more important to understand than the suburbs as a bounded place or “thing” (Keil, 2013; 2018). For example, Lehrer (2013a) examines suburban forms emerging on the urban fringe as “sociospatial manifestations” of hybridity and irregularity in urbanized society produced through various processes. As the lead investigator on an international project examining “global suburbanisms,” Keil (2018) and colleagues have aimed to reframe the suburban from a subordinate or pejorative position to instead give “the suburbs their rightful place in the conceptual imaginaries and real worlds though which we must understand the global urbanism in which our lives are now being lived” (p. 13). Keil argues that much of the hype around rural-to- urban growth and entering a global “urban age,” is actually suburban growth on the fringes of urban metropolitan areas, and thus “the majority of new and existing urbanites will live in suburban constellations” (2018 p. 54).

The “city versus the suburb” can be considered the “defining dialectic of the past century of American metropolitan thought” (Schafran, 2013, p. 136). Geography and urban studies scholars increasingly question the usefulness of viewing metropolitan areas in dichotomous urban and suburban terms, where emergent centralities and complexities on the urban fringe challenge established popular images and urban theories (Keil, 2018; Schmid, 2018). Lefebvre (1970/2003) described the historic movement of capital into central cities through industrialization as an “implosion” as city cores were transformed through factories and the built forms of industrial

8 production, while capital continued to move geographically outward in an “explosion” of polycentric, fragmented suburban form (Goonewardena, 2011). New centralities in suburban areas prompt new questions about these processes of implosion and explosion and how various processes related to land, infrastructure, and governance produce many points “in-between” the urban implosions and suburban explosions in terms of built form and ways of life (Keil & Young, 2011; Keil, 2018). While “urbanization” is at the core of broad critical geography debates surrounding how best to conceptualize the structural relationships between economy, society, and space,4 the primary strand of the literature on urbanization to which this dissertation contributes concerns the relationship between urbanization and suburbanization. The term “suburbanization” can refer to the process of population and economic growth and spatial expansion on the fringes of urban areas in general (Ekers, Hamel & Keil, 2012; Keil, 2013) or at the expense of core areas (Pacione, 2009). Schmid (2018) has argued strongly that “the distinction between urban and suburban areas no longer proves useful,” and dynamics in recently developed areas result from urbanization processes, which are planetary in scale (p. 114). Keil (2018) also dialectically relates processes shaping space across core to fringe metropolitan areas around the globe; however, he employs the concept of suburbanization as a lens through which the “process of urbanization reveals itself in the twenty-first century” (p. 16), wherein suburbanization is part of a larger process of the extension of systemic infrastructures and large- scale political economics” (p. 112).

Discussed further in Section 1.4.2 are the literature and debates on what Masotti and Hadden (1973) call the “urbanization of the suburbs”—that is, the process by which suburban areas come to resemble urban areas, or by which suburban ways of life become more urban. Contemporary debates stemming from this literature examine the extent to which “we might now speak about living in an era of ‘post-suburbanization’ as suburban areas become increasingly complex, variably scaled, functionally differentiated, and socioeconomically mixed metropolitan structures” (Keil, 2013, p. 8; see also Wu & Phelps, 2011). As brought to light through Walks’ conception of urbanism and suburbanism as productive forces operating in tandem across both

4 See, for example, Lefebvre (1970/2003), Harvey (1978), and Smith (2002) on the roles of urbanization and industrialization as organizing logics of capitalism; see also recent debates about “planetary urbanization” among Brenner and Schmid (2015), Walker (2015), and Shaw (2015), and others (see Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, forthcoming 2018 special issue) about the uses and limits of the planetary urbanization theory.

9 urban and suburban areas, the “urbanization of the suburbs” carries a correlative suburbanization of the urban, denoting the extension of suburban ways of life into urban areas (Moos and Mendez, 2015).

Interested in the discursive production of new development in the municipalities beyond of the City of Toronto, I employ the concepts of “urban” and “suburban” while recognizing their contested character because these discursive distinctions remain widely used in and beyond the academy, and they “function as shorthand in urban discourse, allowing powerful spatial imaginaries to structure urban space and make representation of it more manageable” (Fiedler, 2011, p. 67). Defining the suburbs and examining terms that describe urban peripheries has been the focus of scholarly contributions by Forsyth (2012) Harris and Vorms (2017). In this project, I focus less on nomenclature, and instead explore how the terminology and images associated with “urban” and “suburban” are mobilized by different practitioners in the discursive production of place as part of contemporary (post)suburbanization processes of growth and expansion in municipalities beyond the historic metropolitan core. Discourse is productive and as such reveals broader social, cultural and economic values embedded in place images, or in what Lefebvre (1974/1991) calls “representations of space” discussed further in Section 1.3.4. Lefebvre (1974/1991; 1970/2003) recognized the role of discursive and symbolic spatial practices in the production of space, a move that went beyond the work of earlier historical materialist Marxists who emphasized the determinative power of the market. Following Lefebvre and building on Walks (2012a), I regard discursive and symbolic spatial practices as constituting mediating forces between urbanism and suburbanism as ways of life. As part of the shift in the literature from viewing the suburbs as a subordinate “thing” I focus on how “suburban” or non- metropolitan core places are produced as “urbane” or “suburban” and what work these ascribed meanings do as part of overarching urbanization and suburbanization processes.

1.3 Research objectives, questions, and argument

In academic literature and circulating more broadly through popular culture, there developed a “suburban myth” that “suburbia” or the “suburbs” were homogenous, primarily residential areas close to nature, good for families, and led to particular types of community cohesion or control. While housing developers have represented this myth positively as the “suburban dream,” the

10 suburbs have faced increased criticism and in many ways have become caricatured, with a negative place image in normative planning theory and popular culture (see Section 1.5). Harris and Larkham (1999) argued that the “suburban myth” was perpetuated in the literature because it told the story that “everyone ‘knew’” about the suburbs (p.7, my emphasis). Harris recently argued that in Toronto, the “suburban dream” is vying with the powerful alternative of urban living associated with the condominium boom in core and “everyone knows it” (2015, p. 44, my emphasis). As Masotti and Hadden (1973) put it: suburban “myths die hard” (p. 16). What new narratives need to be told to reinvent the image of the suburbs? This dissertation probes the discourses producing this shift in ideology to ask: what are the contours of discourse shaping common sense about what “everyone” in the region “knows” as desirable living?

The objectives of this research project are to explore the dialectical tensions between urbanism and suburbanism in 1) the discursive production of suburban areas as desirable places in which to live and buy a home 2) how contemporary discourses continue or depart from historical narratives and images of the suburbs, and 3) the practices of planning and development according to the perspectives of suburban housing and place producers.

To address the first objective I analyze the following data: 1) interviews with suburban housing and place producers (planners, municipal councillors, and developers), 2) government-produced official plans, and 3) developer-produced advertisements for new houses and neighbourhoods. I use the term “place image” broadly to consider a range of discourses (not just the visual) that package and promote a place (e.g. through an advertisement) or a vision for a place (e.g policy). Interviews with suburban housing and place producers provide the data for analysis when I consider the second objective of building understanding of how producers characterize the practical successes and challenge of “urbanizing the suburbs”.

The dissertation objectives are explored through the following research questions: • How are properties related to the “urban” and “suburban” (e.g. aspects of centrality or distance, design and aesthetics) mobilized in suburban planning and development industry discourses to promote planning objectives, and to sell new-build houses and neighbourhoods? • What similarities and differences are exhibited between:

o the visions and place images discursively produced by planners, councillors, and housing developers? (e.g. What types of housing are envisioned and what types of subject positions are made possible?) o the representations of “urbanism” and “suburbanism” in advertisements for housing developments of different types/densities? o contemporary suburban place images, and the image captured by the “suburban myth?” • How do housing and place producers (planners, municipal councillors, and developers) characterize the successes and challenges facing suburban planning and development now and in the future?

I argue that contemporary planning and development discourses reveal several key divergences from, but also continuities with, the historical script of the suburban myth. Whereas suburban planning and marketing in the past has discursively produced the suburbs as distinct from urban areas (promising greater access to the countryside while still remaining close to town, a healthy, safe retreat from the pollution and problems of the city, and an ideal place for families), the discourses emerging in contemporary planning policies and advertisements downplay urban- suburban distinctions and present a vision that is more akin to desirable urban core neighbourhoods, while retaining certain narratives associated with the suburbs and small towns. Discursive divergences from the historical suburban script include that: 1) the suburbs are evolving and desirable (again) and not “sprawl;” 2) suburban locations can enable urbane lifestyles and mobility options; 3) compact neighbourhoods are desirable for raising children; 4) good design is not traditional and suburban, but modern and urbane; and 5) suburban nodes can compete globally for residents and employers. Discursive continuities include that the suburbs offer 1) opportunities for affordable homeownership (though through smaller units); 2) the “best of” convenient access to nature, recreation and leisure activities, shopping and other amenities; and 3) commuting distance to downtown. Producers plan and advertise new compact suburban housing developments as urbane to reinvent the image of what makes the suburbs desirable places in which to live, and safe places in which to invest through homeownership. I view these discursive continuities and discontinuities as dialectically related in and through processes that simultaneously support and undermine the vision of urbanized suburbs. Drawing on the Foucaultian governmentality literature, I also argue that particular subject positions are

12 discursively produced in the process of reinventing the suburban place image. These arguments are expanded throughout the three empirical papers forming Chapters Three to Five of the dissertation.

1.4 Theoretical Approach

1.4.1 “Culture and economy as mutually embedded”

The turn within geography towards culture and representation has brought attention to place images and to the role of discourse in shaping the meanings ascribed to place (Hubbard, 2006). Neoclassical economic and classical Marxian approaches to the study of society and space have offered varying perspectives on the processes and agents involved in the production of the (capitalist) city, yet both approaches have been critiqued for reifying market processes (Pacione, 2009). The cultural turn within the social sciences broadly and Marxian geographies in particular has done much to enrich current understandings of the intertwining of cultural politics, political- economic power, and social processes of place construction (Harvey, 1996). “Cultural economy” (Hall, 2010; Langley, 2010) and “cultural political economy” (Jessop, 2004) approaches participate in an “open and broad field of research that refuses to bracket out economy as a separable object of study and which works with, rather than against, the cultural, material and descriptive turns in understanding markets” (Langley, 2010, p. 395). Intersecting economic geography and cultural economy approaches have drawn on Polanyi’s (1944/2001) work on the social embeddedness of institutions and economic practices (Peck, 2013).

My own examination of the discursive production of suburban place and the new-housing development market, follows this Polanyian thread and adopts Rankin’s recognition of “culture and economy as mutually embedded” (1999, p. 10). Rankin (1999) argues that markets are sets of social relations embedded in particular cultural contexts and frameworks. She suggests that “focusing on the political and cultural foundations for the representation and organization of markets helps us to recognize them as human constructions that serve some interests over others, rather than as the given, natural way of things” (p. 9). Attention to the cultural production of markets reveals how certain imaginations or ideologies come to prevail, in particular the image of a free market that naturalizes the separation of the economy from other social realms like

13 culture, politics, and institutions (Rankin, 2013). For urban planning, recognizing the cultural production of markets acknowledges planners’ agency and challenges the idea that the market produces “natural” laws to which planners merely respond (Rankin, 2013). Grant (1994) argues that, although economic and other changes impact the context in which planning occurs, “cultural values shape the parameters of acceptable planning responses” (p. 17). Thus, attending to the cultural (e.g. discursive) aspects of planning practice and contexts, replaces “naturalness” with an understanding of the processes producing the definition of planning problems and solutions.

1.4.2 Discourse and governmentality

The cultural turn within social science has been influenced by the attention given to language, symbols, and cultural practices by theorists including Barthes and Foucault. Barthes (1972; 1977) brings the linguistic method of semiotics to a study of culture. He examines how social “myths” are produced through cultural iconography such as advertisements; in socio-spatial terms, he explores how places themselves become forms of “mythology.” Barthes’ use of the term “myth” is distinct from the idea of hidden truths, falsehoods, or lies, referring instead to social norms that become naturalized and folded into what is collectively understood to be “common sense” (Hall, 2001; Cronin, 2004). Barthes’ influence on the social sciences is evident in the idea of the “suburban myth” found in the scholarship discussed in Section 1.4.

Foucault (1977) developed the concept of “discourse” that encompasses a concern for language and text but also moves beyond linguistics to a broader theory of the operation of power. Following Foucault, discourse can be defined as “a group of statements which provide a language for talking about – a way of representing the knowledge about – a particular topic at a particular historical moment” (Hall, 2001, p. 72). Foucault’s interest lies in the ways that the conduct of individuals and populations is “governed” by a range of actors both within and outside the official “government” and mobilized towards “definite but shifting ends… with a diverse set of relatively unpredictable consequences, effects and outcomes” (Dean, 2010, p. 18). The study of “governmentality” examines how a range of actors and agencies employ discourses, strategies, and tactics in “practices that try to shape, sculpt, mobilize and work through the choices, desires, aspirations, needs, wants and lifestyles of individuals and groups” (Dean, 2010,

14 p. 20). Foucault (2008) was particularly interested in “biopolitics:” how power is exercised in and through the body. Foucault (1977) departs from classical Marxian conceptions of power as hegemonic and top down, arguing instead that power circulates in multiple directions and channels, and structures the field of possibilities. Dean (2010, p. 33) observes that Foucaultian5 analysis of government fruitfully attends to questions of “how we govern and are governed” by examining the possibilities and constraints pertaining to ways of 1) seeing, 2) thinking and questioning, 3) acting, and 4) forming subjects. The Foucaultian analytic of governance and discourse “removes the ‘naturalness’ and ‘taken-for-granted’ character of how things are done” and provides openings for counter-narratives or counter-conducts (Dean, 2010, p. 49).

The literature on governmentality pays much attention to the discursive production of “subject positions” or “subjectivities” as they are enabled or constrained through constellations of knowledge and power (Thobani, 2007). Government, or the “conduct of conduct” gives shape to, or structures, the field of possible roles, actions, and abilities to “act on our own or others’ capacities for action” (Dean, 2010, p. 22); in other words, “who we are when we are governed” or our “mode of subjectification” (p. 26). While government shapes the contours of freedom, the governed are also free to think and act in a variety of ways unforeseen by government. The relationship between power and subjects can be framed as such: “[p]ower is productive of subjects and exercised by means of regimes of truth that in turn constitute power” (Bohm, Jones, Land, & Paterson, 2006, p. 9). In the dissertation I am interested in how various subjects are discursively produced and represented through visions of the suburbs in general and suburban homeownership in particular. Within cultural economy and economic geography there is a growing interest in “financial subjectivities.” In Chapter Three, I draw on Langley’s (2006a) work on how producers, especially government actors and producers of media discourses produce “investor subjects.” Attention to financial subjectivities has been valuable for demonstrating how, alongside the roll-back of the welfare state, “personal financial security has become increasingly bound up with the fortunes of international financial markets” (Hall, 2011, p. 404), shaping who “we” are within the contemporary moment of neoliberalism and financialized homeownership. In Chapter Four, I connect the aesthetic governmentality literature

5 Alternatively spelled “Foucauldian”

15 with Catungal and Leslie’s (2009) study of developer subjectivities as “gatekeepers” and “networkers” in shaping the conduct of a “creative district” (Liberty Village) in Toronto. In Chapter Five, my attention to subjectivities comes from the automobility literature, which views the “autocity” as shaping freedom, conduct, ideas and actions of subjects within a car-oriented suburban environment; these terms and literatures are discussed further in the respective chapters.

1.4.3 The “dialectics of discourse”

Urban geographer Harvey (1996) has adopted key Foucaultian techniques and integrated them with his Hegelian-Marxian dialectical orientation into the study of socio-spatial processes in what he calls the “the dialectics of discourse” (p. 77). For Harvey, the focus of dialectical understanding and inquiry is on the relationships between processes, things, and systems. Dialectically, discourses flow between other aspects of social process such as material practices, beliefs, institutions, and social relations. Harvey’s dialectical approach highlights processes: “Dialectics forces us always to ask the question of every ‘thing’ or ‘event’ that we encounter: by what process was it constituted and how is it sustained?” (p. 50). The relevance for geography and planning theory is that a dialectical approach views places, systems, and other socio-spatial “things” as “perpetually constituted and reconstituted” (p. 51). Discourse plays a role in this perpetual constituting and reconstituting, and thus a dialectics of discourse approach helps answer what Harvey calls “the only interesting question” about place: “by what social process(es) is place constructed?” (p. 293-4). A dialectical approach views every unit of analysis (e.g. a metropolitan region) as produced in complex relation with other units of the “social totality” (e.g. other city-regions), but also heterogeneous and capable of being further broken down into complexly related units (e.g. urban core and suburbs, neighbourhoods, houses and households, and so on). The dialectical approach aims to understand the external and internal relationships and processes that constitute a unit of analysis. These internal relationships can reveal “contradictions” where particular processes simultaneously unify and differentiate, and support and undermine each other (Mandel 1990; Harvey 1996; Harvey 2010).

A study of discourse can furnish understandings of “ideology,” which can be variously defined, but for the purposes of this dissertation I define broadly as “world views,” and bundles of taken-

16 for-granted “values,” “ideas,” and “truths” into “belief systems that organize meanings and interpretations into a single, unified sense” (Gottdiener, 2001, p. 10). These worldviews do not announce themselves as ideology per se, (Goonewardena 2005, on Althusser, 1971) and can appear as that which “goes without saying because it comes without saying” (Bourdieu, 1977 cited by Rankin, 2004, p. 51). Discourse analysis is a way to de-naturalize and draw attention to how ideology, or “world views,” and “common sense” do come with ways of talking about and representing social realms. Following Harvey, I understand discourse analysis as a way to unpack how narratives and images work together dialectically in and through other social processes and relations.

“Aesthetics” becomes an important related concept, because “in order to be effective, ideology must also be affective, that is to say, aesthetic” (Goonewardena, 2005, p. 47). In other words, ideology must strike a chord but with all bodily senses (Eagleton, 1988). Aesthetics, broadly conceived beyond the discourses of artistic criticism, “is a form of cognition, achieved through taste, touch, hearing, seeing, smell – the whole corporeal sensorium.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p.6). Ideology, or “world view truths” become shaped aesthetically, through the bodily senses with the formation, or acculturation, of people’s tastes, cultural norms of beauty, and subject positions from which they make “aesthetic” judgements about art, architecture, or the built form more broadly (Buck-Morss, 1992; Eagleton, 1988). In this vein, Goonewardena (2005), drawing on Lefebvre (1970/2003) and others, has developed the concept of the “urban sensorium” to consider how aesthetic experience of everyday life in “the urban” mediates ideology. Eagleton (1988) has made reference to “beauty” as a “consensual power” (p. 330). Ghertner (2015) has brought together Foucaultian and aesthetic scholarship in his work on “rule by aesthetic,” or “aesthetic governmentality,” which further develops how aesthetic judgement and building consensus around a particular image of a “world class city” has become a form of power in the planning and redevelopment of Delhi, India. I further discuss this relationship between suburban planning and aesthetic governmentality in Chapter Four.

Two critical points of tension exist between Marxian-Hegelian-dialectical and post-modern approaches to discourse analysis; ontological and epistemological questions have been raised about the concept of “social totality” in dialectical philosophy, and methodological questions have arisen about how researchers interpret meaning in discourse. First, a dialectical approach views all social phenomenon or “things” (such as an image of place) as perpetually constituted

17 and reconstituted by relational processes within an integrated whole or totality. At the root of the Hegelian-Marxian idea of a social totality are the emphases on dialectical relationships, or in other words: thinking holistically, and a long-range historicizing of social processes recognizing that the social totality “does not sit still: it flows, moves, and shifts shape according to its many determinations” (Goonewardena, 2018, p. 7). The attention to process proves useful for understanding the social world as constantly changing and in flux. Research questions thus consider “how, when, and into what [things or systems] change and why they sometimes appear not to change.” (Ollman 1990, p. 34, cited in Harvey, 1996, p. 55). This is why scholars employing a dialectical approach, and Lefebvre in particular, often speak in terms of space as an unfinished product in the process of “becoming” rather than “being” a static entity.

Post-modernism’s rejection of metanarratives led to concern about how one can claim to know the totality of system, especially in a complex global context. This wariness coincided with mounting geopolitical concerns about political totalitarianism, leading to what Goonewardena (2005; 2018) sees as a false conflation, and preemptive dismissal, of the philosophical, dialectical notion of “social totality,” alongside “totalitarianism.” Lefebvre sought to intervene in rigid understandings of the concept of the “totality” and offered an interpretation of totality that is both “open and integral” (Goonewardena, 2005, p. 59). Lefebvre’s theoretical approach to an open totality views social-spatial contradictions as producing “faults, voids, and lacunae” (Lefebvre, 1970/2003, p. 86); these gaps are political openings, “the places of the possible” for societal transformation (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 156). Despite some of Foucault’s reservations about the Hegelian-Marxian philosophy of social totality, for Harvey, (1996) a dialectical approach articulates with Foucault’s aim to undermine “effects of truth” by considering how discourse is “an internalized effect of other moments in the social process” (p. 95).

The second point of tension relates to terminology and methodology. Classical Marxist analyses have tended to regard discourse as a tool of hegemony; in this view, the purpose of discourse analysis is to uncover or decode hidden truths behind the misrepresentations of reality produced by elites (Lees, 2004; Manghani, Piper & Simons, 2006). Post-modernist scholars raise questions about the methodology for revealing hidden meaning and instead aim to understand how apparent “truths” are produced, naturalized, and depoliticized in and through discourses (Dean, 2010; Manghani et al., 2006). Methodologically, post-modernist analysis leads to an “intertextual” study of discourse across the different narratives and counter-narratives that

18 comprise what are sometimes termed “webs” of meaning (Røe, 2013; Dowling, 1998). Harvey (1996) also uses “intertextual analysis,” and this relational method fits well with the wider dialectical approach to studying discourse. Because of discursive flows within social-spatial production, Harvey’s “intertextual analysis” can “illustrate how discursive effects mark out a complex ‘trace’ across a variety of seemingly independent discursive domains, sometimes presaging disruptive effects but in other instances offering hidden supports to pervasive ideologies” (p. 89).

Although there are points of tension, between Classical Marxist and post-modern approaches to discourse analysis, there are also related and overlapping themes, motivations, and techniques. Lees (1994) argues that Marxian and post-modern cultural explanations for socio-spatial change are two sides of the same coin: material and symbolic values, profit and desire are necessary to understanding socio-spatial restructuring. Harvey (1996) offers an important bridge between Marxian, dialectical inquiry and the attention to discourse that emerged alongside Foucault’s work, and the development of post-modern theory. Harvey examines the production of meaning through the dialectical relationships among discourse and social relations, materialities, and processes, as well as through intertextual analysis. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of understanding how discourse supports or undermines (contradicts) the production of capitalist power. Li (2007) also draws on Marxian and Foucaultian studies of power but complicates the Marxist idea that people either consent or resist coercive power, finding instead that power operates through mundane and routine practices that enable and constrain various realities and subject positions in contradictory ways that offer “grist for critical insights” (p. 26).

In this dissertation I adopt a “dialectic of discourse” approach. I understand ideology or social meaning to be openly produced, and not hidden, false, or “mythic” in a literal sense, but instead where the role of the researcher is to “reveal” how discourse mediates ideologies (of planning, housing markets, and suburbs) dialectically in and through relations among texts, moments, and processes. This understanding aligns with the governmentality studies goal of examining how meaning, values and power are produced, naturalized, and depoliticized in and through discourses. I view power (economic/capitalist and otherwise) as exercised through complex and often contradictory social relations and processes rather than merely through top-down channels. In taking a dialectical approach I do not claim to study or know the social totality in its entirety, but in studying the discursive visions of suburban planning and development, I situate my

19 findings holistically, in relationship with wider dynamic processes recognizing the dynamism and mediating roles of “urban” space, discourse and aesthetics. Harvey (1996) comments that “the exploration of ‘possible worlds’ is integral to dialectical thinking,” (p. 56) which makes the dialectical approach useful for my study’s attention to examining the visions and aspirations of suburban spatial and housing producers. Goonewardena (2005) highlighted “becoming,” “contradiction,” and “praxis” with “a keen eye for the possible” (p. 60) as central themes in Lefebvre’s theoretical oeuvre, which I also take up as key themes in this dissertation.

I follow the general practice within urban geography studies employing discourse analysis by establishing my interpretive contexts in this introductory chapter of the dissertation, and at the beginning of each empirical paper, and then discussing the rhetorical strategies that organize a discourse and establish its authority (Lees, 2004). I frequently draw on critical geography and political economy literatures to set up the theoretical contexts, and highlight the sides of certain debates that my discourse analysis subsequently contributes to or supplements. Discourse analysis is useful in urban studies, geography, and planning for highlighting how policies and other narratives produce particular knowledge about urban issues leading to particular types of solutions and subject positions (Hastings, 1999). While she does not explicitly call her method “dialectic,” I draw on Perin’s (1977) methods analyzing housing developer narratives with attention to the relationships between seemingly contradictory pairs such as owner-renter, house- apartment, suburb-city, high and low density, stability-change, and homogeneity-heterogeneity. She regarded these contradictions as “cultural products,” and a “puzzle” of “misfitting pieces of ideology and practice of which she asked: “where do they come from, who uses them, for what purposes and how do they related to other cultural products?” (p. 28). Economy and society are actively shaped by the meanings that are made, shared, negotiated and imposed through discursive and representational processes, and are thus useful for understanding urban society (Hastings, 1999). Discourse analysis alone cannot produce social change, but Lees (2004) argues that probing the discursive constitutes a useful first step in action research.

1.4.4 Place image

“Place image” can refer to the distinct, but overlapping concepts of images formed 1) mentally, through perceptions and impressions of geographic locations; 2) visually through reading the

20 characteristics, facades, architectural styles, or landscapes of built environments; and 3) discursively, through the social construction of texts and visual representations of place (Lehrer, 2002; Manghani, et al.,, 2006; Bridge & Watson 2002; Cresswell, 1996). The Centrality of the image to this project is reflected in the dissertation’s title, which alludes to Kevin Lynch’s foundational book The Image of the City (1960). Lynch was interested in the mental, or perceptual concept of place image and its application for urban design. He developed the term “imageability,” to convey the idea that certain characteristics of place such as paths, edges, nodes, and districts produce stronger mental images and can make the city more “legible” for residents. Related to the place image literature is the work on “reading the landscape” visually, and like a text by cultural geographers including Duncan and Duncan (1988), and Duncan and Ley (1993). Others focus on the visual spectacle of architectural styles and facades in the deliberate shaping of place image (Crilley, 1993a; 1993b; Boyer, 1992). This dissertation focuses on the discursive production of place image while recognizing discourse as including both text and visual images, and the dialectical interaction between the discursive, perceptual, visual, and material production of built environments.

My approach to place image follows Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) argument that space and society are dialectically produced: “(Social) space is a (social) product” (p. 26). In other words, “space is no mere ‘container’ nor simply an ‘expression’ of social relations, but a productive and constitutive element of them” (Goonewardena, 2011, p. 55). Lefebvre (1970/2003) emphasizes the relational aspect of cities, and the urban phenomenon: “[n]othing exists without exchange, without union, without proximity, that is, without relationships” (p. 117). The discursive production of place image can be linked with what Lefebvre (1974/1991) calls “representations of space,” “conceived” space, or “the discursive regimes of analysis, spatial and planning professions and expert knowledges that conceive of space (l’espace conçu)” (Shields, 1998, p. 160, quoted in Stanek, 2011, p. 129). Representations of space form one point in a triad representing Lefebvre’s theories on the production of space, where the other two points are spaces of representation, and spatial practice, which are dialectically related with perceived and lived space. Harvey (1996) maintains that a dialectical production of place is multi-faceted, highlighting the role that discourse plays in shaping symbolic and representational meanings of places as products of power:

Places are constructed and experienced as material ecological artefacts and intricate networks of social relations. They are the focus of the imaginary, of beliefs, longings, and desires (most particularly with respect to the psychological pull and push of the idea of “home”). They are an intense focus of discursive activity, filled with symbolic and representational meanings, and they are a distinctive product of institutionalized social and political economic power. (Harvey, 1996, p. 316, my emphasis)

Consistent with this approach, Lehrer (2002) emphasizes the process of place image production. Alongside the material construction of the built environment are processes socially constructing associated place images and meanings. The image of a built environment emerges not only from its physical and aesthetic aspects, but also from its attendant social relations and discursive practices (Lehrer, 2006). Place “image” is discursively produced not just through visual or pictorial “images,” but also through ways of talking about place, texts, metaphors, and so on (Forsyth, 1999). Through discourse, ideas about the “urban” become articulable, and “representations make the city available for analysis and replay” in a qualitative sense (Shields, 1996, p. 228). Applying Foucault’s work on governmentality to the social production of place reveals that the discursive practices shaping place image enable or constrain possible ways of seeing, knowing, acting within, and experiencing a place from particular subject positions.

Place image matters because the geographies of materiality and image are dialectically related, or “complexly intertwined and mutually constitutive” (Jacobs, 1996, p.158). Any representation of place constitutes a form of cultural, political and economic power “precisely because it is the imagination and negotiation of the future world. The invention of the future will always be contentious and places will always mediate power relations” (Dovey, 1999, p. 6). Because place images relate to power, individuals or groups who benefit from certain images work to define, promote, and maintain “favoured meanings” of places through representations of who and what is “in” or “out” of place (Cresswell, 1996, p. 59). Discourses, place images, and “myths” are socially produced, but they have real impacts on the material world, as the material and the discursive constantly rebuild each other (Lord, 2017). For example, scholars have examined how the discursive production of place images or “imaginaries” have naturalized the belonging of white, colonial settlers in certain places while rendering racialized others “out of place.” Such

22 images result in the material impacts of segregation, marginalization, and even violence.6 Others have examined how particular place images shape belonging in restructuring, gentrifying core neighbourhoods representationally including some and excluding others along the lines of race, gender and class (for Toronto case studies see Catungal, Leslie & Hii, 2009; Kern, 2010; Lehrer, Keil & Kipfer, 2010; Newman, 2002; Rankin & McLean, 2015; Whitzman, 2003).

1.4.5 Producing and selling place image

The production of place image is long-standing, as industries, governments, and other types of “boosters” have promoted settlement or tourism in particular places (Ward, 1998; Gold & Ward, 1994; Goodwin, 1993). Changing over time, however, is the importance of place image in economic development in an era of globalization, as cities compete for globally mobile capital investments, residents, and employers (Hall, 2006). Place “management” and marketing has also become an official role of public planning agencies (Ashworth & Voogd, 1994). Furthermore, there has emerged a new “building culture,” the focus of which “is no longer about the end result but also about what images are created and disseminated during the building process” (Lehrer, 2006 p. 338).

The place image process holds significance for shaping local and global competition, making places or real estate safe for investment, and representing who and what are included or excluded from particular images of place. The production of an urban image that can be mobilized through place marketing has “become one of the most practiced urban strategies for attracting investments and business” (Lehrer 2002, p. 30). In this period of late capitalism (Jameson, 1984), entrepreneurial governance (Harvey, 1989), “real estate capitalism” (Davis, 2006), and “cultural- cognitive capitalism” (Scott, 2011a), dominant economies trade in place, culture, knowledge,

6 See for example, Anderson (1991) on the discursive production of Vancouver’s Chinatown; Duncan & Duncan (2004) on the exclusionary impacts of the “landscapes of privilege” in suburban Bedford, NY; Edmonds (2010) on the segregation of and violence inflicted on Indigenous people away from the “imagined city” of Melbourne; McCann (1999) on planning practices and representations of space that worked to uphold racially segregated space in Lexington, KY and led to media reports of police violence against a black teenager as an “accident”; and Razack (2002) on how the murder of an Indigenous woman in Saskatchewan was diminished in legal proceedings through her discursive location in a space of violence and prostitution while her killers were located in the space of white middle-class patriarchal privilege.

23 aesthetics, and design..Local governments forge partnerships with city boosters, fueling the city as an economic growth machine (Logan and Molotch, 2010; Hall and Hubbard, 1998). Short and Kim (1998) argue that “cities have become commodified, packaged, advertised and marketed as much as any other product in a capitalist society” (p. 59), wherein reimaginations, representations, and reconstructions bear the marks of power. Philo and Kearns (1993) describe places sold as “bundles of social and economic opportunity competing against one another in the open (and unregulated) market for a share of the capital investment cake” and thus researchers should attend to the discourse produced by different actors and their practical consequences. Harvey (1996) argues that cities sell a differentiated image of place to compete for productive capital investment, residents, and consumers through “the creation of amenities such as a cultural center, a pleasing urban or regional landscape, and the like” (p. 298). In such a process, “using all the artifices of advertising and image construction that can be mustered, has become of considerable importance.” (p. 297-298). Selling the image of a place has become a key part of mobilizing capital and generating profit.

Returning to Rankin’s (1999) idea that culture and economy are mutually embedded and that discourse relates dialectically to other facets of society and space, Philo and Kearns (1993) agree that place image plays a role in shaping economic investment and attraction of capital; however, they illustrate additional social and cultural logics at work in the production and promotion of a particular place image. For example, the promotion of place image is a “subtle form of socialization” to convince people that wider social good is being produced, and to enhance the appeal of a place for wealthy, educated residents (p. 3). Place images represent an intertwining of both economic speculation and cultural speculation; the cultural speculation on new images of place lifestyles build speculative confidence for investors (Philo and Kearns, 1993; Goodwin, 1993). Much place image literature has analyzed the new and reinvented images of industrial cities alongside transitions into service, real estate, and tourism economies, and the resulting dynamics of gentrification (see Crilley, 1993a; 1993b; Fainstein, 1994; Goodwin, 1993; Holcomb, 1994; Ward, 1998). In reflecting on the place images produced in these post-industrial re-inventions, Philo and Kearns (1993) comment on how cities appear to strive for distinctions, but not too much distinction:

“the idea is not so much that they be genuinely different from one another but that they harness their surface differences in order to make themselves in a very real sense

nothing but ‘the same’: to give themselves basically the same sort of attractive image – the same pleasant ensemble of motifs (cultural, historical, environmental, aesthetic) drained of anything controversial – with basically the same ambitions of sucking in capital so as to make the place in question ‘richer’ than the rest.” (p. 20)

Place images can be discursively produced not only through “official” city marketing and tourism campaigns,7 but also through the collective effect of related “texts” including news media, urban planning vision documents and presentations, practitioner narratives appearing in local media (and often researched via interviews), and advertisements for real estate including new-build neighbourhoods and condominium developments. Housing studies literature has examined how housing types and advertising images are “consumed” or interpreted by house buyers. Studies along these lines have employed a Bourdieu-influenced analysis to consider how housing becomes a marker of social status, “good taste” in consumption, and distinction in lifestyle (see Gram Hanssen & Bech Danielsen, 2004; Kriese & Scholz, 2012; Mace, 2013). The “myths,” symbols and place images embedded in housing advertisements have also been unpacked to reveal aspects of suburban life, homeownership ideologies, and the cultural meanings attached to housing types and locations (Dovey, 1992, Dowling, 1996; Eyles, 1987; Knox, 2008). An extensive urban geography literature has examined the production and consumption of place image in gentrifying neighbourhoods and the impacts of middle-class taste and lifestyle shifts on inner-city housing stock, neighbourhoods, and residents (see Zukin, 2014; Mills, 1988; 1993; Ley, 1996, Lees, Slater & Wyly, 2013). Some scholars have designed projects to compare the perspectives of both producers and consumers in the production of housing and place image (see Kern, 2010, Mathews, 2010, and Lynch, 2013 on Toronto’s condominium development).

This research takes a place image and housing production approach, with a focus on the discourses of government planning actors (found in interview narratives and policy documents) and development industry actors (found in interview narratives and new housing marketing). In

7 Harvey and many other sources cited here take a critical stance on urban branding and marketing for their role in sustaining capitalist processes and unequal social relations. At the same time, there exists a subfield of place marketing studies intersecting with geography, planning, and public administration literatures that examines place marketing practices and provides “how to” recommendations for improving place image-making, branding and marketing through participatory methods and attention to cultural sensitivity (see for example, Kavaratzis, 2007; Kavaratzis, Warnaby, & Ashworth, 2015; Zavattaro, 2012, 2014).

25 this dissertation, I follow Grant’s (2009) comparative producer focus by analyzing policies and interviewing planners, politicians, and developers, then comparing and contrasting the discourses produced by each category of producer; I also include an advertising analysis to probe the housing and place image discourses and visions produced by the development industry. Focusing on production, researchers have highlighted the important role of planners, politicians, and developers in shaping the built environment and participating in the “purposive production of meanings, forms and symbolism” that can produce public support or consent for projects (Crilley, 1993b, p. 137). For example, Phelps (2015) suggests that only attending to consumer preferences “perhaps disguises the roles of the state and property developers and wide variety of other business interests involved in the creation and molding of such preferences over time” (p. 59). Real estate advertisements, and other “recruitment mechanisms” function as a “constitutive (rather than residual or incidental)” method of attracting certain groups, and dissuading others (Schwartz 1976, p.329-330). Knox (2008) argues that new-build suburban “landscapes are a product of the interplay of the development industry, design professionals, and affluent consumers with distinctive aspirations and dispositions” (p. 4). Knox focuses, however, on developers, builders, and “mediating professionals,” including planners, for their fundamental role in influencing ideologies, politics, and suburban built forms (p. 7).

Discursive studies of planning texts have examined the cultural values such texts reveal (Grant, 1994), the “power of ideas,” the strategies and rhetorical techniques they use to advance particular visions and values (Forsyth, 1999, p. 7), and the possibilities and constraints for subject positions, actions, processes, and built forms they afford (Hastings, 1999; Lees, 2004; Rutland, 2012). Grant (1994) usefully employs a theatrical metaphor in her analysis of the discourse surrounding urban and suburban planning: she identifies improvised “scripts” governing the common themes, values, and meanings that are discursively transacted in and through “actors” in the planning “drama.” By examining the words, phrases, and rhetorical strategies that actors in the planning process employ, “we uncover evidence about relations between actors and the meanings and values they transact” (Grant, 1994, p. 38). I borrow Grant’s metaphor of the script and actors while recognizing, as she does and as Ronald (2008) does, that a discursive approach to place and housing production must consider these “performances” in dialectical relation with other structuring social processes. One of the key themes to emerge from discursive studies of planning practice is attention to the changing role of planners beyond land

26 use regulators into place promoters, dealmakers, “urban sales agents,” and negotiators in an economy where cities and suburban municipalities engage in entrepreneurial governance to compete globally for residents and business investments (Fainstein, 1991, p. 24; Holcomb, 1994).

In planning practice, place images are captured through policies and government documents that include “visions” or vision statements for the future of growth management and characteristics of place that a government body aims to maintain or aspires to become. “Visioning” exercises, and “scenario” planning have become part of public consultations. When I worked as a planner, I facilitated these types of visioning sessions and wrote vision statements for planning policy documents. Gaffikin and Sterrett (2006) found that “visioning” has become a common planning practice across the USA and UK (and I would add Canada). The emphasis on vision can be seen as part of a shift away from traditional “Euclidean” land use planning and zoning “associated with a reactive and regulatory development control model;” visioning instead offers “a proactive development approach,” that encompasses “imagineering” places rather than simply engineering them. (p. 163). Visioning is “about establishing broad concept plans, rooted in shared values, and then flexibly facilitating investment projects that comply with the overall vision” (p. 163); visioning is an approach that makes discourses of values and aspirations apparent in the planning process. Gaffikin and Sterrett (2006) described the visioning approach as complementary to the rise of participatory planning with the “potential to connect people better to the politics of place,” making planning and development policies and processes more relevant to people’s everyday lives (p. 174). Alongside the potential of visioning in planning practice, the authors have found that visioning processes remain subject to politics, power imbalances, and the difficulties of reaching consensus among disparate groups with different interests. In this dissertation, I discuss characterizations of suburban change in vision statements and related policies produced by planners and municipal politicians, and represented in the advertisements of housing developers. Visions are instructive discourses on the production of place in particular times and locations. They provide insights into what are regarded as best practices, and reveal values and aspirations for planning practice, housing development, and local “culture” more broadly.

1.5 The “suburban myth:” narratives and counter-narratives in the literature

Throughout the geography and planning literature on the suburbs, scholars have described a persistent and dominant “suburban myth” perpetuated by academics, planning professionals, and circulated more broadly through popular media and advertisements. The “suburban myth” is drawn from conceptions and misconceptions of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City model implemented in early-twentieth-century suburban Britain, and North American suburban expansion following World War II (Bourne, 1996; Whitehand & Carr, 1999). In response to the perceived failures of the industrial city, such as overcrowding, poverty, social isolation, pollution, and lack of sanitation, the Garden City promised greater living space for lower costs, high and dry ground enabling better sanitation, sociability, and access to the countryside (Howard, 1902/2011; Wirth, 1938). The values driving the Garden City movement resonated with broader cultural valorizations of family, community, health, amenity, and rural life and gained dominance influencing the planning of new suburban developments in the early-to-mid- twentieth century. As a utopic vision, the Garden City idyll and the “suburban mystique” also resonated with long-standing Western cultural reifications of “nature” and representations of the pastoral garden of Arcadia, the legendary home of the ancient Greek god Pan (Duncan & Duncan, 2004, p. 309). In time, however, the utopian goals of Howard and other early suburban visionaries were selectively employed and simplified into the wide lots, winding streets, and neighbourhood parks that came to signify post-war suburbs (Grant, 2006; Lehrer & Milgrom, 1996).

The dominant story, script, or “myth” about the suburbs in popular culture and academia has in many ways taken a negative turn, encompassing ideas about social homogeneity, bourgeois middle-class character, social conformity, economic dependence on the central city, automobile dependence, and conspicuous consumption. “Suburbia” came to represent a range of quaint and derided images including detached houses as “ticky tacky boxes” (Beauregard, 2006; Nicolaides & Wiese, 2006). As early as the 1960s, critics of the suburbs were vocal and influential perpetuating a negative and sometimes over-simplified or uninformed view of the suburbs; Jacobs (1961), who criticized the suburbs as “the great blight of dullness” (p. 233), seemed to have little direct experience in the suburbs (Relph, 2014). Similarly, Mumford (1961) criticized

28 the suburbs for being formless and dull overgrowths of the city, but he too had little direct knowledge of the urban fringe (Nicolaides, 2006).

Other commentators in the early 1960s saw negative views emerging from wealthier “urban-bred intellectuals” as unfair and classist (Clark, 1966, p. 5; see also Gans, 1967). The monotonous character for which suburbs are often critiqued is directly related to the standardization of design and construction intended to keep costs low, a factor meant to appeal to young families buying homes, but which elite urban commentators derided as “cookie cutter” (Beauregard, 2006, p. 140). To counter stereotypically negative ideas about the suburbs Canadian sociologist Clark (1966) embarked on a study of the Toronto suburbs, further discussed in Section 1.5.2. In the United States, Gans (1967) conducted a sociological study of one of the popular mass- constructed “Levittown” developments after learning that “city planners also swallowed the suburban myth and were altering their professional recommendations accordingly” (p. xvii). Gans concluded that, since residents desired suburban living, city planners should work on increasing housing choices and encouraging population growth “to make the opportunity for suburban living available to everyone who can and wants to come” (p. 432).

With the romanticization of the previously disparaged “slums” Clark (1966) observed that “[w]e have in the last few years gone almost full circle in our conception of what is good and worthwhile in urban society” (p. 227). Derogatory ideas about suburban place also came to be applied to “suburbanites” and their suburban culture (Gold & Gold, 1990). Clark (1966) noted that “grotesque” “myths tended to become built on to myths to produce a caricature of the suburban dweller” (p. 4). The character of the suburban society has been debated: the “neighboring” practices and collective orientation that Fava (1956) identified among self- selecting suburban residents were negatively viewed by Whyte (1956), who found suburban communities to be stifling. Baumgartner (1988) later observed social control in the suburbs, but rather than stifling, he found that it led to a minimization and avoidance of conflict. Nonetheless, negative scripts about the city (e.g. overcrowded, “slums”) had begun to invert such that the suburbs became framed as problematic or “hellish;” Nicolaides (2006) has summarized:

The city started out as the culprit. But by the postwar era, the suburbs had elbowed their way into that maligned position – the site of social dysfunction and pathology. Hell, it seemed, was moving from the city to the suburbs – like everyone else (p. 80).

The influence of these various views and debates on the social science literature was such that a “collage of myth and reality” informed various interpretations of suburban history, built form, and society, further shaped by the differing emphases authors placed on the roles of the market, planning policy, structure, and agency (Bourne, 1996, p. 179). Scholars such as Marshall (1973) argued that the widely held suburban image has become “so distorted and overdrawn that it may appropriately be called a myth” (p. 123), and that lifestyles are better understood by examining variables across the metropolitan scale. Harris and Lewis (1998) argued that models of metropolitan development processes within geography have contributed to over-simplified, dichotomous representations of suburb and city, the subsequent sidelining of suburban diversity, and the tendency of urban researchers, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, to make assumptions about the suburbs. Kruse and Sugrue (2006) similarly critiqued Jackson (1985) and Fishman (1987) for developing broad theories about suburbs that were based on limited case studies conforming to the “myths” about American suburbs as dormitories for affluent white residents. Harris and Larkham (1999) argued that such literature comprised selective studies designed to confirm the “myths” that “everyone ‘knew’” about the suburbs (p.7). What “everyone knew” about the suburbs is what Phelps (2015) has described as the familiar “popular ideological content of suburbia: “the bourgeois utopia formed by the pursuit of personal and economic freedom and escape from the city.” (p. 58). This popular ideological content was framed positively in the marketing of early and post-war suburbs, as discussed in the following section.

1.5.1 Marketing the “myth:” suburban advertising narratives

In their study of advertising themes in the posters and promotional pamphlets for “Metroland,” a string of suburban areas adjacent to London, England, developed alongside the railway in the early 1900s and inter-war years, Gold and Gold (1990) found six overlapping themes, which gained long-standing salience in the selling of suburbia: 1) proximity to nature; 2) a healthy retreat from the hectic city; 3) a haven in which children and families could grow; 4) a place to gain social status through homeownership; 5) a distinctive suburb (e.g. customized, not mass- produced); and 6) offering modernity but within the limits of the predominant images of nature and tradition (e.g. modernity manifested through appliances, extended rail transit, and some

30 architectural expressions). Advertisements portrayed early suburbs as “filled with sunlight and abundancy […] occupied by elegant and sophisticated people enjoying the ease of their new surroundings, whether relaxing in the garden or picknicking and rambling with their healthy children in the nearby countryside.” (p. 178). The promoters of the Metroland suburbs offered more than housing, tapping into “the social and environmental aspirations of the professional middle classes, which themselves were filtered versions of the aspirations of the upper echelons of society” (p. 178). Gold and Gold noted that detached houses were mostly commonly pictured, even though semi-detached houses were more commonly built. The Metroland advertisements were also more inclined to promote “villas,” “estates,” “park estates,” or “garden villages,” than “suburbs.” In a subsequent paper, Gold and Gold (1994) highlighted common suburban advertising symbols including 1) threshold – the exterior façade of the house, including front steps, and glimpses of the side or back garden; 2) a small girl, representing gentleness and defencelessness, safe and happy playing in the garden; and 3) sunlight (e.g. rays of sun, dappled light), to distinguish the suburbs from older areas of London seen to be tightly packed with housing, shadowing, and lacking in open space.

The early ideas and place images formed about garden cities and suburbs in England also influenced the North American aesthetics and social ideas. Ward (1998) found similar advertising themes as Gold and Gold (1990; 1994) in the promotion of suburban lots and houses in the UK, USA, and Canada from the turn of the 19th to 20th century through to the inter-war years: “a careful reading shows that all sellers of suburbia consistently upheld the same core ideals and signified them in very consistent ways” (p. 131-132). Compared to other forms of place boosterism, Ward (1998) argues that “[m]ore than any other form of place marketing, the selling of the suburb touched the very soul of popular aspiration” (p. 129). Beyond price, the marketing of suburban lots and houses was enmeshed with “home” and its associated emotional constructs of family life, romantic relationships and domestic bliss, natural environment, and safety. Common promotional language and visual imagery included core positive myths of the garden suburb discussed above, especially depicting the suburbs as sites of Arcadian pastoralism, the countryside, agrarianism, rurality, nature, and places of “distinctly un-urban activit[ies] of cultivation” (p. 135). These themes were reflected not only in the pictorial elements of promotional materials, but in the naming of developments and streets with terms such as sunnyside, elms avenue, hills rise, village, grove, park, and so on. Ward (1998) further unpacked

31 the promotion of homeownership, where renting was depicted negatively alongside the “gloom and monotonous terraces of the smoky city” versus homeownership, which was “signified by the familiar suburban ideals of space, light, nature and fresh air” (p. 153). The Garden City rhetoric as the best of both town and country was replicated in the advertisements to promise “wholesome suburban family values laced with vague hints of metropolitan delights, even in the most unlikely settings.” (p. 34). Depicted as a haven from the city, the suburban dream was marketed as accessible, while at the same time, an exclusive and excluding option. Homeownership was represented as virtuous, achieved through thrift and hard work, and a means for men in particular, to provide security for their families. In the USA, Ward found that homeownership was promoted as means to become American, and lay down roots in a “new” and “insecure” settler society (p. 157). Traditional images of family were represented, with men depicted as providers and main income-earners, with women portrayed as housewives and mothers, and young children as the beneficiaries of the security and access to outdoor garden space of the suburban home (Ward, 1998).

While the earlier promotional materials packaged suburban houses with expansions of rail and street cars, the post-war period brought an increase in car ownership, the expansion of highway and road infrastructure, and the decreased role of transit in both the suburbs’ physical form and promotion; car manufacturers did not have the same vested interested as railway companies in suburban marketing, which was taken over by land developers and house builders. Continuing from the previous period were strong references to pre-industrial times and rural values represented in street and subdivision names, logos, taglines and pictures (Ward, 1998; Duncan & Duncan, 2004).

The emerging middle classes of the post-war decades had greater, though unevenly distributed, purchasing power, which was deployed to gain social distinction and status. In the suburbs “[n]ew kinds of communities could be constructed, packaged, and sold in a society where who you were seemed to depend more and more on how money was spent rather than on how it was earned” (Harvey, 1985, p. 255). Symbols associated with the lifestyles and estates of nobility became scaled down and adopted into suburban marketing as denoting status and prestige aspirations for the new middle classes (Gottdiener, 2001). Suburban house builders teamed up with appliance manufacturers to package modern conveniences made newly accessible through mortgage credit (Gill, 2012; Ward, 1998). Model homes and sale centres presented the

32 aspirational suburban lifestyle as it “ought to be lived,” orbiting around ideals of nuclear family formation, affluence, car ownership, and leisurely lifestyle (Chapman, 1999, p. 48). Ward (1998) noted that development advertisements generally ignored changing realities of working women, divorce, and divided families: “There is still something of the same air of an imaginary happy land. Those who live there are promised emotional security through ownership, safety from the disturbing influences of the city and a closeness to the comforting world of nature and rustic tradition” (p. 172).

As homebuyers, especially baby boomers, built equity through homeownership over the years, the idea of a “move-up” or “trade-up” home emerged, with advertisements encouraging buyers to aspire for larger houses in more desirable locations (Gill, 2012; Ward, 1998). The idea of the housing ladder emerged as development discourses promoted the idea of trading up “rungs” on the ladder from renting to ownership of ever-larger houses, coinciding with the ascension of social status (Perin, 1977). Possessing larger houses with luxury features was marketed as the reward for homeowners’ financial sacrifices made through incurring mortgage debts (Dovey 1992). House interiors became more predominant in marketing messages into the 1980s, with the decline of formal, closed off living rooms and the growing popularity of family-oriented spaces at the “heart” of the home, divided from the master retreat for the parents (Dovey, 1992). Marketing of wider suburban neighbourhoods and recreation amenities became intertwined with selling houses and lifestyles connoting status, consumption and leisure (Dowling, 1996; Knox, 1992, 2008; Hall, 2006). Suburban lifestyle messages became ideological, naturalized, and influential in shaping individual identities and understandings of suburban areas (Cooper Marcus, 1995; Eyles, 1987).

1.5.2 Beyond the “myth:” the urbanization of the suburbs, new urbanism, and post-suburbia debates

Early narratives about suburban “urbanization” intended to counter the “suburban myth” appeared in two volumes edited by Masotti and Hadden: The Urbanization of the Suburbs (1973) and Suburbia in Transition (1974). These editors (1973) argued that rapid suburbanization in the late 1960s and early 1970s was transforming the dependent “urban fringe” into an independent “neo-city” (p.15) or “outer city” (p.7). The “outer city” was at once “becoming more like the inner city in social structure, economy, problems and life style” (p. 533), but was also something

33 of a “new form of urban civilization” (p. 7). Masotti and Hadden observed the suburbs “urbanizing” in three key ways. First, and most significant in their view, was the relocation and decentralization of economic activities and employers, a process that reduced dependence on the central city. While some suburbs were solely residential, by the early 1970s, “all of the new ‘frontier’ suburbs [had] tried to provide for industrial parks, office complexes, major retail (shopping) centers, or some combination of the three” (1973, pp. 16-17). Second was the increased population diversity in terms of race, class, marital status, and life stage. Despite this increasing diversity, Masotti and Hadden observed different groups clustered within separate neighbourhoods, a phenomenon that could convey the impression of homogeneity. Third was the adoption of urban lifestyles in suburban areas; the authors argued that the suburbs were no longer “just a ‘family place’” (p. 19), signaled by the presence of “specialty stores, singles bars, good restaurants, and professional sports” (1974, p. 5). They also identified multi-unit residential buildings, and the presence of urban “problems” and conflicts as evidence of suburban urbanization, thereby diminishing the relevance of urban and suburban distinctions. Clark (1966) similarly suggested that once high density housing types were built and a diversity of people came to reside in the suburbs, the city had moved to the countryside and a newly formed urban society had come into being.

By contrast, Schwartz (1976) challenged the argument that urban and suburban distinctions would diminish with time, identifying more truth than fiction in the “suburban myth.” He asserted that early built out American suburbs were characterized by primarily residential development and formation of new communities did command the high resident participation described by Fava (1956) and Whyte (1956). In Schwartz’s view, political boundaries and the “sheer numbers” of suburban residents limited the possibility of transforming institutions and social networks. Schwartz argued that

the suburban ring will always be more or less different from the city, that is it will never lose its dominantly residential and communal character. The suburb, by its intrinsic nature, therefore shares one of the essential properties of the small town: It may suffer from relatively few problems, but it cannot boast of many massive accomplishments. It is organized for neither (pp. 332-333).

Schwartz (1976) asserted “one of the most notable aspects of recent work on the suburbs is that it has produced no new image to take the place of the one it so forcefully rejects” (326).

In the decades that followed, scholars took up the challenge to deliver new images and new terminology for multi-nodality, population growth, and diversity on the urban fringe, developing a range of neologisms including: “edge cities” (Garreau, 1991), “technoburbs” (Fishman, 1987), “boomburbs” (Lang & Lefurgy, 2007), “metroburbia” (Knox, 2008), “ethnoburbs” (Li, 2009), “flexspace” (Lehrer 1994; 2013a), “exopolis” and “post-metropolis” (Soja, 2000), “post- suburbia” (Teaford, 1997), “post-modern urbanism” (Dear & Flusty, 1998), “zwischenstadt” (Sieverts, 2011), expanded into the notion of the “in-between” city (Keil & Young, 2011), and “mulapa: multilayered patchwork urbanization” (Schmid, 2018). In Canada, attention has been given to “suburban downtowns” our planned equivalents to the American private sector-driven edge city (Relph, 1991; Filion, 1999; 2009). Relph (1991) quipped, “changes in urban form, especially in the suburbs, have come so quickly in the late twentieth century that they have effectively outrun urban terminology” (p. 421). Within the literature, debates emerged as to whether or not the changes loosely described as signaling an “urbanization of the suburbs” marked the beginning of a new suburban era, or if they signaled the end of suburbanization as a distinctive process, one that had become subsumed within urbanization.

Phelps (2015) gathered these various interpretations of suburban difference under an expanded notion of Teaford’s (1997) “post-suburbia.” He and his co-authors have categorized the debates about continuity and discontinuity of post-suburban forms and characteristics into three groups: 1) temporal debates (i.e. questions surrounding whether current suburbanization marks a break from that seen in earlier periods), 2) geographical-spatial debates (i.e. questions about whether certain built forms and economies on the suburban edge are detached from spatial hierarchies), and 3) ideological-political debates (i.e. questions around whether - and how - particular coalitions of public and private actors converge to produce “distinctly more urban” spaces and ways of life through, for example, transit-oriented development (Phelps 2015, p. 31; see also Phelps, Wood & Valler, 2010; and Wu & Phelps, 2011).

The temporal questions centre on whether post-suburbia marks a sharp break with the suburbia of the past or whether it is simply the latest manifestation of longer-standing suburbanization processes. Fishman (1987), for example, described the decentralized landscapes of multicentred “technoburbs” connected by superhighways and growth corridors as fundamentally disrupting traditional understandings of rural and suburban: “With the rise of the technoburb, the history of suburbia comes to an end” (p. 17). Conversely, Walker and Lewis (2001) argued that the

35 decentralization of employment and industry has been observable since the mid-nineteenth century, and that suburban centres referred to as “exopolis,” “postsuburbia,” or “edge cities” are simply “the latest episode in a long-running story of North American urbanization” (p. 5). Similarly, Wirt, Rabinowitz, Walter & Hensler (1972) contended that “there has been no sharp break with the past, but simply a continuation and accentuation of patterns that were forming over a century ago” (p. 13).

Related to the temporal questions are those surrounding the geographical and spatial growth patterns, boundaries, and physical characteristics of a “new form of settlement space” (Gottdiener & Kephart, 1995, cited in Phelps 2015, p. 22). These new forms are more independent from historical spatial and infrastructural hierarchies and exhibit a post-modern or “postmetropolis” fragmentation that disrupts or even reverses centre-periphery dynamics (Soja, 2000). For example, Garreau (1991) developed the now-popular term “edge city” to capture the “vast new urban job centers” built in the suburbs and the new “psychological location” or “state of mind” they represented as residents and employers sought to be cutting edge or to gain an edge in the sense of an advantage (p. 4). He described edge cities as “a vigorous world of pioneers and immigrants, rising far from the old downtowns, where little save villages or farmland lay only thirty years before” (p. 4). Garreau saw edge cities as evidence of America’s constant reinvention, and as spaces still struggling to define a clear sense of place. Other contemporary developments are characterized as non-hierarchical, fragmented and multi-nodal “metroburbias” (Knox, 2008) spreading into one another as “edgeless cities” (Lang, 2003). The lack of consensus around defining and geographically bounding these detached and disruptive settlement forms has posed limitations for comparative research (Phelps, 2015).

Seeing limits to the temporal and geographical characterizations of post-suburbia, Phelps (2015) and his co-authors have proposed an “ideological-political” view of post-suburbia. This third dimension is intended to crosscut and transcend temporal and geographical issues by focusing on “the shifting ideology and politics associated with a constellation of actors involved in the production of suburbanism as a way of life” (p. 57). The label “post-suburbia” is employed in this sense to capture the broad range of emergent settlement forms (e.g. edge cities, edgeless cities, etc.), economic functions, and ways of life, allowing for the novel change they represent while also recognizing continuity in suburbanization processes over time. Functionally, post- suburbia exhibits a “growing economic gravity” (Phelps & Wood, 2011, p. 2595), multiple

36 nodes, and greater balance between employment and residential land uses, all of which necessitates urban theory beyond centre-periphery dynamics (Phelps, 2015). Phelps (2015) has considered some places to have “evolved” into urbanity, whereas other settlements are “born post-suburban, locally conceived and comprehensively planned from the outset as a new kind of city” (p. 54). Phelps (2015) has also drawn on work by Sieverts (2011) and Young and Keil (2014) of the places and politics in between central cities and outer suburbs by foregrounding the “in-betweenness” (p. 27) of economies and politics caught between forces of centrality and dispersion. Charmes and Keil (2015) have described post-suburbanization not as “a distinct typology––suburbs versus post-suburbs––but rather a historical change in direction: a process of de-densification (classical suburbanization) is partly converted, inverted or subverted into a process that involves densification, complexification and diversification of the suburbanization process” (Charmes & Keil, 2015, p. 1)

Some of the most popular iterations of the post-suburban ideology, and attempts to create communities that are “born” post-suburban have emerged from the smart growth, new urbanism, and sustainable development planning and design paradigms. The negativity associated with the “suburban myth” was reconfigured in the late 1980s and early 1990s around the critique of “sprawl,” which painted conventional residential suburbs as placeless, ugly, and conformist, and in urgent need of remediation (e.g. Duany, Plater-Zyberk & Speck, 2000; Kunstler, 1993). Sociologically, the image of the overly organized and controlled mid-century suburb was replaced with a picture of a sprawling landscape with declining social cohesion and social capital (Putnam, 2000; though challenged by Lupi & Musterd’s 2006 study of suburbs in the Netherlands). “Smart growth” is a regional planning strategy that promotes compact, high density development, and conserves open spaces and farmland (Perrott, 2017). In planning contexts, “sustainable development” is a pro-growth ideology that emphasizes attention to social issues, human health, and environmental responsibility exercised through calls for compact forms and efficient transportation options (Grant, 2009). “New urbanism” similarly calls for designing communities that are “compact, walkable, mixed-use, and transit-friendly and contain a diverse range of housing” (Knaap & Talen, 2005, p. 109). New urbanism, on the one hand focuses on “neo-traditional design” and valorizes the “myth,” form, and aesthetic of pre-war American small towns (Duany et. al., 2000), and on the other hand emphasizes transit-oriented development (Calthorpe, 1993). The popular influence of new urbanism has pundits claiming a

37 wide-scale, “grand effort” to “urbanize the suburbs” (Gallagher, 2013 p. 128-9). New urbanism has enjoyed wide practitioner-appeal with its translation into implementable principles, attractive place images, and templates for form-based codes. While new urbanist communities can deliver a value-added neo-traditional aesthetic and new revenue stream for housing developers, researchers have found that new urbanism’s design-heavy approach is limiting in its realization of ambitious social goals in practice (Grant, 2006; Lehrer & Milgrom, 1996). I further describe new urbanism’s marketing themes and influence in the Toronto region in section 1.5.3, as well as in Chapter Five.

The literature analyzing “post-suburbia” and “post-suburbanization” articulates with a broader body of literature in urban geography, housing and planning studies aiming to produce a more nuanced understanding of suburban complexity. Anderson (2005) described “critical suburban studies” as research that moves beyond normative positions to foreground the “less spectacular but not less complex and dynamic” areas surrounding large cities (p. 2). Bourne (1996), responded to the normative planning literature that critiqued suburban sprawl (e.g. proponents of new urbanism) by arguing that “suburbs are neither inherently good nor bad” (p. 181), and the suburban “myth” “images, and the simplistic city-suburban dichotomy itself, are outdated and increasingly unsuited to the complex realties of contemporary metropolitan life and urban development” (p. 163). Contemporary critical suburban studies have examined long-standing suburban diversity and complexities in terms of race and class (Kruse & Sugrue, 2006; Li, 2009), gender, sexual orientation and household formation (Tongson, 2011), industry and employment (Walker & Lewis, 2001), and housing type (Larco, 2010). Veracini (2012) has linked the “frontiers” of suburbia with the frontiers of settler colonialism, where suburban development continuously re-enacts colonial land relations. Other studies have highlighted issues related to suburban political change and governance (Walks, 2004; Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012; Phelps and Wood, 2011); macroeconomics and suburban neoliberalisms (Peck, 2011); demographic trends and metropolitan population growth (Lang, 2003; Lang & Lefurgy, 2007); struggles over aesthetics, public space, and gated communities, (Grant & Curran, 2007; Low, 2003, Duncan & Duncan, 2004; Kohn, 2004); suburban infrastructure (Keil & Young 2009; Young, Wood, and Keil 2011; Filion 2010); and suburban decline, devalorization, and poverty (Smith, Caris, and Wyly 2001; Hanlon, Short, & Vicino, 2010; Schafran, 2013). Mace (2013) employed the term “post-suburban” but qualified his use of it by recognizing that the suburbs or post-suburban

38 realities were and are diverse, with meanings that are continually created, maintained and disrupted. Mace contended that regardless of diversity and change in suburban locations, residents must still negotiate a centre-periphery relationship and thus the categories of suburban and urban remain relevant.

Reviewing the literature on the suburban “myth” and subsequent efforts to move beyond the myth reveals an ongoing debate over the usefulness and function of the terms “urban” and “suburban” in ever-changing contexts. Phelps, (2015) Charmes and Keil (2015) among others have posed the concept of “post-suburbia” and “post-suburbanization” to capture the range of case studies and theories of contemporary suburban experience and change. Phelps (2015) has highlighted the role of politics and ideology in shaping the current push towards more urban forms and ways of life in the suburbs. This dissertation contributes to research on these debates by examining the discursive and aesthetic contours of the politics and ideology of post- suburbanization processes including image production. In the following chapters, I weave together the literature on place image and suburban studies to consider the contemporary case study of Toronto.

1.6 Toronto region study area, historical and contemporary contexts

In this section I describe the study area, and then illustrate snapshots of three historical moments in the Toronto region’s suburban expansion to provide context for the empirical chapters and as the historical register against which I will compare my contemporary findings in the dissertation’s concluding chapter. Before introducing my research questions and overarching argument in Section 1.6, I provide context on recent population, housing type and price trends, and the contemporary planning policy themes that set the stage for this dissertation’s examination of discursive place image production.

1.6.1 Study area

The study area comprises the municipalities arcing around the City of Toronto, from Burlington and Milton eastward to Whitby and Stouffville, and north up Highway 404 and the regional commuter rail (GO trail) corridor through Newmarket to Barrie (Figure 1.1)8.

8 The 60 interviews were concentrated in the municipalities adjacent to Toronto and up the 404/GO trail corridor to Barrie, while I analyzed the Official Plans and a sample of ads for 304 new-build developments falling into a slightly larger range (e.g. including Burlington, Oakville, Pickering, and Whitby, were included in the advertising sample, even though I did not conduct interviews in those locations). See further information in Chapter 2: Methods.

Hwy 400 Hwy 404

Hwy 407 Hwy 401

Hwy 403

Figure 1.1: Dissertation study area. Highlights the case studies discussed in Chapter Four: Markham Centre and Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, and the case study discussed in Chapter Five: Mount Pleasant. Map shows locations where interviews were conducted and the broader area study of Official Plans and new-build housing development advertisements (Source: author map, various open source data used).

Discursively, the region is typically described in terms of the older “core” urban area of Toronto, the “inner” suburbs (e.g. York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, that were formerly included in Metro Toronto and were amalgamated into the City of Toronto’s political boundaries in 1998), and the “outer” suburbs.9 The suburban municipalities focused on in this study are casually known by the shorthand of the telephone area code “905” and the core and inner suburbs are referred to as the “416.” In the planning discourse, there are “upper tier” regional municipalities, (e.g. York Region) which provide planning direction to “lower tier” local municipalities; there are also “single-tier” municipalities (e.g. the larger cities including Toronto and Barrie) (Figure 1.2 denotes the upper and single tier municipalities by colour, shown in the legend, with the lower tier municipalities labeled on the map.).

9 The Provincial Growth Plan refers to what I describe here as “outer suburbs” as the “inner ring” of municipalities to distinguish those suburban municipalities from the rest of the extended Greater Golden Horseshoe region.

Figure 1.2: Lower tier, Local Municipalities and Upper tier, Regional Municipalities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, with Barrie not shown, but located under the inset map (Metrolinx, 2008, p. 4, used with permission).

The spatial dynamics of population growth and housing development expansion do not neatly conform to political boundaries of municipalities or census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Relph (2014) states that the region’s municipal “boundaries are for most purposes virtually invisible and utterly permeable” (p. 106). In setting the study area (Figure 1.1), I focused on the municipalities in the Toronto CMA that border the City and follow major highway and regional rail commuter lines. I included some growing municipalities beyond the CMA’s boundaries, but

43 contiguous with other growing municipalities within the wider commuting region (e.g. Barrie10, Burlington, and Whitby11). Determining the “suburban growth” study area was influenced by the municipalities built out after 1971, represented in Figure 1.3 as a ring arcing around the City of Toronto, up the corridor towards Newmarket and, further north around Barrie within the wider Statistics Canada “Toronto CMA-ecosystem.” Development patterns in the study area continue to reflect, and expand beyond the growth areas Clark described in his 1966 study of suburban society as “a great arc based on Lake Ontario and sweeping over the top of the city…[and northward] extended almost as far as Lake Simcoe” (p. 23).

10 York Region has recently extended a sewer line into East Gwillimbury, which has opened up new greenfield development in the area, and Barrie has recently annexed a large amount of land along its southern border from Innisfil to expand its greenfield development. Across Canada dwelling density increased the most in the Toronto CMA between 2001 and 2011 (+200 dwellings/km2 or by +19%), but the Barrie CMA was not far behind at an increase of 121 dwellings/km2, or +23% (Statistics Canada, 2016b). Near the Barrie south GO train station development of stacked townhouse “8-plexs” and condominiums branded as “Yonge Station” in a similar vein to what I was seeing in the municipalities further south indicated that urbanization trends were underway further north as well. 11 While I initially intended to limit my ad sample to the Toronto CMA when collecting advertisements, trends like stacked townhouses were appearing in Burlington, and Whitby, which are part of Hamilton and Oshawa CMAs respectively. I chose draw east and west boundaries of “suburbs” before reaching Hamilton and Oshawa, because both those cities have their own historical industrial economic bases that are distinct (albeit related) to Toronto. I was interested primarily in understanding the reinvention of historic small towns and new build areas that grew into combinations of residential neighbourhoods, retail landscapes (malls, plazas), light industrial or business parks, warehouses and logistics, rather than the longer-standing steel and car-manufacturing industries of Hamilton and Oshawa, where contemporary discourses of vision and reinvention may bear stronger resemblance to existing case studies examining industrial city rebranding.

Figure 1.3: Built-up area, Toronto census metropolitan area and census metropolitan area–ecosystem, 1971, 1991, 2001 and 2011. (Source: Statistics Canada, 2016, March 22. Map 1 of “The changing landscape of Canadian metropolitan areas, 1971 to 2011” http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/160322/mc-a001-eng.htm, used with permission).

This dissertation examines three case studies within the larger outer suburban study area. Two are new-build suburban downtowns that are designated by Provincial planning policy as Urban Growth Centres: Markham Centre and Vaughan Metropolitan Centre. Markham and Vaughan are forecast to take on nearly 60% of all the Regional Municipality of York’s population growth

45 up to 2041, (York Region, 2015, November) and the urban growth centres are expected to accommodate much of that new growth. The third case study is the greenfield development area of Mount Pleasant in the City of Brampton. Brampton is forecast to accommodate over half of Peel Region’s growth to 2041 (Peel Region, 2017, January). Mount Pleasant offers a greenfield example inspired by new urbanism and transit-oriented development considered by some local planning and design professionals as a model for urbanizing the suburbs (CanU, 2013).

Why study discourses of suburban visions and change in the Toronto region? There are ongoing academic and media debates about how to characterize Toronto’s suburban expansion, with some arguing that Toronto’s development patterns resonate with notions of North American “sprawl” (e.g. Blais, 2010; Hume, 2011; Sewell, 2009; Solomon, 2007), and others offering more nuanced analyses of planning, development patterns, and densities in particular locations of the region during specific time periods (e.g. Bourne 2001; Filion, 2000; Filion, Bunting, Pavlic, and Langlois, 2010; Hess & Sorensen, 2015; Relph, 2014). Filion (2015) has described the Toronto region as characteristic of broader North American development patterns as “dispersed suburbanism,” (p. 633), whereas Hess and Sorensen (2015) have argued that Toronto’s development can be regarded as relatively “compact, concurrent, and contiguous” (p. 127) compared to the American norm; they have all, however, noted that the region is auto-dependent. Generally speaking, the Toronto region shares with other North American metropolitan areas a legacy of post-war expansions of highways, water and sewer infrastructures, and suburban housing, with relatively separated land uses. Development patterns across the Toronto region, however, reflect certain time periods of higher density construction than the North American norm, and there is an expanding regional commuter rail and bus system. The variable character of development across the Toronto region can be characterized as “simultaneously centralized and decentralized, spread out and concentrated, networked and dispersed”, which position the region as “a microcosm of the processes that are associated with globalization” (Relph, 2014, p. 122).

Ley (1996) asserts that urban core areas historically remained more attractive to wealthy and middle class residents in Canadian cities than in their American equivalents. Harris (2015) argues that Toronto in particular has exemplified a certain rare type of North American city, such as New York and San Francisco, where urban living “poses such a real and symbolic alternative to the ’burbs” (p. 44). Planning across the region is strongly influenced by the Provincial

46 government in setting regionally applicable policy. Municipalities in the region were early adaptors of densification, smart growth, and new urbanism (Charmes & Keil, 2015; Moore, 2013; Grant, 2009), and have long-standing policy efforts to integrate high-density nodes with public transit service (Filion, 2006). The region’s similarities with North American suburban planning and development patterns, but also its distinctions, make the region an informative planning case study of both successes and challenges in planning practice efforts to urbanize the suburbs, and the role of discourse in producing a changed image of suburban place.

In the following section I highlight three distinct historical moments in Toronto’s suburban expansion, which provide context for the dissertation’s empirical findings. I follow Filion’s (1999) demarcation of the height of modernity at 1959-1962, postmodernity at 1989-1992, and add a discussion of the influence of new urbanism in the region in the late 1990s and early 2000s.12 Following these historical snapshots, I provide an overview of contemporary population, demographic, housing type and housing price trends.

1.6.2 Historic snapshot 1: Toronto’s post-war suburban expansion, “modernism,” “Fordism,” and “creeping conformity” (~late 1950s- early 1960s)

Prior to the wars new-build development on Toronto’s edges took diverse forms including elite enclaves for the wealthy, streetcar suburbs, industrial suburbs, and clusters of homes in unplanned areas built by amateur, working-class and frequently immigrant, homeowners. Promotional booklets and posters for these pre-war suburban developments variously promoted fresh air, access to forests and/or lake views, good places to raise children, proximity to street cars, and industrial suburbs used images of smokestacks near the houses to illustrate the prosperity to be accessed through proximity to jobs (Harris, 2004; Relph, 2014).

12 Further accounts of the Toronto region’s political, planning, and housing histories include Boudreau, Keil and Young, 2009; Harris, 2004; Pitter and Lorinc, 2016; and Relph, 2014.

Post-war planning was characterized by modernist values emphasizing progress, improvement, confidence in technical solutions, and big infrastructure projects. The Province of Ontario established the Planning Act in 1946, put into place building codes and standards for parks, open spaces, and transportation, and planners developed rational, comprehensive master plans, and urban renewal schemes (Grant, 2006b). Modernist planning visions provided “some of the most evocative expressions of the progress grand narrative,” including:

the low-density and functionally and socially segregated suburb; the high accessibility city criss-crossed by expressways; the renovated downtown made of high-rise buildings and open plazas; the redeveloped inner city composed of apartment towers surrounded by green space; and a planned metropolitan region structured by new towns and green belts (Filion, 1999, p. 423).

Filion (1999) found that newspaper discourses about planning during the height of modernism (1959-1962) in the Toronto region “revealed a broad consensus around the need for bold planning interventions” (p. 428). Discursively, “enlightened urban planning” was anti-traditional, rejecting the prewar urban form wherein housing conditions had deteriorated in many areas, and which were also unsuited to growing car ownership, and lacked the desired green space (Filion, 1999, p. 428). Two parallel planning visions emerged for mass housing and development patterns. The first drew on Le Corbusier’s towers in the park vision as a planning solution for urban “renewal” manifesting in high-density mass housing for smaller and lower-to-middle income households aligned with transit and highway expansions. The second vision reflected the influence of garden cities, the neighbourhood unit, and the new town movement leading to low- density, mass housing for the growing middle classes and larger family households in car- oriented suburban developments. Both of these approaches to mass housing and urban planning became heavily critiqued in later decades.

The first variation of the modernist vision is evident especially in what are now considered Toronto’s “inner suburbs” where modernist high-density towers were facilitated by advancements in building techniques including steel framing and poured concrete (Relph, 2014; Urban, 2012). Toronto’s tower neighbourhoods now reflect some of the region’s highest suburban densities and provide housing for new immigrants and lower income residents (Hess & Sorensen, 2015; Saunders, 2011). Planning documents during this period envisioned Toronto’s suburban growth as primarily extending west-to-east between Toronto’s neighbouring cities of Hamilton and Oshawa, and transportation infrastructure was laid out accordingly. Residents of

48 inner suburban high-rise apartments, and apartments “turned on their end” into slabs, were intended by planners to support public transit investments (Relph, 2014, p. 47).

The second variation of modernist urban planning is reflected in Toronto’s lower-density neighbourhoods, as corporately developed and packaged, middle-class suburban developments rose to predominance. This post-war housing has been characterized by Harris (2004) as a “creeping conformity” compared to pre-war housing diversity. Relph (2014) has described some post-war housing as unornamented and “built in a rush to accommodate returning vetrans” (46). Clark (1966) also described the extension of small-scale, and lower-priced residential subdivisions northward of the city. Piecemeal developments led to concern about “sprawl” and calls for improved comprehensive suburban planning (Filion, 1999). The emergence of standardized, mass constructed, low-density housing can be attributed to a convergence of factors including the growing influence of the government in land use and housing planning, government mortgage insurance programs that privileged detached housing and homeownership, the aligned interests of mortgage financiers and housing developers, the expansion of infrastructure (water, wastewater, roads and highways), growing car ownership, and standardized building products and techniques resulting in a more homogenous architecture (Filion, 1999; Grant 2006b; Harris, 2004; Vojnovic, 2000).

Don Mills, in what is now Toronto’s inner suburb of North York, was planned by Harvard School of Design-educated developer Macklin Hancock, was built out during the 1950s. It became Canada’s leading model for large, corporate, comprehensively developed new-build suburban areas. Don Mills was planned for a population of 29,000, as well as providing employment for 4,500, in areas separated from residential zones (Relph, 2014; Rynnimeri, 1997). Don Mills became notable for reflecting the modernist planning and housing values of the time. Its large suburban lots, grassy front lawns and curvilinear streets stood in contrast to the narrow urban lots and grid layout of central Toronto’s neighbourhoods. Don Mills was replicated in “in look-alike suburban areas from coast to coast” as developers “endlessly cloned the suburban form, boiled down to its essentials (wide lots, winding streets, and shopping strips)” (Grant, 2006b, p. 326).

Clark, (1966) in his study of Toronto’s “suburban society” discerned that the desirability of suburban development had more to do with the lower price of land, and more affordable house

49 prices beyond the urban core, than with the desire of residents to escape the city; the city remained attractive for the wealthy. Nevertheless, the idea that the suburbs offered a better place to raise children was evident in the interviews that Clark conducted; one respondent who purchased a house in East Gwillimbury Heights, near Newmarket, indicated the desire to raise children outside of the city, but in their search for the best of both town and country were finding themselves far from Toronto:

I don’t think it is right for children to have to grow up in the city. We may have come a little far out – I would prefer a place in closer, you know; what everybody wants: a place that has the advantage of both, all the conveniences of the city and plenty of room and good country air besides. That seems impossible around Toronto, except for a good [read: high] price; and so it is impossible for us now. We drove out one afternoon and saw this house and we decided to take it. (quoted in Clark, 1966, p. 68).

Housing in Don Mills was higher priced than some subdivisions further north, but not as expensive as elite suburban developments of the time such as Thorncrest Village in Etobicoke, nor as expensive as well-regarded urban core neighbourhoods. As Clark explained, the appeal of Don Mills was an affordable but still respected housing and location choice for young, middle class would-be homebuyers. Clark (1966) described these homebuyers as “‘on the make,’ but not yet for the most part with any great amount of savings,” who would not find it “easy to buy a home in a ‘good’ urban residential district” (p. 6). The primary appeal of the suburbs for the newly emerging middle-class was homeownership, and the opportunity to take advantage of government mortgage programs:

The move to the suburbs involved a heavy capital outlay for the purchase of the house and its furnishing, and it left the people who had no great backlog of savings in a state of heavy indebtedness. The suburban was a debtor society (Clark, 1966, p. 111).

The purchase of a house in the post-war period, as now, involved speculation where “there was always the possibility of substantial speculative gains or losses, and, in the suburbs as elsewhere, people could be made richer or poorer by the purchase of a house” (Clark, 1966, p. 112). Generally, the majority of suburban detached and semi-detached houses built at this time were constructed with middle class buyers in mind who could for the most part afford the houses, but only through the acceptance of mortgage debt: “[p]eople were made poor by the move to the suburbs” (p. 112). According to Clark, and echoing some of the suburban myths of the time: “[p]eople were made into different beings by the demands of suburban living, with tastes that were inevitably simpler, standards of judgment that were lower, and social interests that were

50 narrower and more self-centred” (p. 144). Clark acknowledged aesthetic critiques of the suburbs emerging during this period (and evident in the work of Jane Jacobs for example) that the suburbs were “aesthetically damaging” or more “wasteful” than housing the entire population in high rises, but that ultimately middle class residents got the homeownership that they wanted and could afford (p. 225).

Clark (1966) characterized Don Mills and Thorncrest Village as “packaged” suburbs, similar to the American Levittowns, and distinct in the production and packaging of a neighbourhood image from other smaller developments, constructed by builders with less capital. Packaged suburbs were marketed to families as socially distinctive, attractive oases including “everything that was required to live a full community life” (p. 6). Advertisements marketed suburban developments as: “an exclusive residential environment,” “quiet country living,” with smaller developments offering little more than having “sewers and paved streets” (p. 65). Higher priced housing developments put more effort into promoting the surrounding district. Clark’s impression was that “the city street could be made to look drab indeed when compared with the beautifully landscaped residential development of the newspaper advertisement” (p. 65). In addition to the house location, price and required down-payment, commonly advertised features included quality construction, good design and appearance, and distance to work and schools. Newspaper advertisements played an important role in attracting residents to locate in the suburbs, which Clark described as “propaganda organized in the interests of the home-appliance, house-building, and other such industries.” For Clark, “[v]alues of home-ownership and country living, like that of child-rearing, were built into the cult of the new boom society of the post-war world” and they were reflected in the advertisements (p. 145).

Builders of packaged suburban subdivisions during this period began responding to emerging consumer concerns about conformity, mass-production, and quickly and poorly constructed post- war builds (Gill, 2012). By the mid-1960s, a local magazine characterized house buyers as wanting to be “different, but not too different. They don’t want ‘way out’ [design] but they do want individuality.” (House and Home December 1966 excerpt, quoted in Gill, 2012, p. 207- 208). House builders sought to distinguish their subdivisions from their competitors by advertising house features, designs, and fixtures (e.g. clean, modern, and efficient) and the amenities in the surrounding neighbourhood. Builders branching into marketing were instructed to promote their own brand and to develop a brand name, theme, and aesthetic for the

51 subdivision (“a ‘solid’ consistent image”), while promoting the quality of construction (Gill, 2012, p. 168).

To get a sense of marketing messages during this modernist period, I reviewed the Saturday April 11, 1959 edition of the Toronto Daily Star, in which there were twelve advertisements for new build subdivision houses within the study area.13 I found similar themes to Clark (1966) and Gill (2012), in the display advertisements, which were entirely text-based, and mostly quite brief. Many focused on the housing type, specifying when they were bungalows and split-levels. Advertisements highlighted the presence of paved roads, sewers and basic services and included positive references to “subdivision” and “suburb/ia.” The most detailed advertisement in this sample was for the Regency Acres development in Aurora (Figure 1.4). The ad asks: “Do you know why Mrs. Wheeler loves her Regency Acres home in Aurora???” Then offers a list of reasons: a “guaranteed” home constructed by the Regency building company, proximity to “good transportation,” schools, churches, and “excellent shopping,” paved roads and street lights, and access to local golfing, swimming and skating. The development is described as “the perfect suburban community, and so easy to pop into town.” The advertisement invites prospective buyers to drop in on Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler at Lot 36 on Murray Drive to get their first-hand opinion of the area.

13 The 1959 advertisements for new housing developments were located in Aurora (2), Brampton (1), East Gwillimbury (1), Milton (1), Mississauga (2), Newmarket (1), Richmond Hill (3), and Oakville (2).

Figure 1.4: Sample 1959 advertisement for Regency Acres, Aurora: “the perfect suburban community.” The original ad ran long down one column, and I have presented it here side-by-side. (Source: Toronto Daily Star, April 11, 1959, p. 38 accessed through the Pages of the Past archival project of the Toronto Public Library).

Modernist planning visions for bold expansions of transportation and other infrastructure, coupled with mortgage financing, building standardization, and the rise of car-dependency set the groundwork for suburban growth in the following decades.

1.6.3 Historic snapshot 2: “postmodernism,” “dispersed suburbanism,” “polycentrism,” and “wasted density” (~1980s – early 1990s)

Fast-forwarding to the height of postmodernism, delineated by Filion (1999) at 1989-1992, planning and development discourses became divided and were not as clearly unified as during the height of modernism. Some planning visions and advocacy groups emphasized environmental protection, and “the intensified city,” while developers championed continued low-density growth via large-scale projects and called for reduced regulations. In the 1981 plan for Metro Toronto a planning vision for a polycentric, multi-nodal region began to emerge, with suburban downtowns envisioned for “inner suburban” centres including North York Centre and Scarborough Town Centre, as well as “outer suburban” nodes including Markham and Mississauga (Filion, 2009). These were envisioned as multifunctional centres that included new City Halls and shopping malls (Relph, 1991; 2014). Implementing the vision for an intensified Toronto was thwarted by economic recession and government deficits, not-in-my-backyard resident attitudes, preferences for car-use, low–density housing, and strong developer and political resistance to the intensified city vision (Filion, 1999).

Suburban housing expansion in the region from the 1970s into the 1990s generally continued along the two visions established under modernism, with both multi-unit apartment clusters, and low-density subdivisions constructed, with various peaks and troughs related to the overall economy and mortgage lending rates (Filion, McSpurren, Appleby, 2006; Gill, 2012). Debates within broader planning and architecture circles in the late 1970s and 1980s questioned the desirability of high rise developments built under the guise of modernist urban renewal; these projects became seen as representing the displacement and concentration of marginalized groups, and as symbols of inequality that were too large and disconnected from the human scale (Alexander, Ishikawa & Silverstein, 1977; Jacobs & Appleyard, 1987). In Toronto, discontent with high rise development was reflected by a gradual lowering of densities and a shift in housing types towards detached units through the 1980s and into the 1990s as development moved further outward in all directions beyond the boundaries of Metro Toronto (see Filion, McSpurren, Appleby, 2006; Gill, 2012; Hess & Sorensen, 2015). Relph (2014) describes the “big pipe” sewer and water supply lines extensions in the early 1970s into the “outer suburbs” (and this dissertation’s study area) as enabling the expansion of subdivision development and

54 suburban population growth. Filion (1999) observes that the “vast majority” of the Toronto region’s development in the 1980s and 1990s took place in “functionally and socially segregated suburbs provided with plentiful arterial roads and expressways to accommodate a near total dependence on the car” (p. 439). In subsequent publications, he has termed this pattern “dispersed suburbanism” (2015). Furthermore, Filion (2013; et al. 2006) has argued that multi- unit (mostly inner) suburban development has resulted in “scattered” and “wasted” densities that have not been able to tip the scales away from car dependency towards walking and public transit use. Harris (2015) has noted a marked and “steady bifurcation between inner and outer suburban rings” as new build housing development and road network expansion into the 1980s reflected the norms of conventional low-density North American suburbs (Filion et al., 2004). Hess and Sorensen (2015) have shown that the region had a higher proportion of detached housing built out between 1980 and 2000 than during previous post-war decades.

Between the height of modernism and into the late 1980s, advertisements for new-build houses in the Toronto region began to include more images, greater detail about financing programs during periods of high interest rates and economic recession, and the emergence of lifestyle marketing to retirees and move-up buyers. Houses in the outer suburbs were marketed for their affordability. As mortgage interest rates trended downwards in the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, demand for housing increased, consumer confidence in homeownership was boosted, and baby boomers were seeking move-up houses offering more space and privacy. Advertisements targeting the move-up market highlighted recreation opportunities, especially golf, and placed greater emphasis on luxury features, customized finishes, and marketed social status messages about having “made it” (Gill, 2012, p. 278). The discourse of “complete communities” appeared in a local magazine in relation to developments that included a range of amenities including recreational facilities (Gill, 2012, p. 281).

The shift from modernism to post-modernism impacted local suburban architecture, as buyers’ distain for “mass-produced,” “modern” functionalist houses led house builders to offer “authenticity” in the form of eclectic borrowing from heritage styles, and branding subdivisions as old-fashioned (Gill, 2012). Detached houses built during 1980s through to the 2000 were commonly two-stories in height, included two-car garages, were loosely Victorian, Georgian or Colonial in style, with brick and faux stone as popular cladding options (Relph, 2014). Builders sought to convey new subdivisions with distinction, status, and exclusivity through building

55 neighbourhood entrance features and archways, and establishing architectural control and restrictive covenants enforced by homeowner associations to ensure the continued appearance and standards of materials (Gill, 2012). Despite branding and aesthetic control, Relph (2014) has commented that because almost half a million dwellings were constructed from 1991-2011 in the outer suburbs by regionally-operating developer-house-builders “it is not surprising that in spite of attempts to give subdivisions distinct identities many of them do look similar” (p. 86).

To view a sample of ads produced during this period, I reviewed the seventy-two advertisements run in the Saturday April 8, 1989 edition of the Toronto Star for new-build houses in the outer suburbs study area.14 The advertisements emphasized the mortgage interest rates packaged with the purchase price. While there were more images overall in 1989 than the 1959 sample, only 10% of developments advertised using images of people. There were fewer references to lifestyle, location, and community amenities than the contemporary sample of advertisements analyzed for this project. Visual elements in the 1989 advertisements were primarily sketches of the house exteriors or floor plans. References to other places included the Hamptons (rather than urban Manhattan, as found in the contemporary sample and discussed in Chapter Four), and advertisements emphasized the “olde world” of Europe (as opposed to the clean-lines, modern- Scandinavian Europe often evoked in the contemporary advertisements). Advertisements made more reference to the immediate subdivision (e.g. cul-de-sacs and ravines) than the wider municipality in which they were located. Less than half of the advertisements included detail about amenities, but when they did, it was to note parks and nature, luxury finishes, exclusivity of the subdivision, country living, and highway-access. Condominium apartment advertisements highlighted central locations, with some reference to transportation options and commuter transit, views, value for money, and interior recreation amenities. Apartment buildings were advertised as classic, with some references to historical styles, tradition, luxury, and grandeur. Figure 1.5 shows detached house advertisements from the 1989 sample, with the advertisement on the left emphasizing the mortgage interest rate, the one in the centre drawing on historic suburban marketing themes of country life, leisure, and a good place to raise children, and the

14 The 1989 sample of advertisements for new build subdivisions in the study area were located in: Ajax (5), Aurora (2), Barrie (5), Brampton (10), Burlington (2), Innisfil-Alcona (1), Milton-Campbellville (1), Mississauga (18), Newmarket (2), Oakville (8), Richmond Hill (3), Vaughan-Maple (2), Vaughan-Thornhill (5), Vaughan- Woodbridge (1), Whitby (7).

56 advertisement on the right emphasizing large apartment unit size and the luxurious lifestyles of residents with an art deco-inspired illustration.

Figure 1.5: Three sample advertisements for detached houses from 1989 variously emphasizing the mortgage interest rate, country living and child-rearing, golf and world class community (Source: Toronto Star, April 8, 1989, Left: p. E8, Centre: p. E30, Right: p. E32, accessed through the Pages of the Past archival project of the Toronto Public Library).

1.6.4 Historic snapshot 3: “new urbanism” influence (~late 1990s & 2000s)

New urbanism began to influence suburban planning in the region in the 1990s, especially in Toronto-adjacent City of Markham. The master planned area Cornell, in Markham, was originally designed by leading American new urbanist design firm Duany Plater Zyberk (DPZ). Figure 1.6 shows a streetscape of narrow-lot detached houses with a back lane in Cornell. Cornell’s Secondary Plan policies explicitly referenced new urbanist principles, and the community is distinctive for having narrower lots than the previous Markham norm, back lanes, and integrated shopping plazas. Cornell has attracted research on topics including: density (Gordon & Vipond, 2005), housing trajectories (Skaburskis, 2006), housing mix and social

57 diversity (Grant & Perrott, 2009), retail and mixed uses (Grant & Perrott, 2010), gender and feminist planning concerns (Markovich & Hendler, 2006), development patterns and form (Xu, 2017), and planning process and discourses of best practices (Moore, 2010, 2013). Beyond Cornell, new urbanism influenced the vision for Markham Centre, discussed in Chapter Four, and is evident in the general policies directing all new development around Markham’s edges through the late 1990s and 2000s. The wide influence of new urbanism and related smart growth theories in Markham and other municipalities in the Toronto area make the region a type of laboratory for these normative approaches to planning, offering insights into practice. Grant (2009) found that planning practitioners identified developer resistance to implementing the full vision of new urbanism as limiting new urbanist developments from fulfilling their broad social and aesthetic goals, whereas developers more often pointed to the limits of the consumer market which preferred detached houses and suburban forms, while municipal councillors cited resident resistance to increased density and traffic. Relph (2014) characterized new urbanist developments in the Toronto region as innovative and possible alternatives “paving the way” for residential intensification, yet “still automobile commuter developments rather than radical contributions to an overall compact city form” (p. 91).

Figure 1.6: Cornell streetscape (author photo).

The marketing of new urbanist developments in many ways echoes the long-standing themes and images of conventional suburban developments through the decades, especially references to nature access, with an environmental protection spin (Till, 2001). Distinctive, however, is the emphasis placed on nostalgia for a mythic small town form and character, and the focus on community interaction, albeit limited within socio-economic groups (Hayden, 2003; Till, 1993; Winstanley, Thorns and Perkins, 2003). In my own master’s degree study of new-build housing advertisements in Markham in 2007, I found similarly strong emphasis on nature, visual replication of young nuclear families, and nostalgia for the architecture, built form, perceived social character, “myths” and symbols associated with a range of historic time periods (e.g. post- war, but also colonial and Victorian times) (Perrott, 2007, 2008, see Figure 1.7). In its nostalgic pastiche, new urbanism’s influence on suburban place image and its marketing can be regarded as an extension of post-modernism’s logics and reactions to the functionalist sorting and streamlining under modernist planning and design.

Figure 1.7: Outdoor advertisement billboards for developments influenced by the principles of new urbanism in Markham (author photos, 2007).

1.6.5 Contemporary context snapshot

In this section I highlight key aspects of the context informing the production of place image in the contemporary Toronto region: population trends, planning policy themes, and trends in new- build housing types, and house prices.

1.6.5.1 Contemporary population and demographic trends

Figure 1.8 indicates that the 2006 census year was a turning point in the wider Toronto Census Metropolitan Area15 (CMA) where the population of the City of Toronto (including the inner suburbs) was surpassed by the population of the surrounding municipalities in the “rest of the CMA,” which I am describing with the shorthand “suburban.”16

6,000,000

5,000,000

4,000,000

3,000,000 Toronto, CMA Toronto, city 2,000,000

Total Populaon Suburban municipalies

1,000,000

0 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016

Census Years

Figure 1.8: Comparing two decades of population in the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA) as a whole compared with the City of Toronto census subdivision area (CSD) (contemporary political and census boundaries, equivalent to the old Metro, which includes the “inner suburbs” e.g. Scarborough, York, North York, Etobicoke),

15 The Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) includes the City of Toronto (including the “inner suburbs”), all of York and Peel regions, Simcoe and Dufferin counties, Halton Hills, Milton, and Oakville of Halton region, and Pickering, Uxbridge and Ajax of Durham region. 16 Statistics Canada describes areas beyond the urban core of the CMA urban and/or rural fringe. Even though by this rough method, my “rest of CMA”/ “suburban” grouping includes municipalities with a more rural character, all locations designated by Statistics Canada as belonging within the CMA are connected to the City of Toronto and each other by commuting flows, representing an area that is economically and socially integrated (Statistics Canada, Census Dictionary).

60 and the total population in of all “rest of the CMA” or “suburban” municipalities surrounding the Ctiy of Toronto (Data source: Statistics Canada, community census profiles 2001 to 2016, calculated by the author).

According to the 2016 census, the population of the Toronto CMA is 5,928,040, with 2,731,571 residents in the city of Toronto, and 3,196,469 residents in the CMA municipalities surrounding the city. In the past decade, between census years 1996 and 2016, the Toronto CMA population grew by 1,664,281 (39.0%). Table 1.1 compares the change in total population by municipality between 1996 and 2016. The city of Toronto grew by the greatest number of people (346,150) people between 1996 and 2016, and yet population change was greater in all surrounding municipalities. Municipalities with populations that grew over 100% include Milton (243.0%), Whitchurch-Stouffville (131.1%), Vaughan (131.0%), and Brampton (121.3%, where total population growth at 325,387 in the two-decade period was just behind the city of Toronto’s total population growth). The trends in the Toronto region reflect nation-wide “urban spread” population trends as “peripheral municipalities have been growing at a higher rate than central municipalities”17 (Statistics Canada, 2017, February 8, online). Municipality Population 1996 Population 2016 1996-2016 1996-2016 population growth population change (%) Milton 32,104 110,128 78,024 243.0% Whitchurch-Stouffville 19,835 45,837 26,002 131.1% Vaughan 132,549 306,233 173,684 131.0% Brampton 268,251 593,638 325,387 121.3% Richmond Hill 101,725 195,022 93,297 91.7% Markham 173,383 328,966 155,583 89.7% Ajax 64,430 119,677 55,247 85.7% Barrie, city 79,191 141,434 62,243 78.6% Bradford West Gwillimbury 20,213 35,325 15,112 74.8% Whitby 73,794 128,377 54,583 74.0% Caledon 39,893 66,502 26,609 66.7% Aurora 34,857 55,445 20,588 59.1% Oakville 128,405 193,832 65,427 51.0% New Tecumseth 22,904 34,242 11,338 49.5% Innisfil, town 24,711 36,566 11,855 48.0% Newmarket 57,125 84,224 27,099 47.4% Halton Hills 42,390 61,161 18,771 44.3% King 18,223 24,512 6,289 34.5% Orangeville 21,498 28,900 7,402 34.4%

17 From 2011 to 2016, Canadian peripheral municipalities (of at least 5,000 people) collectively grew by 6.9%, whereas central municipalities grew by 5.8% (Statistics Canada, 2017, February 8, online).

Burlington 136,976 183,314 46,338 33.8% Uxbridge 15,882 21,176 5,294 33.3% Mississauga 544,382 721,599 177,217 32.6% Mono 6,552 8,609 2,057 31.4% Georgina 34,777 45,418 10,641 30.6% Chippewas of Georgina Island 201 261 60 29.9% First Nation East Gwillimbury 19,770 23,991 4,221 21.4% Pickering 78,989 91,771 12,782 16.2% Toronto, city 2,385,421 2,731,571 346,150 14.5% Table 1.1: Comparing population by Toronto-region municipalities between 1996 and 2016: total population, population growth, and population change (%), sorted by population change in descending order. Includes Toronto CMA municipalities as well as Barrie, Innisfil, Burlington and Whitby, which I have included in my study area although they fall outside of the Toronto CMA boundaries (Source data: Statistics Canada community profiles census data for years 1996 and 2016, tabulated by the author).

Table 1.2 provides a further census picture of the Toronto CMA, compared with the City of Toronto, and the rest of the CMA or “suburban” municipalities alongside Markham, Vaughan and Brampton, which are the municipalities containing the case studies discussed in Chapters Four and Five. Toronto Toronto, Rest of CMA Markham, Vaughan, Brampton, CMA City “suburban” City City City Population 2016 5,928,040 2,731,571 3,196,469 328,966 306,233 593,638 % of CMA 100 46 54 5.5 5.2 10 population, 2016 Population 2011 5,583,064 2,615,060 2,968,004 301,709 288,301 523,906 % Population 6.2 4.5 7.7 9.0 6.2 13.3 change 2011-2016 Population density 1,003.8 4,334.4 605.9 1,549.2 1,119.4 2,228.7 per square kilometre (2016) % of total 16.6 14.6 18.4% 16.8 18.8 20.3 population 0-14 years of age (2016)

% 15 to 64 years 68.9 69.8 68.8 68.0 67.0 68.6 (2016) % 65 years and over 14.5 15.6 13.5 15.2 14.2 11.2 (2016) Couples without 509,835 250,085 259,750 27,935 23,350 41,360 children, % of 31.4% 34.8% 28.6% 29.2% 26.9% 25.1% census families (2016) Couples with 823,805 316,075 507,730 54,400 52,035 94,600 children, % census 50.7% 44.0% 56% 56.9% 60.1% 57.4% families (2016) Lone-parent, % of 292,145 152,600 139,545 13,140 11,165 28,565 census families 18.0% 21.2% 15.4% 13.7% 12.9 % 17.3% (2016)

Average Total $109,480 $102,721 Not $113,087 $133,095 $98,855 Income of available Households in 2015, $ Attained university 33.3% 36.4% 30.6% 35.8% 32.2% 24.3% level bachelor degree or higher, % of sample 15 yrs+ asked highest education Visible minorities, % 3,011,905 1,385,850 1,626,055 255,155 107,685 433,230 of the sample asked 51.4% 51.5% 52.2% 77.9% 35.4% 73.3% to identify (largest (largest group ID as group ID as Chinese) South Asian) Table 1.2: 2016 Census Profile Data, Statistics Canada. “Rest of CMA” corresponds with all non City of Toronto suburban (and rural) municipalities within the CMA calculated by subtracting the City of Toronto census subdivision values from total values for the Toronto CMA, rounded to one decimal point (Source: Statistics Canada, 2016 Census Profiles, calculated by the author. Census figures taken from 100% of the data, except for visible minority population, and highest educational attainment data, which are derived from a 25% sample answering the “long form” census questionnaire).

This rough and broad division illustrates that the municipalities beyond the City of Toronto are generally growing, and compared to the City have a lower population density, a greater percentage of the population who are children, a greater percentage of couples with children and a lower percentage of lone parent census families. In each of the geographic areas noted in Table 1.2, average total income of households in 2015 was higher than the provincial average ($97,856). The population of the City of Toronto has a slightly greater percentage of adults with “a university bachelor degree or higher” than the rest of the CMA and the highlighted municipalities, but all are greater than the provincial level of 26% of adults with a bachelor degree or higher.

The suburban municipalities around Toronto are noted in the literature and media for their diversity of individuals identifying as visible minorities with a range of ethnicities. Table 1.2 shows a fairly even division between the CMA as a whole, the City and rest of the CMA, at just over half of the population identifying as a visible minority. Markham and Brampton are notable for over 70% of the municipal populations identifying as visible minorities. Relph (2014) observes that diversity along the lines of ethnicity and language are more apparent in the signage of retail landscapes than in residential areas. While suburban municipalities in the area can be considered what Li (2009) has termed “ethnoburbs” (Grant & Perrott, 2009), Harris (2015) asserts that the term has less resonance in the Toronto context because suburban immigrant

63 settlement is “so taken for granted that the presence or dominance of ethnic minorities has become part of the local suburban mythology” (p. 39). Relph (2014) characterizes the diverse outer suburbs as “where a sort of middle-income multiculturalism now appears to prevail” (p. 124).

1.6.5.2 Contemporary housing type trends

As described in the historical snapshot sections above, the “outer” suburban municipalities that experienced much new housing construction after the 1970s contain a high share of lower- density housing, or in the contemporary industry parlance “ground-related” housing types (single-detached, semi-detached, row houses). Table 1.3 displays existing housing units by type collected as part of the 2016 census, representing the cumulative historical build-out in the wider CMA compared with the City of Toronto, and the municipalities in which my case studies are located. In the outer suburban municipalities, ground-related housing comprises over 78% of the total housing stock, with less than 22% comprised of apartment units. Toronto Toronto, Rest of Markham Vaughan Brampton CMA City CMA “suburban” Total - 2,135,910 1,112,930 1,022,980 102,675 94,250 168,010 Occupied private dwellings Single- 846,405 269,675 576,730 60,890 61,215 87,550 detached (39.6%) (24.4%) (56.4%) (59.3%) (64.9%) (52.1%) house Row house 195,245 61,630 133,615 13,970 10,175 20,670 (9.1%) (5.5%) (13.1%) (13.6%) (10.8%) (12.3%) Semi- 158,815 71,230 87,585 6,515 7,685 23,035 detached (7.4%) (6.4%) (8.6%) (6.3%) (8.2%) (13.7%) house Total 1,200,465 402,535 797,930 81,375 79,075 131,255 “ground (56.2%) (36.2%) (78.0%) (79.3%) (83.9%) (78.1%) related” Apartment 626,905 493,280 133,625 13,755 9,805 17,535 in a (29.4%) (44.3%) (13.1%) (13.4%) (10.4%) (10.4%) building that has five or more storeys Apartment 214,365 165,625 48,740 1,655 1,990 7,945 in a (10.0%) (14.8%) (4.8%) (1.6%) (2.1%) (4.7%) building that has

64 fewer than five storeys Apartment 89,975 48,540 41,435 5,875 3,345 11,235 or flat in a (4.2%) (4.3%) (4.1%) (5.7%) (3.5%) (6.7%) duplex Total 931,245 707,445 223,800 21,285 15,140 36,715 apartment (43.6%) (63.6%) (21.9%) (20.7%) (16.1%) (21.9%) units Movable 640 95 545 5 5 25 dwelling Table 1.3. Total existing housing stock enumerated in census year 2016, also showing percentage of each housing type for the respective geography by column. “Rest of CMA” column calculated by author, roughly representing the suburban municipalities minus the City of Toronto. (Source: Statistics Canada (2017) 2016 census profiles – housing data, calculated by the author)

Hess and Sorensen (2015) demonstrated that neighbourhoods in the Toronto region built during the 1980s had the lowest net densities18 in the post war period as detached houses became the most prominent type built in the 1980s and 1990s. Net housing unit density increased in the 1990s, while gross density19 continued to fall, which they attribute to an increase in non-housing uses (e.g. parks) in residential neighbourhoods. Hess and Sorensen also found that from the post- war period on, residential parcel sizes have been steadily decreasing. In interviews for this dissertation project, developers reported that 40-50 foot single detached lots, which were standard a decade ago, are now marketed as “estate” lots as parcel sizes decrease.

Figure 1.9 illustrates housing type trends in new construction since 1990, showing the early 2000s as a peak in detached housing construction that has declined in the past decade and a half. The data indicate a general shift away from the height of detached housing construction (although there was an increase again in the past two years, possibly related to new waste water infrastructure expansions opening up land for greenfield development).

18 units divided by only residential land area, excluding all non-residential land uses include streets and parks 19 units divided by total land area

20,000

18,000

16,000 Single 14,000

12,000 Semi- 10,000 Detached

8,000 Row 6,000 Number of units completed 4,000 Apartment 2,000

Year of completed construcon Figure 1.9: New residential completions by housing type, annually from 1990-2017 in the Toronto CMA municipalities20, minus the City of Toronto (Data source: CMHC Housing Information Portal, data accessed 2016 and 2018, calculated by the author).

Figure 1.10 represents the same new construction data in Figure 1.9 as percentages of total housing units completed each year, showing the mix of housing types newly built out each year from 1990 to 2017.

20 CMHC uses the Statistics Canada definition for the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Data for the City of Toronto is subtracted to highlight the housing mix in the suburban municipalities (Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Oakville, Ajax, Pickering, Milton, Newmarket, Caledon, Halton Hills, Aurora, Georgina, Whitchurch-Stouffville, New Tecumseth, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Orangeville, East Gwillimbury, Uxbridge, King, Mono).

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50% Apartment

Row 40% Semi-Detached 30% Percentage of units completed Single 20%

10%

Year of completed construcon

Figure 1.10: Percentage of new residential units completed by housing type from 1990 to 2017, showing the mix of new housing constructed in the “suburban” municipalities of the Toronto CMA, minus the City of Toronto. (Data source: CMHC Housing Information Portal, data accessed 2016 & 2018, calculated by the author)

Given the context of density-supportive policies and high housing prices, interview respondents expressed an expectation that construction of higher density housing types, especially row houses and apartments would continue.

1.6.5.3 Contemporary housing price trends

Housing prices have been generally increasing at an accelerated rate across the Greater Toronto Area in the past two decades (TREB, 2016, 2017, 2018). Interest rates on mortgage lending have decreased from the peak in the mid-1980s and remained low (e.g. the 5-year fixed mortgage rate has been around or below 5% since 2008) (Ratehub, 2018). Figure 1.11 shows average sales price in the Greater Toronto Area from 2000-2017 using data from all resale housing transactions by realtors recorded on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) (Toronto Real Estate Board, (TREB) 2018, p. 6).

Figure 1.11: Average price in Canadian dollars of all housing sales in the Greater Toronto Area, 2000-2017, as recorded on MLS, and calculated by the Toronto Real Estate Board (Toronto Real Estate Board, (TREB) 2018, p. 6, used with permission).

CMHC (2016b, Fall) reports that house price growth in the suburban municipalities outpaced the City of Toronto between 2015 and 2016; annual price growth in the City of Toronto was 11%, whereas in York Region prices grew by 21%, 19% in Durham and Halton, and 16% in Peel regions (p. 3).

Prices of new-build construction increased over the study period; Figure 1.12 shows the average price of new single and semi detached construction in the Toronto CMA, the City of Toronto, and the case study municipalities of Markham, Vaughan and Brampton in the past decade (CMHC, 2018). Markham experienced a 71% change in the average price of a new built single or semi between 2016 and 2017, Brampton’s increase slowed, and the City of Toronto’s decreased by -6.2% in the same year. The average price of ground related housing (single- detached, semi detached, and townhouses) in the region doubled in the past decade, and rose above $1 million in early 2017 (BILD, 2017). The average asking price for a new-build detached house in the GTA was $1.2 million in 2017 (Altus Group in TREB, 2018). Average price growth for new construction of single-detached and semi-detached houses in the decade between 2008 ad 2017 is shown in Figure 1.13.

$2,500,000

$2,000,000

Toronto CMA $1,500,000

Toronto, City of $1,000,000 Average Price Markham

$500,000 Vaughan

Brampton $0

Year

Figure 1.12: Average price of a new built single-detached or semi-detached house, by year, for the Toronto CMA, City of Toronto, Markham, Vaughan, and Brampton (Source: CMHC, 2018 Housing Information Portal, Market Absorption Survey, calculated by the author).

250.0%

200.0%

150.0%

100.0%

% change in average price 50.0%

0.0% Toronto Toronto, City Markham Vaughan Brampton CMA of

Figure 1.13: Percent change in average price of a new built single-detached or semi-detached house from 2008 to 2017, for the Toronto CMA, City of Toronto, Markham, Vaughan, and Brampton (Source: CMHC, 2018 Housing Information Portal, Market Absorption Survey, calculated by the author).

The TREB (2018) reported some market changes in the Greater Toronto Area in 2017 that interrupted trends in recent years, notably a reduction in the year-over-year rate of price growth as more listings became available relative to sales. The report suggests this was at least in part

69 due to a boost in supply from a slowed market when the Province introduced the Fair Housing Plan in the spring, yet demand increased again then in the later part of the year before the Federal tightening of mortgage lending took effect in early 2018. Prices for “low-rise” or “ground related” housing had been increasing at a high rate than high rise apartments, mostly built for condominium tenure in the region (TREB, 2017); in 2017 this trend shifted as total sales and price growth of high-cost detached housing slowed in relation to condominiums (TREB, 2018). CMHC (2017, Fall) suggests that house prices will continue to grow in the region, but at a more modest rate compared to the recent years forming the backdrop for this study.

A range of factors impact housing prices, supply, and demand, and the relationship between housing price and growth management planning is hotly debated in the region. Determining whether or not increased residential density in the region is a result of housing prices or policy is beyond the scope of this study; interview respondents talked about the interplay of both policy and market factors. Nevertheless, price increases and the “eroding affordability” of detached houses in particular, not just in the city core but also in the suburbs form an important backdrop to understanding recent trends in housing types, and the discourses used to plan for, and promote, higher density housing (CMHC, 2017, Fall). In Chapter Three, I further discuss homeownership, mortgage lending, and debt in the region as context for discourses relating to stacked townhouses emerging as a desirable housing option in the outer suburbs.

1.6.5.4 Contemporary planning policy themes: transformation, evolution, urbanization

The Province of Ontario established the Growth Plan in 2006,21 thereby streamlining the vision, terminology, and policies for smart growth, compact cities, and sustainable development across the planning area called the “Greater Golden Horseshoe,” which encompasses a broad region around Toronto, and incorporates the neighbouring city-regions of Hamilton, Oshawa and Barrie. The Growth Plan describes a metropolitan planning model that centres on the City of Toronto,

21 The Growth Plan was updated in 2017. While I highlight some of the recent changes, I focus on the 2006 version since those are the policies that have shaped lower-level plans and development patterns in the past decade, and were the policies that were discussed in the interviews.

70 with the surrounding municipalities containing nodes and corridors that relate to (and compete with) each other and the central city. The vision statement describes an “evolving regional economy of the GGH will have matured into an economic powerhouse of global significance” (p. 9, emphasis added). Other keywords describing the vision for the region’s future include “vibrant,” “thriving,” “livable,” “unique,” “productive,” “more compact,” and “celebrated” guided by the pillars of “strong economy, a clean and healthy environment and social equity” (p. 9). The Growth Plan (2006) promotes “compact urban form”22 that includes a mix of housing types and reflects a:

land-use pattern that encourages efficient use of land, walkable neighbourhoods, mixed land uses (residential, retail, workplace and institutional all within one neighbourhood), proximity to transit and reduced need for infrastructure. (Growth Plan, 2006, p. 41). and “complete communities”23 that

meet people’s needs for daily living throughout an entire lifetime by providing convenient access to an appropriate mix of jobs, local services, a full range of housing, and community infrastructure including affordable housing, schools, recreation and open space for recreation and open space for their residents. Convenient access to public transportation and options for safe, non-motorized travel is also provided (Growth Plan, 2006, p. 41, italics in original denote other terms with specific definitions in the Plan).

Intensification and density targets are the two main policy levers of the Provincial Growth Plan, which lower level governments are required to implement. The intensification target requires that a minimum 40% of new residential development be directed to the already built up area (infill). Density targets mandate that designated greenfield areas must be planned and built to have at minimum 50 people and jobs combined per hectare; greenfield density targets are measured across the regional municipality scale (i.e. across a large geographical area, not at the fine grain of the neighbourhood). Designated Urban Growth Centres (UGCs) must meet various higher targets, such as 200 people and jobs per hectare depending on location. These “[u]rban centres

22 In the 2017 update to the Growth Plan this term has been renamed “compact built form” and additions regarding active transportation and a well-connected network were added, and discussed further in Chapter 5 23 In the 2017 Growth Plan update, this definition was adjusted to highlight the idea of aging-in-place. An additional sentence was added that complete communities “may take different shapes and forms appropriate to their contexts,” (p. 69) yet the emphasis on mixed use neighbourhoods, convenient access to daily necessities, housing and transportation options remains.

71 will be characterized by vibrant and more compact settlement and development patterns and will provide a diversity of opportunities for living, working and enjoying culture” (p. 9). The Growth Plan’s vision for compact, complete communities emphasizes urban forms and mentions “suburbs” once in the context of improving long-term growth, while the term “suburban” is used to describe some of the newly planned UGCs as distinct from the urban core of Toronto or longer-established nodes like historic main street downtowns of towns and cities. “Sprawl” is referenced several times for its detrimental impacts on the environment, transit service, and the economic competitiveness of the region. The Growth Plan envisions a provision of housing options, offering choices through “a full range of housing” (Growth Plan, 2006, p. 47) and the “right mix of housing” (p. 13). The plan calls for smaller lots and multifamily housing including “detached and semi-detached houses on small lots as well as townhouses and walk-up apartments, multi-storey commercial developments, and apartments of offices above retail.” (2006, p. 47). Relph (2014) summarizes the Growth Plan accordingly:

What this all boils down to is that from now on urban development in the region has to be as much about filling in as spreading out, so that job creation can offset people accommodation and so that the density of developments on greenfield sites has to be about double of what it has been […] This will require a substantial shift away from many of the development habits of the last half century (p. 156).

Within the Provincial planning hierarchy, the Plans of upper tier regional municipalities and the single tier municipalities of the big cities form the next level policy influencing lower tiers of government and/or smaller geographical scales. York Region’s Official Plan (2010) describes the region as “urbanizing,” entering a “new era of city building” (p. 73), and intensifying “into a new generation of sustainable and quality compact areas” (p. 85). “Growing up, not out” is the first principle in York Region’s best practices for intensification areas, where growing up is not just about density, and building heights, but about integration with transit and infrastructure investments through infill development (2013, p. 11). The Region of Peel’s Official Plan (2014) emphasizes sustainable development and envisions a region that “will be a healthy, vibrant and safe community that values diversity, and quality of life” (p. 6). Halton Region’s Official Plan (2009) emphasizes sustainable development, healthy communities, and a prosperous economy that is “desirable” and “identifiable” within the larger region (p. 6). Barrie’s Official Plan (2010) echoes similar themes regarding economic development, environmental protection, and community health in its vision, while also highlighting Barrie’s Lake Simcoe waterfront, and

“premier lifestyle” characterized through access to a diversity of cultural and recreation amenities (p. 2-5). Increased densities are framed as opportunities to minimize infrastructure costs, generate public transit efficiencies, and develop complete communities through urban design.

Following from the regional municipalities are the lower tier municipalities’ official planning policies.24 Planning documents in lower-tier municipalities throughout the “outer suburbs” study area champion transitioning from small towns and suburbs into more urbane communities. The subtitle to the Official Plan for Richmond Hill (2010) is “Building a new kind of urban” and the Plan commits “redefining what it means to be urban in Richmond Hill” (p. 1-1). The Plan aligns the maturity and evolution of the town with its residents: “cities and towns mature and evolve with us” (p. 1-1). Historical change is characterized as a “natural evolution,” (p. 2-1) wherein the municipality is “constantly evolving” (p. 2-2) from village-to-suburban-to-urban built form and lifestyles:

Just as Richmond Hill transformed in the past from a village to a thriving suburban community, the Town will continue to evolve in the future. Building a new kind of urban is about re-imagining the type of urban environment that is desired over the planning horizon (p. 2-2).

The new kind of urban is “a complete, vibrant and connected community,” (p. 2-2) which is guided by principles related to complete communities, environment, economy, place-making, connectivity and mobility. Pursuing its own unique brand of urbanity, the Richmond Hill Plan “represents a fundamental shift in the Town’s approach to land use” (p. 2-2). Richmond Hill, Newmarket and Mississauga have nearly reached the limit of available greenfield land for development, which is reflected in their Official Plan’s emphases on changing planning visions. Newmarket’s Official Plan (2008) describes the town as arriving at “next phase of growth and change” beyond the expansion decades into a future characterized by redevelopment, infill, and intensification. Mississauga’s Official Plan (2015) describes “a decisive moment in its history” moving past the rapid but “unfriendly” divided postwar landscape and “becoming the sustainable urban community envisioned” (p. 4-5). The Mississauga Plan vision and guiding principles place

24 Lower-tier municipalities also develop Secondary Plans for designated areas, and some municipalities (such as Brampton) also require block plans of master planned areas, before reaching subdivision and site plans for development.

73 notable emphasis on transit-supportive and pedestrian oriented development, “desirable urban form” and enhancing options for mobility (p. 4-10).

In Vaughan, the Visioning document (n.d.) prepared as part of the Official Plan (2010) review process describes a bold, transformative vision that will take the municipality from a “20th century suburb” into a “vibrant and sustainable 21st century city” (p. 17, my emphasis):

“We have heard clearly from citizens and experts that what we’ve done in the past isn’t good enough - we need a new urban model to structure our City and the growth that will happen in it. The vision forwarded by the citizens of Vaughan is a vision of improvement, it is a vision of sustainability, and it is a vision of change.[…] a vision of transformation – shifting Vaughan from a 20th Century suburb to a vibrant and sustainable 21st Century City. […] Vaughan will no longer be defined as the “City above Toronto” but as the most vibrant, green and sustainable municipality in the GGH.” (visioning document, p. 17)

The Official Plan emphasizes transformation, intensification and “reurbanization” (p. 15), with the vision structured as a series of goals: strong and diverse communities, robust countryside, a vibrant and thriving new downtown (the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre discussed further in Chapter Four), mobility alternatives to the car, design excellence and sense of place, sustainability, and growth management through intensified development. The Vaughan Plan language emphasizes “transformation,” alongside evolution, where the municipality’s node and corridors are described as evolving into higher density, transit-oriented, mixed-use, places of “major activity” (e.g. p. 39).

The Official Plan for Markham describes its municipal change from small villages to rapidly expanded automobile dependent residential and industrial subdivisions and commercial developments. “Sprawl” and traffic gridlock are results of “unchecked and poorly managed” growth (p. 2-3). The Plan notes a shift towards a “more sustainable model of development” in the 1990s with the development of new urbanist Cornell and creating a plan for a new transit-based urban core: Markham Centre (discussed further in Chapter Four). The Plan states its recognition that “continued expansion” of “low-density, suburban-style residential development is not sustainable over time” (p. 2-3, my emphasis). The vision is based on the “planning philosophy of building more compact complete communities that address the environmental, economic and social needs of the community” (p. 2-3, emphasis in the original indicated a defined term).

The Official Plan for Burlington similarly expresses an evolution from suburban to a vibrant,

74 urban 21st century community:

“The City of Burlington is at a turning point in its evolution and is transitioning from a suburban to an urban community (page 1-5, my emphasis) “The landscape of Burlington has changed remarkably over the last 50 years, and the evolution will continue... The Plan’s long-term vision for the community will help ensure land use decisions made today contribute to the City’s goal of being a vibrant 21st century community (2018, page 2-6, my emphasis).

The Official Plans in the study area all echo the Provincial vision of compact, complete, intensified, higher density communities, with varying degrees of reference to “vibrancy,” “urban,” “mixed-use” “health,” “environmental protection,” and “sustainable development”. Development and population growth rates in some communities appear to be outpacing the vision of the plans. Whitchurch-Stouffville’s Official Plan, (2000) for example, envisions “country close to the city” and describes a “rural community,” even though it experienced population growth over 130% between 1996 and 2016 (p. 2-1). The Town of Milton’s Official Plan (1997) similarly aims “to be the best of town and country,” yet the town had population growth over 240% since the plan was written. In the Plans that include descriptions of past development as preamble to the visions and guiding principles, the story in many places is of “sprawl” or “low-density” “automobile dependent” expansion (e.g. Pickering, Markham, Vaughan, Mississauga). Plans for communities, in the northern part of the study area linking Newmarket and Barrie notably grapple with transitioning from small towns surrounded by agricultural and cottage uses to growing, compact communities with residents relying on the commuter rail and highway systems (e.g. Innisfil (2018) and East Gwillimbury’s (2010) recently updated plans). In Chapter Three, I further discuss the policy discourse of evolution and growth as “growing up” in the dual sense of maturity and building heights, linking the planning document language with housing advertisements and practitioner interview narratives.

There are several other Provincial plans that operate alongside the Growth Plan that relate specifically to the environmental protection of and land use on the Greenbelt, and other designated areas. The Big Move is the transportation and transit plan for the region produced by Metrolinx (2008), a regional transit authority of the Provincial government. In addition to playing a long-range planning role, Metrolinx operates the regional commuter rail and bus system, GO transit, which extends into and beyond the “outer suburbs” into the “commutershed” of adjacent cities: Barrie, Hamilton and Oshawa. The Big Move characterizes much of the region

75 as low-density and car dependent, thus difficult to service by transit. The policies are intended to support the Growth Plan vision for “mixed-use, transit-supportive, cycling and pedestrian- friendly communities” (p. 5). Efficient transportation is framed as essential to the region’s economic competitiveness, increasingly “dependent on creativity and innovation” (p. 11) and on the ability to “attract the broadest talent pool possible.” (p. 8). “Urbanization” discussed as the growing population within urban areas worldwide and in Canada, and the transportation plan is envisioned to support the vision of intensification and reducing the spread of urbanized rural land in the region. The long-range vision for transportation and transit supports a “high quality of life” with attention to healthy active lifestyles, fair and equitable services; a “thriving sustainable and protected environment” via low-carbon footprint transportation system; and a “strong, prosoperous and competitive economy” supported by a quick and efficient transportation system. (p. 13). The Big Move further intends to achieve the goal of “valuable, beautiful, and attractive places” and “help curb sprawl by supporting more compact and efficient urban forms” (p. 17). The Plan calls for the detailed study and design of “mobility hubs,” which coincide in many cases with areas that the Growth Plan designates for high-density Urban Growth Centre nodes.

Regional and local municipalities in the broader commutershed operate their own local bus transit systems, and several have launched bus rapid transit lines (Mississauga, Markham and Newmarket). My research was prompted in part by the emergence of distinctly suburban-to- urban rebranding efforts by York Region Transit (YRT) and Metrolinx in the promotion of the VIVA Next bus rapid transit system. The transit agency installed billboards throughout the region depicting “now” places images rendered in black and white to signal that the existing character is already passé, juxtaposed with colourful “next” place visions that are distinctly higher density and more urbane in character (Figures 1.14 and 1.15, see also Figure 5.1 in Chapter Five). This dissertation reflects my exploration of how extensive the mobilization of urbanism and urbane place images are in planning, policy and housing development discourses including, and beyond the VIVA campaign.

Figure 1.14: VIVA Now, Next campaign billboard in Markham at the intersection of Highway 7 and Warden Avenue. The image shows an extension of the cluster of high-density buildings along the Highway 7 corridor and the newly constructed bus rapid transit service (Source: author photo).

Figure 1.15: VIVA Now, Next campaign billboard entering Vaughan, on Highway 7. The “now” image shows a Future Shop big box electronics store alongside a large roadway replaced by the “next” place image of a cluster of high rise buildings, with less visual emphasis on the street, instead highlighting streetscaping amenities including plantings and lighting, and a rapid transit station (Source: author photo).

1.6.5.5 Contemporary Snapshot Summary

In sum, distinguishing the “outer” post-1970s suburbs from the earlier “inner” suburbs are higher household income levels, homeownership, auto-dependency and lower densities in the built form (Harris, 2015; Relph, 2014). The outer suburbs are where the “suburban dream” is most evident in the Toronto region according to Harris (2015):

“It is in the outer ring, and beyond, that the stereotypical suburb—as dream and as reality—lives on, albeit in modified form. Residential densities are higher than in past decades, and some New-Urbanist-style development has made a significant gesture in the direction of a more urban style of living.” (p. 42)

In the contemporary context, housing types are shifting away from the peaks of detached house construction during the 1980s, and early 2000s with a gradual shift towards attached housing forms (discussed further in Chapter Three). Housing prices have been steadily increasing. While a detached house in the outer suburbs is still priced lower on average than in the city of Toronto, Markham’s prices are catching up, and recent price growth has been higher in the outer suburbs than in the City of Toronto. Whereas Clark (1966) found that the outer suburbs offered affordability for buyers, including those who would have preferred to live in the City of Toronto, suburban affordability is eroding. This poses new challenges for housing developers promoting new developments on the edges of the outer suburban municipalities.

Official Plans work to reinvent the suburban vision away from the forms and stereotypes associated with the “suburban myth” and towards a vision for communities that are “complete,” “compact” and “urban.” Planning in the region emphasizes smart growth, intensification (e.g. infill), and densification, particularly in identified higher density nodes and corridors throughout the broader Toronto metropolitan region. According to the policy documents, suburban built forms are to change, transition and improve, with the provision of mixed land uses, amenities, housing choices, and greater options for transportation, transit and alternative mobility.

The central City of Toronto has experienced a “condo boom” in the past two decades, reshaping the skyline of Toronto, strengthening the local condominium apartment building industry and impacting urban core neighbourhoods through gentrification, or “condification” (Lehrer & Wieditz, 2009, p. 154). Rosen and Walks (2014) describe the property dynamics in the urban core of Toronto as “condo-ism” emerging from the combined interests of public policies (e.g.

78 intensification), the private sector development industry (e.g. expanded profits), and residents (e.g. seeking homeownership over renting, and preferring urbane lifestyles) (p. 290). Rosen and Walks argue that mortgage credit has displaced industrial expansion as the primary driver of the urban economy, with condo-ism usurping the role of industrialization in Toronto’s urban development. This aligns with other Lefebvre-influenced perspectives on the growing importance of real estate and property development in the contemporary socio-spatial dynamics of cities including Smith’s (2002) argument that “urban real-estate development-gentrification writ large-has now become a central motive force of urban economic expansion, a pivotal sector in the new urban economies” (p. 447), and Davis’ (2006) description of “real estate capitalism” (p. 62). The broader themes of property development of higher density forms (including condominium apartments and townhouses), homeownership, and economic competition are revisited throughout the empirical papers with attention to the discourses that appear to support similar dynamics in the suburban region.

Planning for the region as a whole, and in the outer suburbs specifically, emphasizes change and transition to more urbane built forms, housing types, mobility options and daily routes or lifestyles that would be less reliant on cars. The normative calls for North American suburban areas to become “urbanized,” “retrofitted,” and “repaired” has impacted planning academia and practice to the extent that Phelps (2015) has called it the “zeitgeist,” of contemporary planning, with potential to reshape the ideology and built form of suburban areas. The mediating role of discourse in reshaping suburban ideologies and the extent to which discourse articulates with wider “post-suburbanization” processes form the focus of this dissertation, the format of which is outlined in the section below.

1.7 Structure of the Dissertation

The dissertation comprises three journal-article-format papers that report on key findings and develop independent arguments that support of the overarching argument outlined above. Preceding the empirical papers, Chapter Two details my data sources and sampling techniques, methods for conducting and analyzing interview transcripts, and approaches to qualitative content and discourse analysis of residential development advertisements. The three empirical papers examine the discourses of urbanizing the suburbs at different scales: the first paper examines the discourse of urbanity with attention to the small scale of stacked townhouse units; the second paper expands in scope into a discussion of high-density nodes and corridors with case studies of two suburban “downtowns” (Vaughan Metropolitan Centre and Markham Centre); and the third paper highlights producer perspectives on the broader successes and challenges of urbanizing the suburbs across the region, with attention to mobility options, and a focus on the case study of Mount Pleasant, Brampton.

Chapter Three, the first of the three empirical papers, is titled “Not your parents’ suburban home: Planning and marketing discourses on homeownership of stacked back-to-back townhouses in the ‘grown up’ suburbs around Toronto, Canada.” In this paper I engage with literature about homeownership ideologies and the use of organic metaphors in planning housing discourses. I demonstrate how stacked and back-to-back townhouses are planned and promoted through the intertwining discourses of suburban “evolution” and young adult “maturity.” I argue that the discursive construct of suburban evolution produces and relies on young prospective homebuyers taking up the subject positions of not just homeowner-investors, but also suburban-re-inventors.

Chapter Four, the second empirical paper, is titled “The Aesthetics of Post-Suburbanization in the Toronto Region” This paper engages with the literature on “aesthetic governmentality” and “post-suburbanization” to examine the discursive production of “world-class urbanity” and the overlapping roles of producers in the planning and promotion of “competitive” high-density nodes to attract knowledge economy workers and employers. I argue that the aesthetic of world- class urbanity is mobilized to signal the arrival of suburban downtowns as distinct from suburban office parks, low-density residential developments built elsewhere in the region, and stereotypical conceptions of suburbia held more broadly. Planning and packaging of high-density

80 developments more closely resemble strategies employed by cities than those employed more typically by suburban areas.

Chapter Five is the final empirical paper, titled: “Building the “Best of Both” Urbanism and Suburbanism? Practitioner Perspectives on the Promises and Challenges of Planning Compact and Complete Communities” The paper examines the gap that producers describe between the theoretical promises of high-density, transit-oriented suburban development and the persistent realities of car-dependence and separated land uses. While some marketing materials draw on the long-standing discursive production of the suburbs as the “best of both worlds,” producers describe the “in-between” character of some contemporary developments as neither idyllic urbanity nor conventional suburbia, but rather as a “squished-in” version of auto-centric suburban development. Traffic congestion and “car-cramming” are the unintended consequences of intensification that will necessitate planning solutions for transit service beyond the compact city approach.

The dissertation concludes with a chapter titled “Reinventing the Suburbs: New Myths and Old Realities?” There I reflect on the dialectical tensions that run through the papers: tensions between urbanism and suburbanism, contemporary and traditional, young and old, detached and connected. I discuss the usefulness and limitations of regarding discourses in the Toronto region as “post-”suburban. I highlight the policy implications of the research and consider steps for further investigation. I close by commenting on the planning opportunities and challenges for urbanizing the suburbs in the Toronto region.

Chapter 2

Methods

2.1 Data and Research Methods

Several sources of data were examined in this research, to explore the relationships among texts, or intertextualities, operating in and through the processes of (post)suburbanization: 1. Interviews with three categories of participants: planners, municipal councillors and developers; 2. Advertisements for new-build housing developments; 3. Planning policies; and 4. Housing construction data.

The data sampling/participant recruitment, and analysis methods for each data source are described in the following sections.

2.2 Interviews

2.2.1 Recruitment

I conducted interviews with a total of 60 interviewees in three categories: planners (n=30), municipal councillors (n=15), and residential developers (n=15). Interviews were conducted between December 2015 and August 2016. To recruit Provincial and municipal planners, I started with contact information listed on municipal websites and contacts recommended by professional colleagues. I then followed up with contacts suggested by my initial interviewees following “snowball” sampling techniques. The category of “developers” includes planners who work for the development and homebuilding industry and a representative from the Building Industry and Land Development Association of the GTA. Developer recruitment drew on recommendations from planners, and I used the directory of planners on the Ontario Provincial

81 82

Planners Institute website to find employees at land development and homebuilding companies operating in the study area. These developers recommended colleagues in other companies to interview. Councillors’ contact information is publically available and I requested interviews with those who had greenfield areas or the urban growth centres actively being developed in their wards.25

Table 2.1 shows the break down of planners, councillors, and developers by municipality. For confidentiality, I do not name the companies of the developers. While some developers specialize in certain municipalities, many had development experience or active projects throughout the study area. Five of the councillors I interviewed also sat on York and Peel regional councils, but for the sake of anonymity, I have identified them only with the lower-tier municipality they represent. I spoke to the most representatives in York and Peel regions because those are the regional municipalities within which the Growth Plan (2006) projects the greatest growth in population and employment. Of the lower-tier municipalities, I focused on Markham, Vaughan and Brampton, because of development underway in the “new downtowns” of the Urban Growth Centres of Markham Centre and the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, and the greenfield case study of Mount Pleasant, Brampton.

Geography Planner Councillor Developers

Province 5 15 (Municipal Affairs & Growth Secretariat)

Peel Region 1 Developers build throughout the York Region 1 region

Regional Transit 4 Agencies (Metrolinx, YRT)

Brampton 3 2

Mississauga 1 1

25 Aurora is unique in that there are no political wards and Councillors are elected at large. .

Milton 1 1

Vaughan 4 2

Richmond Hill 2 1

Markham 3 3

Stouffville 1 -

Ajax - 1

Aurora 1 1

Newmarket 1 1

Bradford 1 -

Innisfil - 1

Barrie 1 1

Total (n=60) 30 15 15 Table 2.1: Interviews by geographical location and interviewee category

2.2.2 Interview Process

Interviews were semi-structured and followed questionnaires asking about changes they have observed in their municipality (or region), how they characterize the planning vision and the idea of “complete communities.” Interviews then asked about the successes and challenges of implementing the targets for intensification, greenfield densities and urban growth centres depending on each participant’s area of practice and knowledge. Questions posed to the planners and councillors emphasized policy, while with the developers the emphasis was on development trends and specific projects. See Appendix B for the questionnaires that guided interviews with each of the three categories of respondents. Semi-structured interviews allow for flexibility, where participants could speak in detail about their area of expertise, while skipping other questions that fell outside of their knowledge or geographic area of practice. For example, planners working in development control provided detailed insights about specific projects and the development process, whereas policy planners had greater insights into the challenges of conformity with provincial visions and the policy appeals process. At the same time, semi-

84 structured interviews poses a limit to comparability because the content covered in each interview is slightly different and the findings cannot be directly compared as they can in interviews with a rigid questionnaire, or a survey instrument.

The majority of interviews were conducted in-person, one-on-one, for approximately one-hour, and recorded for transcription. I conducted 3 interviews over the phone with 4 planners (two of them were interviewed together) and 3 councillors. Phone interviews were generally shorter (about 40 minutes). I did an in-person interview with a councillor and a planner together at their request. In total there were 58 interviews with 60 interviewees. One developer and one councillor requested not to be recorded for transcription. In those cases I took detailed notes during the interviews and typed my notes and reflections on the interview themes shortly after. I transcribed the majority of the interviews, but hired two transcription assistants for 16 of the interviews, in accordance with the ethics protocol for secure transfer and storage of data and preserving the anonymity of respondents.

As a way of concluding the in-person interviews (except for several when there was not time), I showed the interviewees a sample of advertisements for new-build housing developments in the region drawn from the December 2015 issues of New Home Guide and New Condo Guide. I selected approximately 15 advertisements for developments within the municipality of the respondent and adjacent areas. At first I designed an exercise following Hubbard (1996), who drew on social psychology techniques and showed interview respondents photographs of redevelopment projects in Birmingham and asked them to classify, then describe their groupings, with the purpose of uncovering the language respondents used to characterize entrepreneurial landscapes. In the first few interviews, I asked respondents to categories the advertisements however they wanted and then explain their categories to me. I then asked them to tell me who they saw represented in the advertisements, and whether what they saw was consistent with the vision for the region. Figure 2.1 shows some sample groupings of the advertisements by interview respondents.

Figure 2.1: Advertisement groupings based on initial interview categorization exercise (Source: author photos).

After several interviews, I found that the categorization exercise was too time consuming, and there was not always the desk or table space for interview participants to group the advertisements easily. I proceeded instead with an exercise in “image elicitation,” which is a participatory visual research method using images or photos in an interview context to prompt verbal responses (Pauwels, 2016). I drew insight from Wu (2010) who showed interview respondents images of gated entries to communities and asked for their reactions. I asked interview participants to look through a sample of advertisements and tell me their main impressions given the conversation we had been having about urbanism, suburbanism, and the vision for the region. I asked them if they thought the vision represented in the advertisements was consistent with the planning vision for the region, and who they saw represented or targeted by the advertisements. The advertisement exercise was also a method to informally test the coding theme variables for my content analysis (described in Section 2.5) and see if there were other themes or ideas that I had not initially considered. The advertisements were useful “props”

86 or conversation-starters about relevant issues and themes. Some respondents who seemed hesitant in speaking about certain policies or development trends spoke more freely about what they were observing in the region while commenting on the advertisements.

2.2.3 Informed consent and ethical considerations

There was minimal risk to participants in this research. Since participants were speaking in their professional or political capacities there is the potential for some reluctance to speak frankly about a project or policy direction. There is the possible social risk that speaking critically about their job, or a planning and development project may harm their job security or status. To minimize risk I have not named participants in my dissertation or subsequent publications. Appendix A shows the letter and consent form that went through the University of Toronto ethics board approval and was provided to interviewees. At the outset of the interview I explained the objectives of the study and asked participants for their consent to participate, and have the interview recorded for transcription, while understanding that I would not name them and instead assign an anonymous code based on their profession, and for councillors and planers, profession and location. I asked participants to indicate if they wanted to speak more frankly and have it attributed more generally to “study participant” rather than the code. One planner expressed concern about identifying the location of participants. I have in general identified quotes by professional category using an alphanumeric code (e.g. P01 for planner, C01 for councillor, and D01 for development industry representatives), and included location information only where it was included in the direct quote or necessary for understanding the context of the quote. Appendix E is the summary of findings circulated to participants.

2.2.4 Interview coding analysis

I followed Jackson (2001), Boyatzis (1998), and Saldana's (2009) techniques for thematically and iteratively coding interviews, starting with a base of thematic codes derived from the literature and questionnaire, then developing additional themes as they emerged across several transcripts. I developed a codebook defining the major themes and codes and updated them as I

87 went (Appendix C). I chose to code the transcripts manually, using a two-columned table in Word, where the transcript text was in the left-hand column and the codes were in the right column. This allowed me to use the search tools in my mac computer’s Finder program and the search tools in Word to locate themes across transcripts. One of the reasons I chose to manually code is that software cannot pick up nuances in texts like the difference between “towns” as a short form for townhouses, or when people are talking about towns, as in municipalities (both of which are used in the interviews). Because I conducted all of the interviews myself and did the majority of the transcription, I was very familiar with the content, which made locating quotes and themes easier. Once the major themes across the interviews were established I created a series of “round up” documents gathering all of the relevant quotes and organizing them by respondent group: planners, councillors and developers for further analysis of common themes and divergent perspectives.

2.3 Policy Analysis

I conducted a close reading of twenty-five planning policy documents within the study area. At the provincial level, I focused on the “Places to Grow. Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe” (2006),26 the “Crombie report” stemming from the scheduled 10-year review (Planning for Health, Prosperity and Growth in the Greater Golden Horseshow: 2015-2041), and the revised “Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, 2017” (2017). I examined the regional transportation plan “The Big Move” (Metrolinx, 2008). For the regional and lower tier municipalities, I reviewed twenty-one Official Plans, focusing on sections and statements containing long-range visions, and policies regarding growth management and housing. Similar to the interview analysis, I created “round up” documents grouping visioning and housing related themes and quotes by municipality.

26 Referred to in the dissertation by the shorthand “Growth Plan” (2006).

2.4 New-Build Housing Advertisement Analysis

The purpose of the advertisement analysis was to describe the themes and advertising appeals in new-build housing developments relating to messages about urbanism and suburbanism, which were then brought into conversation with policy and interview findings. Content analysis is a method for counting and systematically distilling a large amount of textual and visual material into concise quantitative and/or qualitative descriptions (Bauer, 2000). Content analysis methodology, particularly in the fields of communications and psychology, is generally concerned with the reliability, validity and objectivity of the study. Bauer (2000) suggests coherence and transparency as additional good practices of content analysis. I have been less concerned about objectivity in this study because I follow Bauer in recognizing that content analysis is a social construction, and “is not the last word on any text” where “counting text units is just another contribution to the open interpretation of a text corpus” (2000, p. 6). I have, however, attended to methodological coherence, transparency, reliability, and validity in the content analysis sampling and research process described below.

2.4.1 Contemporary Advertisement sampling

I gathered a sample of advertisements for new-build housing developments within the study area described above. My sample was based on the online PDF archives of four print magazine Homes, Condo Life, New Condo Guide, and New Home Guide, which are available for free throughout the region at development sales offices and in boxes adjacent to transit stops or at busy intersections. A full archive from 2012-2016 was available for Homes and Condo Life, and 2014-2016 was available for New Home Guide and New Condo Guide. I looked at each magazine for this time period and saved a copy of each print advertisement and advertorial (an article-style advertisement), for each development in the study area. To address sampling validity, I collected every advertisement for developments within the study area from each issue of the magazines, resulting in a sample of 304 developments that should be fairly representative of broad contemporary trends. I also analyzed the content on developer websites for each development. Because some developers advertised more information than others in the print content, viewing the websites provided greater balance in the level of detail analyzed for each

89 development. For the “urban townhome” developments in particular, it was necessary to view the floorplans or siteplans on the developer’s websites to determine whether or not it was a stacked unit development or a traditional townhouse with contemporary architectural style branded as urban (relevant for the discussion in Chapter Three). I did not code each advertisement separately but rather treated the sum of text and images in both print and online content for each development as a collective coding unit. Table 2.2 shows the break down of developments in the sample by municipal location.

Stacks & Ground- Total Location Apartments Back2Backs Related

Ajax, Pickering 2 8 10

Aurora 3 2 8 13

Barrie 3 2 3 8

Brampton 3 4 41 48

Burlington 8 1 1 10

East&West Gwillimbury 8 8

Innisfil 3 3

Markham 13 2 21 36

Milton 1 8 9

Mississauga 13 3 6 22

Newmarket 7 7

Oakville 9 5 12 26

Richmond Hill 9 1 25 35

Stouffville 3 3 4 10

Vaughan 14 5 30 49

Whitby 2 1 7 10

Total 80 32 192 304

% 26% 11% 63% 100% Table 2.2: Developments advertised in the Contemporary sample by municipal location and housing type (calculated by the author)

2.4.2 Advertisement content analysis

Content analyses can code for both manifest and latent themes. Manifest content “refers to the visible, countable components of the message,” whereas latent content “refers to the meaning that may lie behind the manifest content.” (Rose, Spinks & Canhoto, 2015, p. 1). Because I was the sole coder of the advertisements, I focused my quantitative content analysis on primarily manifest content in images and texts, because it is the least subjective and the study method is potentially replicable by other researchers. Following the methods for content analysis outlined by Treadwell (2014) I developed and tested an initial coding scheme against a selection of developments to refine the theme-based coding variables, and determine the coding rules prior to coding the entire sample.

The coding scheme assigned a score of 1 if a theme was present in a development’s advertising content or a 0 if absent.27 The present or absent (1 or 0) coding method is common in content analyses and in particular I drew on the coding example employed by Kriese & Scholz’s (2011; 2012) study of lifestyle and sustainability messages in housing advertisements. In the quantitative analysis, a score of 1 was given to a development if a coding theme was referenced once or multiple times. Similarly, with present/absent coding the score of 1 remained even if the developer ran an advertisement emphasizing a particular theme multiple times or only once during the sampling period.

I used Excel to manage a master coding spreadsheet, with each development coded by themes in columns. In addition to calculating total sums and percentages, I also used the Excel pivot table function to separate and compare variables for example, themes including mobility and amenities by development unit type and municipal location.

My coding scheme and coding spreadsheet was comprised of coherent and clearly defined theme variables falling into the following broad categories (with the full codebook included as Appendix D): • Development information (e.g. municipality, developer, housing type) • Location keywords or phrases (e.g. urban, suburban, central, elite, popular)

27 For absent scores, I left the Excel cell blank, which Excel calculates as a zero.

• House images shown (e.g. exterior/interior shown, contemporary/traditional/mix) • House and development keywords (e.g. exclusive, luxury) • Who images (e.g. family groupings, women/men/children pictured alone) • Target market keywords (e.g. first time buyers, family buyers, investors) • Lifestyle keywords (e.g. family, urban, quiet, condo, active) • Mobility keywords and images (e.g. GO train, local transit, cycling and walking) • Amenity keywords and images (e.g. parks, shopping, golf, schools, grocery) • Price (e.g. price range, low price/value vs. high price emphasis, incentives offered) • Other keywords (e.g. evolved design, master-planned, aspirational references to other places)

I enhanced the reliability and accuracy of my coding scheme by drawing on suburban advertising themes established in the literature by other researchers, including nature, proximity to amenities, lifestyle, and family representations (e.g. Duncan & Duncan, 2004; Eyles, 1987; Perkins, Thorns & Newton, 2008).

Frequency counts of manifest content are useful for uncovering broad trends across the sample, but do not demonstrate how advertisers use discursive or rhetorical strategies to mobilize themes as advertising appeals. To address the limitations of the quantitative content analysis, I paired the frequency counts of manifest content with qualitative analysis of advertisement texts to deepen the interpretation of thematic content. As part of the coding process, I selected quotes about house style, lifestyle and neighbourhood design; commute; amenities; location; best of both worlds references; aspirational references; planning; and financing and placed these into the coding worksheet I also made notes about images and other relevant content. Similar to the interview analysis process, I created “round up” worksheets and documents of quotes by theme to further analyze the data. I have focused on text content for deeper analysis rather than a detailed semiotic and visual analysis of images because of the limits to interpreting images as a single-coder, and because texts can be quoted and discussed in publications, whereas images require permissions for reproduction.

In the communications literature, content analyses control for bias and objectivity when a team of coders is used and more than one coder will analyze the entire sample (e.g. in Perry & Motley, 2009). Inter-coder reliability checks are then performed, and differences resolved. As a single-

92 coder less concerned with objectivity, I have used techniques from intra-coder reliability (see Macky & Gass, 2005), where a coder will retest earlier coding to check for stability over time, resolving differences where necessary. As with any human interpretation of data, there is room for error; however, I aimed for reliability by keeping notes clarifying what I included or excluded for a certain code, and I checked through the entire sample a second time to reduce the potential for missed variables in my earlier coding. Content analysis even with a team of coders still produces only one sampling and interpretation of many possibilities, but because content analysis is a thoughtful and systemic reading, it remains as useful method for interpretation despite its limitations.

Showing a selection of advertisements to interview participants improved the reliability and validity of the study by opening up other variables for consideration in the coding scheme checking my interpretations against other readings. For example, I coded the architectural styles of exterior renderings as 1) traditional, 2) contemporary or 3) offering a mix of the two styles (categories that were based on keywords employed in the advertisement texts). Discussion with interview participants further confirmed the distinguishing features of “traditional” vs. “contemporary” styles and which renderings could be interpreted as designed with a mix of styles.

I chose not to code for race representation in the advertisements, not because I was not interested in that aspect of who was being represented, but on the contrary, because a content analysis of race risks reducing race, which is a social construction to visual signifiers, whereas I think it is more important to understand race as a product of racialization processes rather than comprised of inherent qualities that people possess. As part of the advertising exercise in the interviews, I wondered if respondents would comment on race or ethnic representation, but respondents generally talked about who they thought the advertisements were targeting in terms of market segment, either by income or age group. A few developers discussed efforts to represent the ethnic diversity of the region in the advertisements, which I discuss in Chapter Four. Future research on advertisements and place image focusing on questions of race representation and gender presentation would benefit from different methodologies (e.g. drawing more from audience studies and focus groups) than the methods I used in this study, and theorization within literatures that are beyond the scope of this project.

2.5 Housing construction data analysis

Descriptive statistics provided by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) were downloaded and analyzed using Excel to assess trends in housing type within the Toronto CMA.28 I downloaded time series data from 1990 to 2017 by municipality within the Toronto CMA. I then grouped all of the suburban municipalities without the city of Toronto to assess the suburban trends without being skewed by the condominium apartment development within the city boundaries. As discussed in Chapter Three, stacked and back-to-back townhouses are an important emerging trend in the region, yet there are data limits to understanding the magnitude and location of these housing types. Neither CMHC, Statistics Canada, nor local real estate organizations that I contacted gather construction data on unit types differentiating the stacked and back-to-back units from either townhouses or apartments. CMHC calls the highest density category “apartment,” yet it includes stacked and back-to-back townhouses.

2.6 Benefits of mixed data sources and methods

Using a mixed methods approach that draws from multiple data sources, using primarily qualitative analysis with some supplementary quantitative description, allows for cross-method comparisons and produces a more nuanced understanding of social and spatial issues than would be enabled through only one method. As discussed above, each of methods employed in this study has strengths and limitations. Mixing methods at the interface of urban studies and communications research can enhance findings, increase validity by enabling triangulation of findings across data, and can provide a more complete and diverse account of the social phenomenon studied (Matsanganis, 2016). Examining policies, and advertisements allows for a comparison of visions between government/planning and the development industry. It also

28 I looked at the building permits data available through Statistics Canada, but the CMHC data was more useful, because it can be downloaded and analyzed by municipality rather than the CMA as a whole (which includes Toronto, where new development in condominium apartments influences the overall data). CMHC uses municipal building permits data and site visits to collect information about housing completions.

94 enables an examination of theory (as expressed in policy) and practice (as characterized by participants in interviews, and development practice of advertising new housing products and neighbourhoods). In each of the empirical chapters that follow, I report on findings from interviews, policy analysis, and the advertisement content analysis, and supplement my study findings with the housing construction data.

Chapter 3 First Empirical Paper

Not Your Parents’ Suburban Home: Planning and Marketing Discourses on Homeownership of Stacked and Back-to-Back Townhouses in the “Grown Up” Suburbs around Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT: Stacked townhouses represent an emerging housing form in the Toronto region. This paper examines how planners, developers, and municipal councillors discursively produce townhouses as desirable options for suburban living and homeownership in the contexts of growth management planning, and house price increases. I find three intertwining discourses mobilize organic metaphors to co- produce 1) the maturity of young adults through homeownership 2) the naturalized progression of suburban housing types, and 3) the evolution of the suburbs. I argue that discourses produce young adult households as both homeownership investor subjects and suburban re-inventor subjects. Promoting the ownership of smaller housing units represents a discursive “spatial fix” to the price constraints faced by young adult would-be homebuyers.

keywords: suburbs, stacked townhouses, medium-density, homeownership ideology, discourse, organic analogy

3.1 Introduction: Stacked and back-to-back townhouses as an emerging suburban homeownership alternative

Detached houses have historically held an important position in the cultural imaginaries of homeownership and suburban landscapes (Dovey, 1992; Gold & Gold, 1990). In Canada’s largest regions, however, in the context of rising house prices combined with urban planning policies promoting residential densification, supply and demand for new housing unit construction is shifting towards higher density housing types including stacked and back-to-back townhouses. Over the past decade, average prices for housing in general, and for detached houses in particular, have increased in Canada (CMHC, 2016a; Teranet and National Bank of Canada, 2017). The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) identified lowered supply and rising prices as factors that will “shift demand from higher priced single-detached

95 96 homes to lower-priced alternatives in multi-unit buildings”29 (CMHC, 2016a, p. 4). Already evident is the correlation between residential patterns of Canadian young adults and high-density living in urban, and some transit-serviced suburban areas, due to factors including preferences for urban lifestyles, changing household composition, increasing housing prices, and changing economic prospects (Moos, 2016). The recent census shows that Canadian young adults30 in 2016 were more likely to rent or buy in low or high-rise apartments, and less likely to live in a detached house, than that same age cohort in 1981 (Statistics Canada, 2017, Oct. 25). Furthermore, a mortgage lender-conducted “life in the ‘urbs’ or ‘burbs’” survey of 6,000 Canadians indicated a generational divide in preferences with younger adults31 preferring to live in urban areas, while over half of older adults with children responding that urban living is too congested and expensive (TD Bank, 2015).

This paper examines the discursive production of stacked and back-to-back townhouses as desirable options for suburban living and homeownership in the Toronto region, in the contexts of growth management planning, and house price increases. The wider Toronto region32 population has increased by roughly 100,000 per year since the 1990s, is currently at about 6.5 million, and is projected to reach 9.5 million by 2041 (Advisory Panel, 2015; Ontario, 2016). To manage this growth the Province of Ontario established the Growth Plan (2006), which streamlined policies supporting housing densification, compact form, transit-service, and land use mix across the region. Toronto is Canada’s largest housing market and house prices have steadily increased in the area since the late 1990s, paralleled by an increase in homeownership rates and household debt (Walks & Clifford, 2015). The average price of ground related housing (detached, semi-detached, and townhouses) doubled in the past decade, rising above $1 million in early 2017 (BILD, 2017). Over the course of 2016, the average price of a new-build detached house in the Toronto region increased by more than $273,000 (BILD, 2017). Recently, average price growth in some suburban Greater Toronto Area municipalities has outpaced the city, for

29 Defined in the CMHC report as all housing types other than single-detached houses. 30 Aged 20-34 years old. 31 Younger adults were categorized as Millennials and Generation X, and older adults were defined in the survey report as the generations that would have parented the former groups. 32 Greater Golden Horseshoe region.

97 example, prices in York Region, which borders the City of Toronto to the north, grew by 21% between 2015 and 2016, compared to the City of Toronto at 11% (CMHC, 2016b, Fall). Scholars have suggested that medium-density housing could provide transit supportive options for family living (Moos, Kramer & Williamson, 2015). Local politicians and development industry representatives have similarly highlighted the need to provide the “missing middle” of housing options in terms of density, forms, and price (Tuckey, 2017, Nov. 4; TREB, 2018; McGrath, 2018, April 17).

In this context stacked and back-to-back townhouses are emerging in the outer suburbs of the Toronto region as a popular multi-unit housing option. Back-to-back townhouses without a stacked component are generally three storey buildings; the stacked projects are typically four storeys and can include a rooftop terrace and utility room on an additional level. Commonly found in the region are combined stacking-back-to-back townhouses, which I will capture under the term “stacked” in this paper; Figure 3.1 shows an example exterior and Figures 3.2 and 3.3 show example configurations of these units. Parking is either integrated into the units on the ground floor, through a surface lot, or in a communal underground lot.

Figure 3.1: Developer’s rendering of stacked-back-to-back townhouses in Aurora (Source: Treasure Hill, used with permission).

Figure 3.2: Example cross section of a shared entry/stairwell stacked-back-to-back townhouse with underground parking (Source: Treasure Hill, used with permission).

Figure 3.3: Example cross sections of units in a direct walk-in/up stacked-back-to-back townhouse with integrated parking (Source: Averton Homes, used with permission).

The growing popularity of stacked and back-to-back townhouses in the Toronto area suburbs reflects a national trend in Canada’s largest metropolitan areas, where multifamily housing

99 construction has grown at a faster pace than single-detached dwellings since the 2008 recession (Statistics Canada, 2017). Sales of high-rise units in the Toronto region hit a record high in 2016, 10% of which were stacked townhouses, which reached a new high of 2,701 units (TREB, 2017b). Land sales for medium-density (primarily townhouse) development also reached a record of $773 million in transactions in the Greater Toronto Area (Altus Group, 2017). Changes to the Ontario Building Code in 2015 allowing wood frame construction up to six storeys, above the previous limit of four storeys, may also further enable stacked townhouse products by potentially reducing construction costs. In addition to housing type changes, in the Toronto region, the size of units and lots have both decreased for new-build detached and townhouses, impacting residential densities (Hess & Sorensen, 2015). Figure 3.4 illustrates the proportional mix of housing types constructed in the suburban municipalities33 (without the City of Toronto) over the past two decades, showing a gradual shift away from single-detached houses and towards higher density forms. New housing construction completed in 2016 and 2017 provides a recent snapshot of housing unit mix and demonstrates the continued trend towards multifamily.

Figure 3.4: Proportional comparison of new housing unit completions in the GTA suburban municipalities. Does not include City of Toronto (source: calculated by the author from CMHC Housing Market Information Portal, accessed 2016-2018).

33 CMHC uses the Statistics Canada Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) definition. Data for the City of Toronto is subtracted to highlight the housing mix in the suburban municipalities.

100

Stacked and back-to-back townhouses are counted as apartments by CMHC, and account for part of the gains in the apartment category.34 Between 2006 and 2015 in the suburban municipalities there has been an overall decrease in the total units constructed (-39%) and in single-detached units (-51%) compared to the previous decade. The only housing units to increase in this period were apartments (by 41%). Housing unit construction in the apartment category has surpassed all other unit types in four of the suburban municipalities bordering Toronto: Mississauga (since 2006), Markham (since 2014), Vaughan (since 2015), and Richmond Hill (since 2013, although traditional townhouse units had a slight edge over apartments in 2015).

Alongside these changes in housing form and price have been sustained rates of homeownership. Homeownership rates in Canada have, on average, been over 60% since 1971; 67.8% of Canadian households owned a home in 2016, with the Toronto CMA sitting close to the national average at 66.5% homeownership (an increase from 55.4% in 1971) (CMHC, 2014; Statistics Canada, 2017, Oct 25). National homeownership rates in the most recent decade remained in the high 60 percent range, but in the previous decade homeownership rates increased by over 9%.35 Sustained and increased rates of homeownership have been linked to various actions taken by the Canadian government to increase household access to mortgage credit as part of a general shift by the federal government towards an “asset-based welfare” approach to governance (Walks, 2016). Under asset-based welfare, responsibility for social welfare shifts away from the state and towards individuals who then rely on liquidated assets, especially real estate, to fund retirement (instead of pensions) and education (instead of government grants), and supply income in the case of job loss (instead of unemployment pay) (Walks, 2016; Walks & Clifford, 2015). According to supporters, asset-based welfare is means to generate social equality through actions of the “enabling state” (rather than welfare state) and to increase opportunities for individuals to participate in the market economy (Paxton, 2003; Sherraden, 2003). Critics, however, see this as part of a neoliberal approach to governance where following Peck and Tickell’s (2002) concepts

34 Neither CMHC, Statistics Canada, or local real estate organizations that I contacted gather comprehensive construction data on unit types differentiating the stacked and back-to-back units from either townhouses or apartments. CMHC calls the highest density category “apartment,” yet it includes stacked and back-to-back townhouses (CMHC, 2015). 35 from 62.6% in 1991 to 68.4% in 2006. This is 0.39 % per year, which is slightly faster than the rate of homeownership growth in the USA during the same period (Walks, 2016, p. 762).

101 of “roll back” and “roll-out” neoliberalism, the rolling back of welfare state provisions is replaced by the rolling out of programs and incentives to promote homeownership, which shifts the burden of societal wellbeing onto individuals and households (Walks, 2016).

The housing market is also increasingly influenced by financialization, which can be broadly defined as the process by which financial motives, markets, actors and institutions become increasingly involved in various markets and economies (Epstein, 2005). While homeownership has long involved mortgage financing, in recent decades the logics of finance have become embedded in housing and mortgage markets whereby innovations in the credit system have opened up new avenues for profitability through mortgage-backed securities and derivatives trading in Canada and worldwide (Walks, 2012b). Critical scholars have described these new mortgage-related financial instruments as mechanisms to transform the value captured in the fixed asset of a house into liquid, globally tradable, and thus increasingly profitable, entities (Gotham, 2009; McNally, 2011). Mortgaged housing thus provides a profitable outlet, or “spatial fix” for absorbing over-accumulated capital in financial and other industries (Harvey, 1978, 2012; Aalbers, 2017; Walks, 2012b). Aalbers (2017) has argued that “[i]ncreasingly, mortgaged homeownership is there to keep financial markets going, rather than being facilitated by those markets” (p. 543).

The financialized housing system relies on new entrants, and government homeownership programs facilitate an inflow of mortgaged homebuyers, including young adults, into homeownership (Ronald, 2008). Even after the global financial crisis, government bank bail-outs and policy responses served to re-instill the problematic dynamics of capitalism that led to the crisis (Walks, 2010). Contemporary neoliberalism was likened by Walks (2010) to schemes that rely on “new entrants to maintain the flow of profits up the ponzi neoliberal pyramid” while profits at the top are artificially expanded through securitization (p. 18). Compelling new entrants into homeownership, despite the vulnerabilities and instabilities revealed through the recent crisis, is related to the deeply entrenched ideology of homeownership, which “is discursively supported almost everywhere and fiscally underpinned in many countries” through government narratives and wider cultural discourses of property-ownership aspiration, and the potential to accumulate wealth from the resale, or exchange value, of housing units (Aalbers, 2017, p. 549; Ronald, 2008).

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Following the financial crisis of 2008, media discourses highlighted Canadian exceptionalism in prudent financial regulation, obscuring the role that the Canadian government had and continues to play in securitizing and insuring mortgages, removing debt from bank balances to keep loans flowing with little risk to the banks, and keeping interest rates low36 to facilitate mortgage lending. (Walks 2012). Walks and Clifford (2015) have concluded that Canadian interventions kept house prices from falling, yet the stimulus further released banks from the consequences of increased lending. This has enabled the continuation of financialized mortgage lending, ramping up demand for houses and housing prices, and increasing household debt throughout the country.

Recent data on Canadian homeownership and mortgage debt illustrates the unfolding of the contemporary housing market’s problematic exclusions and inclusions. Increased credit supply and low-interest lending includes new buyers into the market at the cost of increased household indebtedness, but can also inflate housing demand and prices, leading to unaffordability exclusions. Homeownership has generally increased among high-income earners and decreased among low-income earners. The largest gap is evident between high and low income family households headed by young adults,37 where three-quarters of high income young adult families owned, but only 20% of lowest income young family households were owners (Statistics Canada 2016, Oct 7a). Trends such as these, led Aalbers (2017) to argue that asset-based wealth “now appears generationally limited, with younger people increasingly excluded” from housing that is affordable in relation to incomes and compounded by employment precarity. Canadian households that have been able to access inclusion into homeownership, face mounting mortgage debt, which is the largest component of Canadian household debt, more than doubling over a twenty-five year period.38 Debt-to-income levels are highest among younger homeowners and young families with children39 (Chawla & Uppal, 2012; Hurst, 2011; Statistics Canada, 2016, Oct 7b). Households in the suburban municipalities adjacent to Toronto show high levels of debt as a percentage of disposable income compared to households in the city, and where mortgage

36 For example, posted interest rates for a 5-year mortgage have been under 6% since 2009 (Ratehub.ca). 37 young adults between 19 and 34 years old. 38 between 1984 and 2009. 39 More than 60% of household debt held by Canadians under 45 years old, and about a half of all debt was held by couples with children.

103 debt comprises 72% of total debt (Walks, 2013; Simone, 2014). Critics argue that policies encouraging the accumulation of property as an asset are compounding vulnerabilities for low- income, immigrant, and young households, and leading to greater spatial segregation and concentrations of wealth (Aalbers, 2008; Walks, 2016; Simone & Walks, 2017).

Increased demand has not only placed pressure on housing prices in Canadian cities such as Toronto, but also on the supply of new housing construction (Walks & Clifford, 2015). Aalbers (2009) hypothesized that urban form is shaped by homeownership and tenure, and has suggested that the connection between homeownership and housing type is a research area deserving of greater attention. Scholars have long made connections between the expansion of suburban low- density, detached housing, state-financed infrastructure projects, and government programs promoting homeownership (e.g. Harris, 2004; Lawson, 2006). Langley (2006b), has also argued that the production of “suburban subjects” as “explicitly neo-liberal property investors” in the pre-crisis suburban housing boom helped enable the extension of mortgage lending into mortgage-backed securities markets (p. 290). The post-crisis, financialized housing market opens up the opportunity to examine continuities and disruptions in homeownership ideology, housing types and (sub)urban forms.

The ideology of homeownership has been theorized by scholars drawing on the governmentality framework of Foucault (1991) to demonstrate how government and media discourses enable particular subjects positions for people to adopt as they participate in financialized regimes of mortgaged homeownership. Through this lens, new entrants to homeownership experience a discursive realignment of subjectivity from property owners to “investor subjects” who speculate on the housing markets and see financial risks as opportunities for investment (Langley, 2006a, 2007). Discursive processes work to “convince the necessary stakeholders” into adopting reconfigured financial subjectivities, making entrepreneurial-type investment decisions, and engaging in new social relations and housing dynamics (Coq-Huelva, 2013). Studies of discourses, both government-produced (e.g. policies and educational literature on mortgages and pensions) and cultural (e.g. through news media and advertisements) demonstrate the normalization and naturalization of individual and collective financial subjectivities, aspirations, and ways of thinking in terms of risk and reward (Finlayson, 2009; Greenfield & Williams, 2007; Langley, 2006a; Watson, 2009).

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In this paper, I examine discourses about homeownership of new-build stacked townhouses in the Toronto suburbs to build on Langley’s discursive studies of suburban investor subjectivities and contribute to the wider response to Aalber’s call to attend to the relationships between homeownership and (sub)urban form in the context of the financialization of housing. In the Toronto suburbs, where stacked townhouses form an emerging new housing market, I ask: how are these housing types discursively produced as a desirable new form of suburban housing, and how are potential stacked townhouse buyers discursively produced as particular suburban subjects? The discourses analyzed for this project include narratives from interviews with housing producers (planners, municipal politicians, and developers), alongside their discursive products: planning policies and new-build housing advertisements. Discourse analysis of housing producer interview narratives has demonstrated how different actors in the development process reinforce social norms and determine what constitutes appropriate planning policy, and saleable housing forms (Fincher, 2007; Grant & Perrott, 2009). Advertisements for particular housing types typically include messages about the surrounding neighbourhood or wider municipality and thus, the values attached to housing products act as referents in the production of the surrounding place (Eyles, 1987; Dowling, 1996). Studies analyzing both housing marketing and interviews have demonstrated the intertextual production and reinscription of discourses related to housing types, place, and homeownership (Duncan & Duncan, 2004; Kern, 2010; Lynch, 2014; Mills 1993).

Three intertwining discourses co-produce the naturalized progression and maturity of young adults, suburban housing types, and the suburbs in general. First, stacked townhouses are discursively produced as new “routes to maturity” through homeownership for young adult homebuyers who find detached homeownership beyond their budgets. This discourse follows a thread in the housing literature on the naturalization of homeownership ideology and the relationships between housing type and residents’ “lifecycle” (Perin 1977; Ronald 2008). Second, stacked townhouses are promoted as a “graduated” suburban housing type that offers the benefits of high-end modern design, and condominium tenure, but is “ground-related” to appeal to suburban family buyers. Third, stacked townhouses are branded as “urban towns,” which plays a broader role in the discursive transformation of the suburban image from “sprawling” to “urbanizing.” This carries the tradition of using ecological metaphor in suburban planning, yet shifts the organic metaphor from describing access to nature, meandering streets, and curvilinear

105 block layout, to evolutionary growth of building heights and densities. Collectively, these discourses offer young adults housing types and suburban locations that are distinct and more attractive than housing built for past generations.

I argue that the discourse of “evolution” signals a positive progression and functions as a rhetorical strategy to convince residents and potential buyers about the positive aspects of new stacked townhouse forms. Discourses about stacked townhouses produce young adults as suburban investor subjects who will form the target market for this new housing product and as suburban re-inventor subjects necessary for ushering in the urbanization of the suburbs. Because of rising house prices across the Toronto region, housing producers view stacked townhouses as more “affordable” homeownership options than detached houses. These smaller, yet still ground- related, units provide for the continuation of mortgaged homeownership in the suburbs. Promoting the ownership of smaller spaces via stacked townhouses represents a type of discursive “spatial fix,” to young adults’ constrained opportunities for homeownership of detached houses.

In the next section I discuss the literature on how discourse naturalizes homeownership and suburban development patterns. I then describe my study area, data and methodology. I present my findings on inter-related discourses that naturalize the maturity or “natural” progression of young adult homeowners, suburban housing types, and suburban locations. I conclude by discussing the relevance of these findings for the housing literature.

3.2 Natural progression and maturity in homeownership discourses

The advancement of homeownership as “natural” is promoted through, for example, public and policy discourses, even though ownership has expanded in periods of deliberate “deep government subsidy and policy stimulation” (Ronald, 2008, p. 1). Cultural idioms like the “American dream” and the “Englishman’s home is his castle” also reinforce the normative character of private property ownership. Ronald’s (2008) overview of debates about ideology in the housing literature, pointed to Saunders (1990) as supporting a view that owner-occupation is a natural extension of cultural values, whereas Kemeny (1981) saw cultural views as

106 manipulated by the subsidization and promotion of homeownership by governments in individualist societies. Ronald (2008) argued that “home ownership is not ‘natural’, but a constructed set of social relations and legal norms,” (p. 51) which “support a particular alignment or interaction of social and power relations.” (p. 8). He foregrounded the role that discourse has played in commodifying housing and the shift in ideology towards investment and exchange- value over use value. Ronald pointed to the ways that homeownership has been normalized and naturalized by integrating owner-occupied tenure with cultural values such as privacy, autonomy, family, control, status, security, lifestyle, and identity.

Narratives of natural progression and maturity discursively sustain homeownership as a cultural ideal. In countries with higher home ownership, “owner-occupation has become embedded with routes to adulthood and autonomy and bound up with discourses of choice and freedom” (Ronald 2008, p. 2). Through an analysis of interviews with housing developers in case study American cities, Perin (1977) found that property developers articulate a metaphorical ladder of housing types and tenures that individuals and households climb up as they reached various stages of life, with homeownership of a detached house at the pinnacle of the ladder. A broad cultural narrative about the “correct chronology of life” is embedded in developer discourses, with one Perin’s respondents characterizing renters as immature for not having raised downpayment saying “they haven’t grown up, they’re not mature and so forth” (cited in Perin p. 42.) Perin raised the question: “Can it be that it is the lack of debt that brings suspicion and lower status in American society? (p. 75). Recent studies in Australia (Fincher, 2007) and Canada (Grant & Scott, 2012) have found that even in contexts where planning policy promotes higher density residential development, the idea of middle-class family households ascending the housing ladder to reach detached homeownership remains embedded in the narratives of housing producers.

3.3 Organic metaphor and nature in suburban planning and marketing discourses

The social sciences have a lineage of borrowing terminology from the natural sciences to explain urban change in organic and evolutionary ways. For example, in urban geography, scholars within the Chicago School of human ecology, including Park, Burgess, and McKenzie (1925) and Wirth (1938), likened spatial, social, and economic processes to those in the natural sciences,

107 discursively reflected in terms such as “competition,” “succession,” and “invasion” (Pacione, 2009; Perin, 1977). Planning theory and practice has also long mobilized organic and natural metaphors to guide visions of place and justify change (Auster, 1990; Herbert, 1963; Lejano & Gonzalez, 2017). “Organic” approaches to planning and the design of the built environment has been especially influential in the suburbs, where historically planners sought to distinguish suburban communities from cities through the prominence of natural landscape features, “organic” curvilinear streets, and radial patterns. Early promoters of organic thought and design in planning included Patrick Geddes, Frederick Law Olmsted, Clarence Perry, and Henry Wright (Beinart, 2014; Lynch, 1981). Although Jacobs (1961) critiqued planning and the suburbs, she too championed organic metaphors and the idea that cities can be understood as complex organisms.

The marketing of suburban houses and neighbourhoods has historically emphasized access to natural features, including green space and fresh air, and the suburbs were sold as healthy retreats, better places to raise children, and as symbols of social status (Gold & Gold, 1994; Perkins, Thorns, & Newton, 2008; Ward, 1998). Marketing references to green space and rurality combined with references to tradition, exclusivity, and other themes work to naturalize the desirability of large, detached houses, and suburban lifestyles, alongside social distinctions and divisions (Eyles, 1987; Duncan & Duncan, 2004; Knox, 2008; Perkins, 1989).

In the later decades of the twentieth century, the organic, curving forms of suburban development and the predominance of front lawns and green space once upheld by some as ideal, became widely disparaged in planning circles as “sprawling” and “placeless” (e.g. Duany et al., 2000; Kunstler 1994). In response, increasing the density of the built form became promoted as central to the related planning ideologies that emerged around the world calling for sustainable development, healthy cities, smart growth, new urbanism, compact cities, and urban renaissance (Grant, 2006). Advertisements for new urbanist housing developments market nostalgia for an imagined small town North American past combined with long-standing suburban promotion of proximity to nature reinvented through the discourse of sustainability (Keil & Graham 1998; Till, 2001; Winstanley, Thorns & Perkins, 2003; Zimmerman 2001).

As part of the movement towards new urbanism and smart growth, contemporary planning policies have championed European-inspired, mid-rise built forms and walk-up medium-density

108 housing (Ancell, & Thompson-Fawcett, 2008; Dixon & Dupuis, 2003). Examining housing trends across the USA, Larco (2010) found a growing market for medium-density mid-rise40 walk-up “garden apartments,” which are similar to multiplex housing, stacked flats or stacked townhouses. In Australia, Fincher and Gooder’s (2007) interviews with housing developers in Melbourne have shown how new medium-density housing developments target buyers perceived as desiring sociability and diversity: “people of cosmopolitanism, people seeking lives in contrast to assumed suburban norms” (p. 171). The developers “naturalized” the cosmopolitan marketing pitch as a natural extension of historic multiculturalism in the city, alongside the promotion of indigenous plants in the landscaping. In Canadian suburbs influenced by new urbanism, Grant and Perrott (2010) found that housing producers used ecological metaphors to describe the suburbs, but noted a shift away from “organic” neighbourhood design towards characterizations of suburban “evolution,” given enough time, into a European character with sidewalk cafes and neighbourhood pubs.

Traditionally, social scientists in general, as well as planners and developers, have discursively constructed suburban houses and communities as a “natural,” expansion, and promoted their desirability through rhetorically combining references to nature with values like privacy and healthy retreat. More recently as planning values shift, studies show continuation of ecological metaphors, but with an emerging realignment to naturalize changes towards denser housing types, and built forms.

3.4 Data and methods

In this paper I focus on the discourses of housing producers through interviews with planners, municipal councillors, and housing developers, as well as housing policies (produced by planners and councillors) and new-build housing advertisements (produced by developers). I conducted

40 Definitions of medium density and mid-rise vary across urban and suburban contexts, and are defined in Official Plans, in this paper I follow my interview respondents in characterizing townhouses on smaller parcels and in tighter configurations, stacked townhouses, back-to-back townhouses and low/midrise apartments (~4-8 storeys) as roughly “medium density.”

109 interviews with thirty planners,41 fifteen municipal councillors,42 and fifteen housing developers.43 Participants were initially drawn from lists of staff and councillors on websites and the online directory of planners accredited through the provincial planning institute, with later participants recruited through recommendations from earlier interviews, in a “snowball” sampling technique. Interviews were semi-structured, approximately one-hour, were mostly conducted in-person,44 and recorded for transcription. Housing producers responded to questions about the successes and challenges of implementing intensification and densification policies, housing trends in general, and about stacked and back-to-back townhouse developments in particular. Thematic coding of the interview transcripts form the basis of the narrative discourse analysis presented in the following sections. To conclude most interviews, I conducted an image elicitation exercise, asking participants to comment on a selection of new-build housing advertisements.45 Policy documents analyzed included the provincial Growth Plan for the region surrounding Toronto, and the Official Plans for municipalities in the study area arcing around the city.

I also analyzed advertisements and advertorials for 304 new-build housing developments. The sample of advertisements for new-build housing developments was taken from the 2012-2016 online archives of four housing industry magazines (New Home Guide, Homes, New Condo Guide and Condo Life), which are freely distributed throughout the region at locations including transit stops, developer sales centres, and model homes. Of the complete sample, 51% had a traditional or higher density townhouse component, either as part of a unit mix or as the sole unit type. There were 32 developments in the advertising sample for stacked and back-to-back units.

41 The “planner” category includes representation from the provincial government, regional and local municipalities, and two regional transit agencies: Metrolinx and York Region Transit. Municipal department managers and transit agency representatives doing planning-related work are included in this category. 42 The category “municipal councillor” refers to elected politicians at the local and regional municipality scale and includes a Deputy Mayor, who for the sake of anonymity will be called “councillor.” 43 The category “developer” refers to representatives from land development and homebuilding companies, which in this region are often integrated within the same company or group of companies. Most of the “developers” interviewed are accredited planners who work for the development and homebuilding industry. 44 I conducted six interviews by phone, which were generally shorter, but were also recorded and transcribed. Two in-person interview participants declined to be recorded, and notes were taken instead. 45 Drawn from the December 2015 issues of New Home Guide and New Condo Guide

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Stacked townhouse projects ranged in scale from 12 to 272 units per project. Combined stacked- back-to-backs were the most prevalent form of higher density townhouse advertised.

3.5 Findings

3.5.1 Stacked townhouses as part of policy strategy for suburban densification

Housing policies across land use plans at Provincial, regional, and local levels call for a diverse mix of housing types and tenures in a compact built form. Municipalities in the region have been required to intensify by directing a minimum of 40% of all new residential development within the already built-up area (infill), and build new greenfield areas at a minimum density of 50 people and jobs per hectare.46 “Growing up, not out” is the first principle in York Region’s best practices for intensification areas, where growing up is not just about density, and building heights, but about integration with transit and infrastructure investments through infill development (2013, p. 11).

Policies mobilize life cycle language to encourage housing provision for households at different stages and with different income levels. Medium-density housing, and townhouse products in particular are emphasized as an emerging strategy for densification in Plans that have been recently updated. For example, the City of Vaughan aims to add more housing options by:

adding a greater range of housing types and sizes, including more townhouses, stacked townhouses and multi-unit buildings, to the existing housing stock which still primarily consists of single-detached and semi-detached houses (City of Vaughan Official Plan, 2010, p. 206, emphasis added).

The City of Markham identifies the need to shift towards higher density housing types including townhouse products, as the community “evolves:”

Many of Markham’s neighbourhoods were built as primarily single-use residential communities with services located at the periphery […] But this is changing […] As

46 In the 2017 update to the Growth Plan, the intensification target was increased to 50% and the target for designated greenfield areas is to have a mix of 80 people and jobs per hectare.

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Markham evolves into a more urban community and addresses the market needs of future residents and workers there will need to be a shift towards a more balanced housing stock composition with an increased share of apartments, stacked townhouse and townhouse dwellings (Markham Official Plan, 2014, p. 4-3 & 4-4, emphasis added).

Suburban municipalities with few designated greenfield areas are shifting their policies to emphasize residential intensification through “compact forms such as townhouses and apartments.” (City of Mississauga Official Plan p. 4-5). Medium-density housing holds a unique position in the housing type spectrum for being regarded as appropriate in a wide range of locations. For example, stacked townhouses are permitted as part of the mix with higher density apartments and offices in some areas identified for intense growth, but compatible as infill in some lower density stable neighbourhoods, and as part of greenfield site plans. These policies suggest that municipalities are beginning to regard medium-density housing, including stacked townhouses, as important housing types for the future of the suburbs.

3.5.2 The suburban housing “sweet spot”

In interviews producers described townhouses in both the traditional row house and higher density, stacked forms as increasingly desirable suburban housing types for young adult and “entry level” buyers; they are priced less than singles, but remain closer to the suburban ideal of a detached house by virtue of being “ground related.” One developer called townhouses the hottest thing on the market: “the new singles. They’re the first to go” (D01). A planner described the market for townhouses as “red hot right now...you can stand on the side of the road with a clipboard and sell sixty townhouses over the weekend. It’s that strong” (P04). Some developers were skeptical that condominium apartments can offer suitable housing for suburban families: “is a 500 square foot condo going to sustain you through your lifecycle? Well, it’s not. It’s too small, pure and simple” (D12). Townhouse products were described as representing the suburban housing market “sweet spot” by both a planner (P06) and a developer: “We’re getting much more creative in the townhouse side of things, because that’s obviously where the sweet spot is for the entry level buyer or the younger family” (D03) (Figure 3.5).

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Figure 3.5: Townhouse products are emerging as the suburban housing market “sweet spot” and represent a form of in-between housing density that is becoming increasingly common (Source: author’s illustration).

For developers, townhouse products represent the sweet spot between appealing to buyers with “market accessible” (D10) price points, generating profits for their companies, and contributing to the municipality’s density goals while remaining complementary to older neighbourhoods comprised of detached houses. The Toronto region’s development industry association identifies stacked and back-to-back townhouses as a rising trend across the metropolitan area, characterizing these housing types as “innovative” and capable of producing “gentle density” in new-build greenfield and infill locations (Tuckey, 2017, March 18). From the developers’ perspectives, a stacked townhouse “doesn’t really deviate too much from the community and people can deal with that” in infill locations (D15). Developers explained that the market for suburban higher density townhouses have grown in the past decade, particularly the past five years as house prices have continued to rise, for example:

Entry-level buyers need affordability so the delivery of back-to-backs and stacks does that. Not just here, but across the 905 [suburbs phone area code] and across the 416 [City of Toronto] … that’s why you’re seeing a lot more mid-rise projects than you did just five years ago (D05).

Planners described stacked and back-to-back townhouses as sensible middle-range options that were expected to become more prevalent in the future given market and planning contexts:

The towns and stacked towns are really the direction that people are going - at least developers are going. In order to meet the people per hectare guidelines, it’s the built form that makes the most sense (P07).

There will be an increasing market for urban towns or stacked townhouses […] in between a town and a high-rise condo that gives space, is well-priced in the market, and gives us some density (P06).

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The presences of both policy and market conditions that led to a “condominium boom” in the City of Toronto in the early 2000s was likened to the ubiquity of townhouses in the suburban municipalities recently (D05).

3.5.3 Stacked townhouse homeownership as affordable route to maturity for young adult investor subjects

Stacked townhouses are primarily targeted to young professionals and families; there were no seniors represented in the advertisement images. Three-quarters of the advertisements showed images of couples, or women by themselves. Images of family groupings appeared in 40% of advertisements, and 22% showed images of children by themselves. Nearly half of the advertisements had text references including “young,” “family” and “first time buyers,” for example:

designed with the urban family in mind.47

These homes are ideal for first-time buyers and young professionals who are looking to buy a home that is contemporary and stylishly appointed but at a price that is ultimately affordable and in a community that is convenient and close to the city.48

Stacked townhouses are marketed as way for young adults to “grow up” and leave their parents’ house: “[you have] sacrificed, compromised, put up with the ‘my house, my rules’ attitude of your folks, and now it’s time to make your own rules in a home of your own!”49 Developers asserted that young adults do not “need” a large house “like their parents,” nor could they afford it:

Today’s young adults don’t need to have a big house like their parents lived in. But they still seem to like to have that ability to be on the ground somewhere close to where they work. I think that's why townhomes are becoming more popular, because they're $400,000 [or] $500,000 and then you get into the $700,000s for a house (D01).

47 Newtowns at Mount Pleasant, stacked back-to-back townhouses, Primont, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2015, v.23(3) p.43 (all caps in original). 48 Urban Towndominiums, stacked townhouses, Rosehaven, Brampton, Homes, 2015, v.2, p.44. 49 Fairground Lofts, stacked back-to-back townhouses, Wycliffe, CondoLife, 2012, v.7, p.54.

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Developers promoted stacked townhouses as providing affordable options for buyers in a region with increasing prices. Stacked and back-to-back townhouses were marketed as providing “urban” building densities, styles, amenities, and lifestyles for a lower price than in the City of Toronto:

With house prices in the GTA on the rise, Uptownes will be affordable for those finding downtown Toronto homes beyond their reach.50

For today’s home buyers, Averton offers the affordable alternative – Main Street Seaton. An incredible new selection of Brownstone Townhomes including Coach Towns, Garden Towns and Urban Towns. All in a central Pickering location close to parks, shopping, schools and GO Transit [commuter rail].51

Advertisements promoted the value offered to buyers of stacked townhouses, combining the themes of affordability alongside “luxury” and thus desirability, resale potential, and safety as an investment. For example, one project was advertised as “stacked full of luxury.”52 The Millstone on the Park stacked townhouses were advertised as “elegant homes” with “exceptional value.” and “with trendsetting designs that embody grand French chateau and English Georgian manor styles.”53 Stacked townhouses were advertised as a great long-term investment for homeowners, and investment opportunity for landlords:

Impeccable aesthetic and attractive pricing in a prestigious location makes TIME the perfect location for young and mature professionals or ideal for those seeking an investment opportunity […] live the urban life.54

Anchors isn’t just about new homes, it’s about putting your mark on a community and leading a cultural revolution destined to become a legacy. […] redefine urban living,

50 Uptownes, stacked back-to-backs, Cardinal Point, Geranium, Stouffville, Homes, 2013, v.9(Sept.), p.78, pdf p. 86. 51 Main Street Seaton, back-to-backs, Averton, Pickering, New Home Guide, 2015 v.23(6), pdf p. 39, emphasis added. 52 LaViva Towns, stacked back-to-backs, Lormel, Vaughan, online. 53 Millstone on the Park, stacked back-to-backs, Menkes and Fernbrook, Oakville, Homes, 2014 v.5(May), p. 66, emphasis added. 54 Time, stacked back-to-backs, Treasure Hill, Aurora, online brochure, pp. 3 & 9, emphasis added.

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redefine a historic area and redefine Lakeview itself […] This area is poised to become the next Brooklyn, or Granville Island, and that means a brilliant investment.55

With a location like this, combined with distinctly modern design, it’s easy to see why Oggi Boutique Townhomes is destined to be a great home and investment. Oggi is the quintessential expression of timeless style and modern convenience, all set in a locale that puts you in the heart of it all.56

Housing producers and advertisements positioned stacked townhouses as offering routes to maturity and financial stability through homeownership, at a more affordable price than both detached houses in the suburbs and similar units in urban core areas in Toronto.

3.5.4 Stacked townhouses as “new” and “graduated” suburban housing

Advertisements appealed to young adult buyers by offering housing types, layouts, tenure and architectural designs that are distinct from earlier generations of suburban housing. Stacked and back-to-back townhouses are marketed as innovative and offering “a new way of living.”57 For example, Newtowns were advertised as bringing “a whole new style of living, a new opportunity to be part of a one-of-a kind community.58 The Grand Cornell Brownstones were described as “unique stacked units”59 that maximize space through modern design. Another development emphasized innovation: “VISTA’s innovative condominium one-storey flats and two-storey towns represent a new vision for modern living and a unique opportunity to live in what is unquestionably the best location.”60

Interviews confirmed that these units are a new product in most of the suburban municipalities, and a first-time product for developers who have been primarily detached house builders in the

55 Anchors, stacked back-to-backs, Dunsire and Fortress, Missisauga, Condo Life, 2014, v. 4(April), p.58, pdf p.70, emphasis added. 56 Oggi, stacked back-to-backs, Duca, Vaughan, New Condo Guide, 2016 v.20(7), p.80, emphasis added. 57 Orchard Park, traditional and back-to-back townhouses, Minto, Stouffville, online. 58 Newtowns at Mount Pleasant, stacked back-to-backs, Primont, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2015 v.23(3), p. 32. 59 Grand Cornell Brownstones, stacked townhouses and back-to-backs, Lindvest, Markham, Homes, 2015, v.10(Oct.), p. 31, emphasis added. 60 VISTA, stacked townhouses, Geranium, Stouffville, online, emphasis added.

116 past. Developers indicated, though, the similarity between today’s stacked and back-to-back townhouses with the “sixplexes” or “double duplexes” of the past in Toronto’s inner suburbs and the adjacent suburban municipality of Mississauga. Stacked and back-to-back townhouses are slightly different architecturally than conventional multiplex apartments because they typically do not have interior hallways, elevators, or central heating and cooling systems, and instead have either direct entry to individual units, or shared entries and interior stairwells. Heating and cooling for each unit is generally located either on balconies or in rooftop utility rooms. One developer described contemporary stacked townhouses as representing a “graduated,” next level redesigning and rebranding of older midrise multiplex apartments:

[Townhouses and multiplexes have] graduated to things such as back-to-back townhouses, stacked townhouses, stacked-back-to-back townhouses. Part of it is the necessity of needing to intensify and …in order to meet those targets, a lot of those 905 [suburban] areas are more comfortable at attracting density, or improving density in that low-rise format (D10).

Project branding emphasized built form likeness to high-value ground-related houses with terms like: urban towns, modern towns, newtowns, boutique townhomes, mews, and brownstones. What stacked units offer as an advantage over narrow61 traditional floor plan townhouses, are wider layouts which “feel” more like “ground related” homes with private entry-ways, they also fit larger furniture easier, and allow for larger windows and natural light.

Stacked and back-to-back townhouses are owned through condominium tenure, which is a legal requirement to establish multiple units per land parcel. Several of the developments marketed the benefits of common ownership and maintenance of roads and outdoor amenities including playgrounds or landscaped areas.62 The ground-related access of the townhouse unit, yet maintenance-free condominium property management was marketed as the best of both condominium and freehold tenure worlds:

This is what you've been waiting for! Urban Towndominiums are the best of both worlds - a charming townhome setting with the carefree convenience of a

61 some traditional floor plan townhouses advertised were as narrow as 13’ and 15’ wide. 62 Except in a few cases where stacked and back-to-back townhouses were part of a larger master planned area that had an apartment building, there were no indoor amenities like gyms or pools advertised, and commonly owned elements were limited to outdoor playgrounds, landscaped areas, and parking lots.

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condominium. Now you can own in Brampton's most popular Neighbourhoods of Mount Pleasant.63 (see also Figure 3.6);

Offering the best of both worlds, Oggi Boutique Townhomes provides lowrise living with a condominium component;64 and

At almost 50 per cent sold, these stone-and-brick condominium townhomes have proven a hit with purchasers who appreciate freedom from exterior maintenance 65 chores, without living in a highrise.

Condominium tenure was advertised as a new style of maintenance-free suburban living, yet in a ground-related building form.

Figure 3.6: Advertisement billboards for stacked townhouses emphasizing the best of both townhouse built form and condominium tenure at Rosehaven’s “Urban Towndominiums” in Mount Pleasant, Brampton (Source: author photo).

Three quarters of the advertisements for stacked and back-to-back townhouses presented a contemporary and modern design and emphasized clean lines and minimalist style for an “urban” feel:

This collection of modern towns feels urban, fresh, and contemporary in contrast to traditional homes [...] The play of light and dark brick, glass, and wood, arranged in

63 Urban Towndominiums, stacked townhouses, Rosehaven, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2015 v.23(17), p. 18. 64 Oggi, stacked back-to-backs, Duca, Vaughan, New Condo Guide, 2016 v.20(7), p.80-81. 65 Grand Cornell Brownstones, stacked townhouses and back-to-backs, Lindvest, Condo Life, v.5(May), p. 58.

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blocks with clean lines, produce visual interest and a graphic edge that contribute to a sophisticated yet modern aesthetic.66

Developers explained that the role of the contemporary aesthetic in the suburban market was to attract a younger target market, and “a more urban type of clientele” (D10). Well-established suburban developers have had to change their townhouse project’s architectural styles from “conventional subdivision architecture [that] screams out suburbia” (D15) to meet new demands from younger buyers who “want something different than what their parents bought” (D03):

[Originally] the buyer was like ‘Uh, I’m not 35, I’m not 40, I don’t have kids, what do I want that for. That’s what my parents lived in. I want to live in something cool, modern, whatever.’ So, ok yeah, no problem. […] We’re changing our look (D03).

We actually tried developing [a stacked project with] a traditional type aesthetic. It didn’t go. We re-launched it, two months later with an urban elevation [snaps fingers] sold like hotcakes - the market is ready for it (D14).

Modern architecture was described as a referent for urbanity, where the marketing terms “urban and modern are kind of synonymous,” (D14) and where modern, urbane design added distinction to suburban housing products:

Modern architecture has typically been more of an urban thing than a suburban thing. In order to distinguish yourself even in the suburban marketplace, there is a place for introducing a different type of architecture because people have said that they want that. They may still want to live in the suburbs so that they can go to Costco, or whatever it is they need (D10).

Developers explained how modern design distinguishes medium-density projects in the suburban market as urban, but not “too urban:”

It was urban, but it didn’t go too urban if you know what I mean. It was a flat roof design. But it was a blend […] So it wasn’t uber, uber - like you see in a downtown type infill project. There were some traditional-contemporary elements (D14).

Developers are selling a look and feel of urbanity, but at a lower price than in downtown Toronto:

66 The 6ixth, stacked townhouses and back-to-backs, Metroly Distrikt & in2ition, Oakville, online, emphasis added.

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We try and deliver the urban aesthetic, but we just try and do it in a format that’s more mindful of costs (D14).

The 6ixth offers something rare in Oakville. Great design meets affordability in these spacious, elegant residences with a modern architectural signature, setting this collection of towns apart. Set in a complete community with everything you need, while surrounded by others like you, the 6ixth sits firmly at the top of your list.67

Modern style thus helps developers distinguish products as better designed than other suburban offerings to appeal to buyers who may also consider buying in Toronto, or who desire the city aesthetic and find it out of their budget.

Advertisements distinguished stacked townhouses as modern and inviting compared to the past:

These aren’t your grandparent’s townhomes - narrow, dark, or old fashioned. Step into your urban townhome at Upper Glen Abbey West and you’ll be amazed at how the spacious, light-filled interiors give it the look and feel of a detached home.68

One developer asserted a difference between past and contemporary townhouse design saying: “the old, very inexpensive, vinyl townhome of 10, 15 years ago is now stone and brick and high end finishes and it’s a different creature than it used to be” (D11).

Planners were generally positive about the modern design aesthetic, which just “makes the most sense” for multifamily developments (P07). “An awakening to a different aesthetic” was how one planner described the appeal to younger buyers and continued saying: “I encourage it highly. Myself, being younger […] obviously I would much rather have a contemporary style townhouse than I would have a historic suburban, cookie-cutter approach” (P12). Another commented that

The kind of juxtaposition of the very urban image of these places with their [suburban] locations is kind of intriguing. […] that looks like it could be on any avenue in Toronto. […] architecturally and kind of from an urban design perspective, they’re doing all the right things (P29).

Several planners expressed concern that few new housing units constructed in the suburbs are truly affordable for entry-level homebuyers. They pointed to basic housing packages already

67 The 6ixth, stacked-back-to-backs, Oakville, Metroly, Distrikt & In2ition, Homes, 2006 v.2, pdf p. 59, emphasis added. 68 Upper Glen Abbey, stacked townhouses and back-to-backs, Ballantry, Oakville, online.

120 loaded with high-end finishes and buyers’ desire for costly design upgrades as compounding affordability issues in an area where households are increasingly indebted (P02, P20, P23). One young planner commented on how the finishes and prices for new housing units today are different from the previous generation:

I asked my mom if when she first bought a house it was all granite and high-end finishes and stuff, and she said ‘No.’ I think that’s what jacking up the price on a lot of these lately – everyone wants the hardwood, people like some sort of cornicing or molding now too. Granite or some sort of high end counter top seems to be very big, and stainless steel appliances, which are always more expensive (P08).

For developers, the interior design studios and sale of design upgrades provide an additional revenue stream. One developer explained that:

It’s hard to bring true affordability to a market that would otherwise allow you to bring more expensive housing. Unless you start to play around with the built form, and that’s where the midrise comes in (D11).

Reducing housing unit size, particularly through stacked townhouses, is the primary market- based solution to reducing housing costs and prices in the suburbs.

3.5.5 Stacked “urban towns” and the “grown up” suburbs

Stacked and back-to-back townhouses are advertised as “urban towns”. In the advertisement sample references to urbanity were combined with text and images about contemporary architectural design, centrality and access, and images of young people and families enjoying amenities such as sidewalk cafes, transit, and urban shopping streetscapes (Figure 3.7). Stacked townhouses near transit routes offer the urban lifestyle provided by a transit-accessible commute, even though in a suburban location:

A recent Angus Reid Institute survey illustrates a mounting GTA housing and transit crisis, with millennial buyers being priced out of the region and GTA commuters still dependent on congested highways. Adi Development Group addresses this major

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Figure 3.7: Example advertisements for stacked and back-to-back townhouses that emphasize urbanity in branding, including access to cafes, transit, and shopping (Sources: Top Left: Hampshire Mews, stacked back-to-backs, Heathwood Homes, Homes 2013, v.6(June), pdf p. 8, used with permission; Top Right: Adi Developments, New Condo Guide in 2015, 19(Nov.), p. 104 pdf p. 112, used with permission, Bottom: outdoor billboard, author photo).

69 Station West, stacked townhouses and back-to-backs, Adi Developments,, Burlington, Condo Guide, 2016, v. 20(1). pdf p. 80.

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Figure 3.8 shows how advertising appeals for stacked townhouses compares with other housing types, by showing the percentage of developments within three broad housing type groupings that use particular words or phrases to describe locational attributes. Text references to urban, city or downtown were evident in 52% of all the advertisements across housing type, with “urban” references most predominant in marketing apartments or stacked and back-to-back townhouses. Advertisements for stacked townhouses also emphasized a hot or desired location and centrality. Some marketing juxtaposed the strong emphasis on urbanity alongside promises of easy access to nature and green space, but less frequently than advertisements for detached houses. Marketing the location as prestigious or exclusive was less frequent in advertisements for stacked townhouses than either detached houses or apartments.

Figure: 3.8: Comparison of location attributes coded as a percentage of the total sample for each housing type (calculated by the author).

Some advertisements for stacked townhouses directly appealed to young adult buyers who may have been raised in the suburbs by encouraging them to rediscover their suburban hometown as exciting, urbane places. For example, one advertisement for a project called “Oakvillage” in the

123 municipality of Oakville asks buyers to experience: “that “O” moment. The moment you realize that everything you could ask for was right here all along” 70 (Figure 3.9).

Figure 3.9: Outdoor advertisements for Oakvillage condominium apartments and stacked townhouses asking prospective young adult and family buyers to “live the life style” of “urban living” (Source: author photos).

Buyers are encouraged to shift their thinking and see the suburbs as capable of offering not only an opportunity for homeownership of contemporary, stylish houses, but also a new youthful, urban lifestyle:

If you think Pickering is just a traditional community with traditional homes, it’s time to shift your way of thinking. Treasure Hill is proud to bring its distinctively modern style of design east of the GTA.71

70 Oakvillage, back-to-back townhouses and stacked townhouses, Minto, Oakville, New Home Guide, 2015, v.23(3), p.71 pdf p. 81. 71 SHIFT Urban Town Living, stacked back-to-backs, Treasure Hill, Pickering, online.

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Advertising stacked and back-to-back townhouses as “urban towns” to a young demographic communicates that they are not the vinyl sided townhouse of their parent’s sprawl, nor the affordable multiplexes and towers of the older inner suburbs, but instead represent a fresh, innovative and new way of middle-class living that is just as desirable as the city, and better than outmoded conventional suburban housing. The advertisements for stacked townhouses work not only to brand the houses but also to rebrand the suburbs as urban, vibrant and desirable, rather than homogenous and sprawling:

this modern new townhome development will offer an urban town living experience within the convenience of a flourishing suburban neighbourhood.72

In the context where detached, and even traditional row houses are priced out of reach for prospective homebuyers, stacked townhouses in suburban areas are branded as not just the next best thing or a step down the proverbial property ladder, but as even better, since buyers can access urbane modern design, low-maintenance condominium tenure, and access to amenities. These benefits were described by one developer as acceptable tradeoffs for buyers who are letting go of detached homeownership:

‘Ok, I’m giving up on the single-detached, but I can afford this unit and I’ve got all these other benefits around me.’ That definitely is part of what we’re selling when we promote these communities (D05).

Advertisements for stacked townhouses position them as the inevitable “future” of modern lifestyles and housing products in suburban locations:

LINK encompasses a modern lifestyle, which means we had to create an incredibly progressive product. We knew there was a market for this, but the off-the-chart demand for the product confirms that people are quick to understand this is the future.73

In interviews, some housing producers discursively linked the “maturity” of the municipality with the “maturity” of children raised in the suburbs who are now young adults and looking for a desirable, vibrant place to live, but may not be able to afford the city. Planners anticipated demand for higher density housing as children raised in the suburbs grow into young adults: “as

72 TIME, stacked back-to-backs, Treasure Hill, Aurora, online. 73 LINK, townhouses and condominium units stacked, Adi Developments, Oakville, New Condo Guide, 2014, v. 18-19, p.131, pdf p. 145.

125 a community evolves and matures that demand for different housing types also changes with them. It’s a stage of life thing” (P19). Another planner emphasized the next generation as bringing the demand for greater housing options:

Now people’s children are trying to find houses, and the market is working with that in terms of the high-rise buildings that are being built, townhouses - different types of market opportunities for purchase. Like before it was just pretty much singles, and now we have a variety of different housing options for people to choose from” (P10).

Planners attributed the growing appreciation for higher density housing to the “matured” attitudes of residents, and young people are important for producing the shift:

It's also a population that gets involved with the planning that’s going on in their city. So they have matured, you know with the maturing city, […] And then of course you add some of the younger people who have moved up, and they probably were already understanding or seeking something different (P11).

Planners and councillors naturalized changes, by describing the progression of the community from a low-density, small town or suburb that had “grown out” around the edges, to a high- density urbane city, that must “grow up” in both the sense of building heights and a general sense of municipal “maturity.” Several municipalities in the region have already built to the edge of the municipal boundary. As one planner put it, this leaves

no more land to grow out anymore. Now we are looking at growing up. [In] suburban places all over North America, it’s always been grow out, grow out, with very little thought of what would come next. […]Now we’re at a point where we’re having to get creative on where we go for the next 50-60 years (P17).

Community changes towards density, mixed use and housing options were also characterized as part of the general process of becoming a “grown up city” (C13). Another councillor used the maturity metaphor to characterize one municipality as not quite grown up to urbanity: “We’re kind at the awkward teenage years, you know, we’re not a kid anymore, but we’re not a grown up.” (C14). Growing up is described as a normative and pressing goal: “we have to grow up” (D12). The suburbs are thus re-envisioned as “grown up” places capable of attracting and retaining young adult buyers with tastes that reflect the widespread cultural rejection of “suburbia” in favour of urban lifestyles and aesthetics.

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3.6 Conclusion

Housing studies have demonstrated the significance of detached houses for shaping the image of the suburbs, and middle-class suburban family homeowner identities (Dowling & Power, 2012, Harris, 2004; Knox, 2008). In their studies on Toronto suburbs, Grant (2009) found that developers resisted planning efforts to densify suburban housing, and Skaburskis (2006) found that consumer preferences for detached houses remained strong. This paper has demonstrated that in the contemporary moment of rising housing prices and growing household indebtedness in the Toronto region, the production of a higher density suburban housing market is emerging, and many developers are eager to expand their housing type offerings for the younger generation. Housing producer discourses illustrate how homeownership continues to be naturalized as a route to maturity for young people alongside narratives of the evolving suburban house and desirable, but changing suburbs. Stacked and back-to-back townhouses represent what housing producers characterize as the suburban housing “sweet spot.” These housing forms provide a homeownership option for younger buyers that is ground-related, but not too suburban, and urbane, but without the downtown price tag. Stacked and back-to-back townhouses provide density towards the policy goals for planners and municipal councillors, and they generate profit and quick sales for developers.

As the primary target market for stacked townhouses, young adult households are discursively positioned as the investor subjects of these new suburban housing types. Literature on homeownership has highlighted inter-generational inequalities emerging as older generations benefit through the sales of their houses at inflated prices, while younger adults who are able to access mortgage financing must direct greater proportions of earnings towards housing costs and face the “greatest exposure to the risks of market downturn” (Ronald, 2008, p. 250). Aalbers (2016) has pointed to growing intra-generational inequality as wealth transfers from an older generation of homeowners to their children and exacerbates unequal access to homeownership in the next generation. In the advertisements and interview narratives, the idea emerged that younger buyers do not “want” or “need” the house style or sizes that their parents bought, capitalizes on diverging generational preferences, but may be downplaying the difficulties young adults households experience to access homeownership and the debt levels they take on. Stacked townhouses provide more “affordable” or “market accessible” homeownership options, and demonstrate the capacity of developers to continually innovate housing products for consumers

127 to consider alongside changing market conditions; however, stacked townhouses represent a market-based solution to a housing access problem that relies on reducing unit size. Promoting homeownership of smaller units is a discursive “spatial fix” for regional affordability issues. Further study with homebuyers could examine the extent to which these units are meeting the needs of contemporary households. Future research could also track the flows of financialized mortgage credit in and through the suburbs via younger “new entrants” into homeownership, as a “fix” for barriers to profit accumulation related to rising detached house prices.

Stacked townhouses are not marketed as apartments (even while they are counted that way in the construction data), but instead as suitable yet “new,” “innovative,” and “improved” ground- related townhouses for busy, modern young adults and families. High-end finishes and contemporary design discursively structure stacked townhouses as desirable suburban housing options, distinct from negatively portrayed townhouses or multiplexes of the past. Marketing stacked townhouses as desirable, uniquely contemporary, and urbane suburban housing types works to reinvent the image of the suburbs as “urbanized,” and distanced from the stereotypes of homogenous and sprawling “suburbia.” Housing producers cast young adults as suburban re- inventor subjects, who are regarded as necessary for not only investing in these new housing types through homeownership, but also riding the transit lines, shopping in the local “mixed use” centres, sipping coffee at the imagined future cafes, and fulfilling the wider planning vision.

Stacked townhouse units are legally established through condominium tenure. The collective and privatized maintenance of common spaces is marketed as beneficial for buyers who want a different lifestyle from that associated with the image of suburban houses and big front lawns. Condominium townhouses offer “affordability,” and urban lifestyles in the suburbs, and yet in their establishment, roads and outdoor areas become privatized, which is a tradeoff worthy of future study.

Responding to Aalbers (2009) call to attend to the relationship between urban form and tenure, housing producer discourses regarding stacked townhouses appear to facilitate and reinforce homeownership as the ideal tenure, through naturalized discourses appealing to young adult independence from their parents and financial “maturity.” As I have shown, ecological and organic metaphors naturalize the co-production of homeownership ideology and intertwine with narratives about the progression of the suburbs into “grown up” cities; however, emerging

128 housing markets, planning policies, and cultural preferences are produced through not natural, but economic, social and political processes. Auster (1990) has argued that organic metaphors for growth and development are easily aligned with a market-oriented philosophy and can be “expected to thrive as an interpretive and legitimizing metaphor” (p. 183). Perin (1977) has critiqued ecological explanations for homeownership and development trends as obscuring economic and social functions. For Lynch (1981), “[c]ities change continuously, and that change is not just an inevitable progression to maturity” (p. 97). De-naturalizing the discourses shaping homeownership ideology, housing and suburban change highlights limitations alongside benefits. Housing producers task young adults as both stacked townhouse investor subjects and suburban reinventor subjects; the hopes for re-invented suburbs rest with young adults who take on debt and heightened risks associated homeownership under an asset-based welfare state, and financialized housing market. While stacked townhouses move towards the densities desired by planning policies and enable the “missing middle” in the housing stock, discourses that portray a continuous evolution of homeowners, housing types, and suburbs may obscure the emergence of related tradeoffs and vulnerabilities.

Chapter 4

Second Empirical Paper

The Aesthetics of Post-Suburbanization in the Toronto Region

ABSTRACT: This paper examines how suburban densification is planned and packaged by developers in the Toronto metropolitan region. Drawing on the governmentality literature to analyze interviews with housing producers (planners, municipal politicians and developers), and to examine residential development advertisements, the paper discusses the aesthetic of world-class urbanity mobilized in the post-suburbanization process. Alignments emerge in the visions and roles of producers in the production of a unified post-suburban aesthetic. Discursive contradictions also emerge between planning for “complete” and inclusive communities while targeting high-end employers and retailers and residents with urbane tastes.

keywords: post-suburbanization, densification, world-class, aesthetic governmentality, design, planning, development advertising

4.1 Introduction

Contemporary normative planning theory has called for the “retrofit,” “sprawl repair,” densification, urbanization, and enhanced sustainability of the suburbs (Dunham-Jones & Williamson, 2009; Tachieva, 2010). Popular literature has declared the “end of the suburbs” and the “great inversion” of residential preferences towards urban forms and lifestyles and away from post-war suburbs, which are frequently critiqued as environmentally damaging, sprawling, and lacking in diversity (Gallagher, 2013; Ehrenhalt, 2013). Phelps (2015) has described the ideas promoting the urbanization of suburbs as “something of a Zeitgeist in architectural, design and planning circles” with the “potential to reshape the politics and ideology associated with suburbia, and with that to rework the suburban into post-suburban forms” (p. 43). Nelson (2013) has predicted that the future American suburb “may need to achieve a certain level of urbanity to be successful” (p. 394). Since Masotti and Hadden (1973) noted the “urbanization of the

129 130 suburbs” decades ago, critical scholarship examining already-existing and increasing suburban demographic, economic and land use diversity (Kruse & Sugrue, 2006) has resulted in a wide range of neologisms and characterizations. For example, accounts of the growing economic and employment importance of American suburbs have included Fishman’s (1987) multi-centred “technoburbs” and Garreau’s (1991) market-driven “edge city,” while in Canada, scholars have examined government-planned “suburban downtowns” and “mixed-use centres” (Filion, 2001; Evenden & Walker, 1993; Relph, 1991).

Scholars have recently employed the concept of “post-suburbia” to build theory across the wide range of emergent functions, forms, and politics on metropolitan peripheries, allowing for the novel change they represent, while also recognizing continuity in suburbanization processes over time (Phelps, 2015; Phelps, Wood & Valler, 2010; Mace, 2013; Wu & Phelps, 2011). Functionally, post-suburbia exhibits a “growing economic gravity” (Phelps & Wood, 2011, p. 2595), multiple nodes, and greater balance between employment and residential land uses, which pushes conceptions of urban-suburban structure beyond centre-periphery dynamics. Phelps and his co-authors have categorized debates in the literature on distinguishing post-suburbia from conventional suburbia along three dimensions of continuity and rupture: 1) temporal (i.e. current suburbanization marks a break from earlier periods of suburbanization), 2) geographical (i.e. new built forms and economies on the suburban edge are distinct and detached from core-periphery spatial hierarchies), and 3) ideological-political (i.e. particular coalitions of public and private actors converge to produce “distinctly more urban” spaces and ways of life, through, for example, transit oriented development) (Phelps 2015, p. 31). Highlighting planning and development processes, this third dimension emphasizes “the shifting ideology and politics associated with a constellation of actors involved in the production of suburbanism as a way of life” (Phelps 2015, p. 57). Charmes and Keil (2015) have described post-suburbanization not as “a distinct typology––suburbs versus post-suburbs––but rather a historical change in direction: a process of de-densification (classical suburbanization) is partly converted, inverted or subverted into a process that involves densification, complexification and diversification of the suburbanization process” (p. 581).

In this paper, I extend these process-oriented considerations of the ideological-political aspects of post-suburbanization, with attention to the constellation of actors in the production of a contemporary aesthetic of urbane, high-density, transit-served, mixed-use neighbourhoods. I ask

131 what can be learned about post-suburbanization by examining aspirational visions and aesthetics (i.e. the discursively produced “look and feel” of a place)? I analyze the discourses and images produced by different actors (planners, developers and municipal politicians) in the post- suburbanization of planning and developer “packaging” of high-density developments in the suburban municipalities around Toronto, Canada. I use the term “packaging” here similarly to Wu (2010), Knox (1992), and Hackworth and Rekers’ (2005) examinations of how developers, planners, business improvement associations and other actors produce and promote particular place images to attract real estate buyers and/or tourists. Toronto is an informative region for examining post-suburbanization aspirations and processes because there is not only a renewed interest in urban living in the city core, similar to other cities across North America, but government-led plans to create suburban nodes have been in place since the 1980s, and smart growth and new urbanism have influenced planning ideology in the region since the 1990s. The region illustrates continuity in planning for suburban intensification, but also change in its planning and packaging over time, and illustrates key trends in post-suburban ideology in the contemporary moment. Drawing on Ghertner’s (2015) neo-Foucaultian theory of “aesthetic governmentality,” discussed in the next section, I examine how planning and development discourses package the aesthetic of areas with post-suburban aspirations. I further consider how planning and development discourses produce particular producer roles or “subjectivities” in the process of shaping the post-suburban aesthetic.

I argue that the aesthetic of world-class urbanity is mobilized to signal the arrival of suburban downtowns on the competitive global playing field for knowledge economy workers and employers. This aesthetic is packaged as distinct from suburban office parks, low-density residential developments built elsewhere in the region, and stereotypical conceptions of suburbia held more broadly. A key part of the past efforts to plan and package suburban downtowns in the Toronto region was to construct city halls and malls (Relph, 1991; Filion, 2001); the contemporary place distinction strategy, however, more closely resembles the mode of development observed in Toronto’s downtown core that Rosen and Walks (2014) describe as “condo-ism,” rooted in private sector development interests and “new urbane yet privatized residential preferences, lifestyles, and consumption interests among consumers” (p. 290). Condominium apartment branding in Toronto emphasizes an urbane locale and lifestyle, youthfulness, likeness to global cities, leisure and private amenities (Kern, 2010; Langlois, 2011;

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Lehrer, 2012a). Suburban housing advertisements have historically emphasized proximity to nature, family life, a quiet, private retreat, and social status (Keil & Graham, 1998; Perkins, Thorns, and Newton, 2008; Ward, 1998). With post-suburbanization, the planning and packaging trends documented in the core move out to the densifying periphery. Alongside the movement to condo-ism within the broader context of neoliberal entrepreneurial governance, is the heightened importance of aesthetic control by place producers. Roles overlap as planners and politicians engage in branding and promotion, while developers tout their roles as visionaries and leaders. These alignments in subject positions also bring tensions, where planners and politicians sometimes find conflict between economic development strategies and inclusivity policies, and where developers become involved in broader community visioning and amenity provisions, yet operate within their constrained corporate mandate to generate profit.

In the following sections, I discuss how Ghertner’s (2015) “aesthetic governmentally” contributes to the literature on city branding, contemporary planning practices, and post- suburbanization processes. I then contextualize Toronto’s past and present suburban downtown strategies, and explain my research methodology. I present region-wide findings on how high- density residential developments are planned and packaged as “world-class” and “urbane” with an emphasis on producing a contemporary urban design aesthetic thought to attract the young adult workers of the knowledge economy and their employers. I present two case studies of new-build suburban downtowns (Markham Centre and the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre), that have been conceived and planned to be new kinds of suburban nodes, or “born post-suburban” to use a phrase from Phelps (2015, p. 54). The case studies are not compared to demonstrate differences, but rather illustrate various aspects of related broad themes including the subjectivities of producers, the types of solutions posed for aesthetic problems, and the contradictions that emerge in post-suburbanization processes.

4.2 Aesthetic governmentality and world class urbanity as a diffuse signifier

Ghertner (2015) has developed the theory of “aesthetic governmentality” or “rule by aesthetic,” using Foucault’s concept of “governmentality” and Ranciere’s idea of a “community of sense” to explain the heightened role of aesthetics in planning for slum demolition and redevelopment

133 projects in Delhi, India. Ghertner has described how modernist rational planning methodologies and strategies of political power (e.g. surveys, statistics, and cartography) have been superseded by aesthetic modes of governing (e.g. visions and renderings) as “a means of eliciting, fostering, and promoting a particular set of convictions and dispositions in a population through a compelling image.” (2015, p. 42). Foucault (1991) was interested in how power operates through tactics, discourses, and strategies that shape the conduct of the population. Governmentality operates through the construction of problems that “appear to require active improvement,” and which individuals learn to accept and adopt in their own beliefs, habits and aspirations which contribute to particular “convenient ends,” such as a growing and competitive economy (Ghertner, 2015). Aesthetic governmentality operates through the production of consensus around the shared aesthetic of “a compelling vision of the future” alongside a narrative of improvement. In Delhi, the vision for the city became shaped by “a world-class aesthetic,” as planners, developers, the media, and politicians participated in the cultivation of tastes and approval for the vision by a public who were discursively framed as “world-class subjects” (Ghertner, 2015 p. 1-2). The aspirational image produced in Delhi was less about directly replicating the precise aesthetic of world-class cities like Paris or New York, than about reproducing more diffuse or general characteristics of world-class urbanism:

The world-class city is thus the aspirational target toward which world-class city making is oriented. It operates as a diffuse signifier, training a particular way of seeing and putting in place an aesthetically grounded form of power/knowledge—the world- class aesthetic—that inspires among its potential subjects a will to participate in its discourse and to make its visual criteria their own (Ghertner, 2015, p. 9).

The aesthetic governmentality framework usefully highlights the function of place image as a form of power constituted in and through the production of “common sense,” knowledge or in other words, ideology. For ideology to be effective, it “must also be affective, that is to say aesthetic” (Goonewardena, 2005, p. 47). Power/knowledge, or power via ideology, operates not only through logic, but also aesthetically, in and through bodily senses whereby experience and knowledge “takes root in the guts and the gaze,” with the potential to reconstruct human subjects (Eagleton, 1998, p. 328). Methodologically, the aesthetic governmentality approach opens up the role of discourse and images in shaping the contours of power in contemporary planning practice and real estate development. Harvey (1990, p. 355) has asserted that “[a]esthetic and cultural practices matter and the conditions of their production deserve the closest attention,” because

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“the production of images and of discourses is an important facet of activity” within the contemporary, post-modern articulation of capitalism. The aesthetic and image-making practices of housing producers mediate the perception of socioeconomic transformations and generate ideological effects through the organization of space and mobilization of meaning (Crilley, 1993b).

The production of an attractive, globally competitive place image has become increasingly important under neoliberal entrepreneurial governance, and economic restructuring where real estate development plays a pivotal role (Goonewardena, 1998; Harvey, 1989; Kavaratzis, 2007; Lehrer, 2012b; Kipfer & Keil, 2002). From event marketing to property advertisements and city visioning exercises, particular place images are produced alongside support for specific activities that align with and reinforce the championed image (Paddison, 1993). Marketing strategies promote “images of high quality lifestyles, unique attractions and distinctive ambience by which cities seek to appeal to footloose capital and to be ‘consumed’” (Holcomb, 1994, p. 130). Economies and urban forms become reinvented alongside their place image. Case study research has highlighted the roles of planning and marketing in the reinvention of deindustrializing cities and neighbourhoods into homes for the “creative class” of highly educated professionals (Florida, 2003) or what Scott (2011a) describes as “third wave urbanization” dominated by a “cognitive-cultural” economy (see for example: Crilley, 1993a; 1993b; Holcomb, 1994; Mathews, 2014; Ward, 2000).

Literatures on creative cities, policy mobility, and gentrification indicate the emergence of widely resonant signifiers of world-class urbanism. Just as cities around the world competing for global capital are implementing similar mobile policies (e.g. McCann, Ward & Cochrane, 2011; McCann, 2004), there is a serial reproduction of aesthetics, visions, and images that amount to a mobile aesthetic of world-class urbanity. Scholars including Ley (1996), Zukin (2014), Bridge (2001), Crilley (1993a), Mills (1988) and Jager (1986) have examined the marketing and consumption of a generalized, but variable aesthetic of urbanity in gentrifying city cores that has been mobilized to attract middle class residents seeking to distinguish their tastes and status from their counterparts in the suburbs. Signifiers of gentrified urban lifestyles, like New York’s loft- living have been exported and marketed globally and adopted in combination with local aesthetics in places like Montreal and Sydney (Podmore, 1998; Shaw, 2006). Mills (1988) noted the irony of the trendy urban aesthetics becoming a type of new conformity. Forsyth (1999) has

135 examined the “visual rhetorics” mobilized in planning and development processes, where images of example cities from around the world have been used to present desirable or frightening potential futures, asking: “What did these images highlight and what was obscured, silenced, or even misrepresented?” (p. 76). Through selectively presenting an image of global urbanity, producers find justification for their visions and real estate projects, while omitting the complexities of the contexts from which the images are drawn.

Architecture and urban design have become increasingly important as signifiers and icons of world-class status, with buildings as the object of cognitive-cultural design activity, and the product of an increasingly powerful real estate industry (Fainstein, 1994; Scott, 2011a). The economic imaginaries or aesthetics of world-class cities, have been influentially shaped by spectacular architectural design (Lehrer, 2003; Lowry & McCann, 2011); and through the mundane global repetition of office towers (Grubbauer, 2013). Grant and Leung (2016) discussed the importance ascribed to contemporary, modern architecture and urban design by a network of young urban professionals in Halifax, revealing “changing cultural priorities” and “the operation of new governance mechanisms within local growth machines” (p. 113). Ong (2011) argued that “world-aspiring projects” discursively and materially “drive the flow of distinctive urban codes that gives the region a buoyant sense of being on the cusp of an urban revolution” (p. 4).

While an image of urbanity has coalesced in the planning and real estate marketing of gentrifying urban centres, studies examining suburban community branding and housing advertisements have found long-standing packaging of the suburbs as places for children to grow, healthy retreats, status symbols and offering proximity to both nature and modern conveniences (Gold & Gold, 1990; Perkins, Thorns, and Newton, 2008; Ward, 1998). While new urbanism has influenced North American suburban planning and design in past decades, studies have shown that advertisements for these communities continue to trade in nostalgia for small town and suburban ways of life (Hayden, 2003; Perrott, 2008; Winstanley, Thorns, & Perkins, 2003). The contemporary call in normative planning theory extends from, but also beyond, new urbanism’s neotraditionalism towards “getting real about urbanism,” (Zyscovich & Porter, 2008) opening the opportunity to re-examine the representations of urbanity in the post- suburbanization process.

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The governmentality approach also foregrounds how powerful actors produce “subjectivities” or “subject positions,” that is to say how they “elicit, promote, facilitate, foster and attribute various capacities, qualities and statuses to particular agents” (Dean, 2010, p. 43). The production of subjectivity is not a determining activity, but rather through the powerful repetition and circulation of discourses, these agents can come to see themselves as positioned according to particular subjectivities with associated capacities. In this paper, I attend to how government (e.g. planners and municipal councillors) and non-government actors (e.g. property developers) promote various subject positions, or roles, for themselves, and others involved in the post- suburbanization process. There are debates within planning theory about the role of planners, but one widely held view is that planners work for the public interests of a diverse population (American Institute of Certified Planners, 2016; Canadian Institute of Planners, 2017). Similarly, municipal politicians are held accountable by, and work for, the public who elect them. The literature on entrepreneurial governance and growth machines has highlighted how planners and politicians become involved in the promotion and production of economic growth, competition, and profit seeking (Harvey, 1989; Molotch, 1976). Some scholars have suggested that the increased role of real estate development and city marketing under urban restructuring change the role of planners from regulating development to promoting development (Fainstein, 1991; Holcomb, 1994). Moore (2012) found an alignment of values and norms and a blurring of distinction between “public” and “private” actors involved in planning, negotiating and developing new urbanist communities in the Toronto region. Recent literature has also highlighted the discursive positioning of planners as “placemakers” tasked with producing attractive cities capable of global competition (Fincher, Pardy & Shaw, 2016). In pursuit of making attractive places, planning has increasingly taken up the project of “good design” in a professional trend that Knox and Schweitzer (2010) called “design determinism” (p. 317). Real estate developers play a key role in shaping the image of a place through advertising. When developers of mixed use and commercial properties also function as property managers they come to act as gatekeepers, controlling retail and office tenants and thereby shaping local economies by privileging the most profitable and excluding lower profit generating uses like artist studios (Cantungal & Leslie, 2009). Planners, politicians and property developers involved in planning and packaging new-build developments and entirely new suburban downtowns play powerful and central roles in determining place image and character, and displaying

137 representations of who and what will belong in the new community before residents move in (Knox, 2008).

The aesthetic governmentality approach mobilized here contributes to the literature on post- suburbanization by bringing attention to the role of discourse in shaping a post-suburban aesthetic and subjectivities of key actors in densification regimes (planners, politicians, and developers). Phelps (2015) has suggested that the constellation of public and private actors coming together to produce a “more urban” space is a defining feature of post-suburbia. Scholars building theory about post-suburbanization processes have examined the growing economic complexities, independence, and transformation of edge regions (Phelps, 2015). Attention has also been paid to the political diversity of post-suburban densification regimes with varying abilities to shape “soft” or “hard” approaches to suburban transformation (Charmes & Keil, 2015; Touati-Morel, 2015). Post-suburbanization has been theorized as an extension of entrepreneurial governance and growth machine dynamics in the contemporary context of municipal fiscal stress and the need to generate new tax revenue (Sweeney & Hanlon, 2016), and where public employees function like real estate agents (Wu & Phelps, 2011).

Although Phelps (2015) suggested that attention to the political-ideological contours of post- suburbanization can help inform current dynamics of development and change on metropolitan edges, less attention has been paid to the aesthetics, image, and branding in shaping this emergent ideology of suburban urbanity, and the roles that key actors play in the post- suburbanization process. Lehrer’s (1994) study of suburban Zurich has made an important contribution in this regard, by highlighting the role of architecture in distinguishing new transit- serviced, economically competitive office tower-dominated spaces on the periphery. Office tower design communicates customization and distinct corporate branding in a visual rejection of the aesthetic of mass-suburbanization in previous decades. While the office clusters in Zurich have an aesthetic of urbanity, they are mono-functional and lack residential uses and therefore the infrastructure, amenities, and activities associated with everyday urban life. Røe’s (2013) socio-cultural study of suburban Oslo, foregrounded the entrepreneurial governance alignment of planners, politicians, and real estate developers in the discursive and representational practices producing an “urban turn” in placemaking exercises with the intent to attract young, highly educated professionals. Røe argued that this amounts to the “silent complicity” of government actors with locally powerful elites, in a process that lacked broad local input and resulted in a

138 disputed plan. Keil and Addie (2015) addressed the role of image-making in the post- suburbanization process in their discussion of the political importance of producing a regional image for the assemblage of public-private coalitions who benefit from transit expansions and the production of “polycentric post-suburban constellations” (p. 1) in the Toronto and Chicago regions. In this paper, I suggest that an aesthetic governmentality approach can build on these analyses of architectural design and the discursive and representational practices of place image production in a contribution to the literature on the political and ideological aspects of post- suburbanization processes.

4.3 Data and methods

I employed qualitative methods to examine the planning and development packaging discourses and aesthetics of suburban intensification in the municipalities arcing along major commuter highways and rail corridors just beyond of the City of Toronto,74 with a focus on two intensification nodes: Vaughan Metropolitan Centre and Markham Centre. Findings are drawn from a close reading of planning policies, thematic discourse analysis of interviews, and content analysis of advertisements for new-build residential developments. I interviewed sixty respondents in three categories: 1) thirty planners working for multiple levels of government and transit agencies, 2) fifteen municipal councillors, and 3) fifteen land development and homebuilding industry representatives including accredited planners working in the industry. Developers are primarily residential with some of the larger companies containing branches of mixed use and commercial properties, and one is primarily a commercial developer expanding into mixed use and residential. Interviews were conducted between December 2015 and August 2016, primarily in-person, semi-structured, approximately 1-hour in length, and recorded then transcribed for thematic coding and analysis.75 Interview questions probed the vision for the

74 The study area includes the municipalities that arc around the City of Toronto, south of the greenbelt (Burlington, Milton, Oakville, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Markham, Stouffville, Pickering, Ajax and Whitby), and up the corridor defined by Highways 400 and 404, and the GO train commuter rail line through Aurora, Newmarket, Bradford and Innisfil to Barrie. 75 Six interviews were conducted over the phone. Two interviews were not recorded or transcribed at the request of the participants, in which cases interview notes were coded thematically.

139 region, development trends, and the successes and challenges of implementing intensification and densification policies. Interview participants are quoted in this paper using an alphanumeric code to preserve anonymity, where P#, C# and D# represent the planner, councillor, and developer categories respectively. I also examined the websites, print advertisements and advertorials for 304 new-build residential developments. The sample was based on developments in the study area municipalities advertised in magazines that are distributed for free throughout the region: Homes and Condo Life (drawn from online archives available for 2012-2016), and New Home Guide and New Condo Guide (online archives for 2014-2016). I focused the discourse analysis of planning policies on the Provincial Places to Grow growth management plan, to which all lower-tier regions and municipalities are required to adhere, as well as sections in Official Plans related to vision and the Secondary Plans for the intensification nodes. Transcribed interviews, advertising materials, and policy excerpts were coded thematically. Examples of themes coded include emulation of other places, attraction of residents and business, architecture and design, and the roles of actors in shaping suburban change and defining the new urbane aesthetic.

4.4 Toronto region study context: growth management, downtown condo-ism, and suburban intensification

Providing context for suburban intensification in the Toronto region are the following key factors: 1) re-valorization of urban living and condo-ism in the downtown core, 2) regional planning for growth management and economic competitiveness, and 3) housing price increases.

Historically, suburban living in the Toronto region offered the “suburban dream” of space, community and privacy for some residents, whereas for others the suburbs offered a more affordable option for homeownership, even if they would have preferred to live in the city. Inner suburban areas now falling within the amalgamated borders of the City of Toronto include high- density nodes and diverse land uses, and declining affordability. Post-1970s development in municipalities beyond Toronto’s border is relatively dense by North American standards, but increasingly conformed to lower density, car-dependency and single-use neighbourhoods (Clark 1966; Harris, 2004; Harris, 2015; Hess & Sorensen, 2015). Since the late 1990s, there has been a “boom” in the development of high-rise, condominium-tenure apartment buildings in the City of

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Toronto, reshaping the property development industry alongside the reinvention of the city’s skyline and image. Rosen and Walks (2014) characterized the transformation of central Toronto as “condo-ism,” where an “emerging nexus of economic development, finance, and consumption sector interests […] have coalesced around condominium construction and culture” redirecting investments and attracting young residents to the urban core (p. 289). In Toronto, condominium apartment development produces gentrification or “condofication” (Lehrer and Wieditz, 2009, p. 141) as condominium production, marketing, and consumption make spaces “safe, clean, and secure for real estate capital, investors and the new urban middle classes” (Kipfer and Keil, 2002, p. 237). Condominiums in downtown Toronto have thus become a local signifier of the global image of urbanity or “gentrification blueprint that has become the leading edge of neoliberal urbanism” (Davidson & Lees, 2010, p. 397). Studies examining the planning and development packaging of condominium apartment units in Toronto found traces of widely circulating trends placing emphasis on urbanity, contemporary design, global city aspirations and liveability as a commodity (Kern, 2010; Langlois, 2011; Lynch, 2014; Mathews, 2010).

The broader region around Toronto, or the “Greater Golden Horseshoe” (GGH) is Canada’s largest and rapidly growing, with a population of approximately 9 million people, projected to grow to 13.5 million by 2041 (Growth Plan, 2017). Regional planning efforts established by the Province of Ontario a decade ago seek to protect a 1.8 million acre greenbelt. Through several measures, the regional Growth Plan (2006) promotes suburban intensification by directing new residential developments to be denser and located within already built-up areas. The regional Growth Plan emphasizes the building of “compact” and “complete communities” that:

meet people’s needs for daily living throughout an entire lifetime by providing convenient access to an appropriate mix of jobs, local services, a full range of housing, and community infrastructure including affordable housing, schools, recreation and open space for recreation and open space for their residents. Convenient access to public transportation and options for safe, non-motorized travel is also provided (Growth Plan 2006, p. 47, emphasis in original denoting terms with specific definitions).

Regional planning also emphasizes economic growth and prosperity. For example, the Growth Plan envisions an economy that “will have matured into an economic powerhouse of global significance” (p. 9). The Growth Plan repeats the goals of “attractive” and “vibrant” places, and echoes the creative class discourse in naming as a strength of the regional economy: “[c]ultural amenities that offer the kinds of creative and recreational activities that attract knowledge

141 workers” (p. 7). The vision set out in the regional transportation plan is similarly for: “A strong, prosperous and competitive economy. Our region will be competitive with the world’s strongest regions” (Metrolinx, 2008, p. 13). The transportation system will “support Ontario in becoming a leader in attracting the best and the brightest from around the world” (p. 17), and “will help us create valuable, beautiful and attractive places” (p. 17).

A key part of the Growth Plan’s strategy for reaching both density goals and competing globally for investments, employers and knowledge workers, is the designation of twenty-five “Urban Growth Centres” (UGCs) identified for the highest concentrations of residents and jobs, and which generally align with convergences of public transit and highways. The UGCs have an entrepreneurial mandate of global attraction to “serve as high-density major employment centres that will attract provincially, nationally or internationally significant employment uses” (p. 16). The UGC node strategy builds on longstanding nodal planning in the region. The region’s history of planning for these mixed-use suburban downtowns stretches back to the 1970s and 1980s. Studies of these earlier-built suburban downtowns,76 some of which now fall within the boundaries of amalgamated Toronto, concluded that although there are demonstrable successes in achieving a mix of land uses and density gains above suburban norms, land uses within the sites remained segregated, limiting pedestrian movement and maintaining suburban car- dependence (Filion, 1999, 2001; 2009). Initially planned with shopping malls and office clusters, suburban downtowns gained symbolic centrality and status with the establishment of city halls and civic squares (Gad & Matthew, 2000; Relph, 1991). These suburban nodes have been works in progress for decades and resemble varying levels of plan implementation and development.

After discussing region-wide findings, I will discuss Markham Centre and Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC), two new-build suburban UGCs in the Regional Municipality of York that are planned as entirely new downtowns, which will need to compete with each other and the central City of Toronto for office tenants, residents, and other investments. The political creation of both Markham and Vaughan as municipalities brought together several villages and towns. The UGCs are distinct from the historic village main streets and are tasked with establishing a central downtown identity for the politically created municipalities. Figure 4.1 shows the envisioned

76 Scarborough Town Centre, Mississauga, and North York.

142 transformations in several of the UGCs and their adjacent transportation and transit corridors as part of a campaign to promote new rapid transit lines. The images were placed on roadside billboards throughout the region and can be considered, following aesthetic governmentality, as strategies to educate or train the public to see densified, transit-oriented development nodes as constituting the desirable post-suburban future.

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Figure 4.1: VIVA bus rapid transit promotion campaign showing the “now” and “next” vision for urban transformation. From top to bottom: Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill and Newmarket (Source: York Region Transit, used with permission).

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Housing price increases across the region provide another key factors shaping the context of suburban intensification. Compared to a decade ago, the average price for a detached house in the Greater Toronto Area has doubled (BILD, 2016). One way that municipalities are addressing housing affordability concerns is to encourage higher density residential buildings. Interview participants and planning documents describe the importance of residents having the choice of smaller unit alternatives to costly detached houses. For an example of the housing price context, in York Region, within which both Markham Centre and the VMC are located, the average sales price in May 2012 for detached houses was $726,033, condominium townhouses fetched an average of $394,024, and $339,737 for condominium apartments (TREB, 2012). By May 2016 the average price of detached houses had risen to $1,174,571, condominium townhouses: $595,522, and condominium apartments: $390,004 (TREB 2016). In my review of development advertisements, developers in Markham Centre advertise prices for “Urban Condos” starting from the $200,000s,77 “townhomes” from the mid-600,000s,78 and some “townmanors” for over $1 million79. In the VMC condominium apartments are advertised as starting from the mid- $200,000s80 in one development, and the high-$400,000s81 in another, with townhouses starting in the mid-$600,000s82. The combination of policies, housing market prices and the dynamics of condo-ism in the region set the stage for the production of higher density nodes and corridors in the suburban municipalities planned and packaged with an aesthetic of world-class urbanity, discussed in the following section.

4.5 Post-suburban aesthetics: Region-wide findings

“World class living on Yonge and Steeles […] world-class in its design, amenities and location”83

77 York Condos Downtown Markham, apartments, Remington Group, New Condo Guide, 2016 v.20(05), p. 61. 78 York Condos Downtown Markham, townhouses, Remington Group, New Condo Guide, 2016 v.20(11), p.85. 79 The Benchmark, The Lyndhurst model, townhouses, Remington Group, online. 80 Cosmos Condominiums, apartments, Liberty, New Condo Guide, 2016, 20(6), p.38. 81 EXPO City, apartments, Cortel Group, sales centre packet. 82 The Met, VMC, townhouses, Plaza, New Condo Guide, 2016 v.20(13), p.52. 83 World On Yonge, Apartments, Markham, Liberty, online.

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Across the region, interviews with producers and advertisements for higher density housing developments84 reveal the discursive production of an aspirational image of high “style,” “world- class,” “sophisticated” urbanity in the suburban municipalities. Echoing the creative city discourse, interview participants and advertisements have highlighted the importance attracting the next generation of young, educated and upwardly-mobile knowledge-economy workers and major employers. The regional and global competition for the knowledge-economy is linked with the production of an urbane and contemporary urban design and architectural aesthetic.

Advertisements mobilized the discourse of “world-class” to align the sophistication of the development and nearby amenities with globally competitive regions, cities and neighbourhoods. Half of all advertisements for apartments85 made aspirational references to the urban design, architecture, and characteristics of central Toronto and other urban centres. One development, for example, was named Union after Toronto’s grand central transit station, and another named Uptownes was said to draw “inspiration from Toronto’s loft conversions” and its “architecture is quite evocative of an urban textile building.”86 Other developments adopted the names of neighbourhoods in global cities like Paris, London, New York, such as Chelsea, Trafalgar Green, Manhattan, Upper West Side, and Greenwich Village.

Some interview participants upheld European cities as models for higher density built forms, architectural styles, walkable mixed-use neighbourhoods, and transit service, for example:

If you go to Europe, that’s how we did it […] You had green space, you had commercial, industrial, you had residential and you had your little downtown centre, where you can do your shopping and everything else. In every European city, that’s the way it is (C06).

Several interview participants, however, mentioned the population of residents identifying as Asian in the Toronto suburbs and referenced Hong Kong as an aspirational model, particularly in terms of transit service, walkability, and high-density living. Some developers reported efforts to

84 including apartment towers and stacked or back to back townhouses, sold for condominium tenure. 85 41% of all ads for stacked and back-to-back townhouses (mid-rise, ground-accessed housing forms also called stacked flats or garden apartments in other regions) made aspirational references to other places, and 18% of ads for ground-related housing (single and semi detached houses and conventional floor plan town/row houses. 86 Uptownes, stacked townhouses, Stouffville, Homes, 2013, v. 9(Sept.), p.78, pdf p. 86.

146 de-emphasize European references and white models to improve marketing appeals to a multicultural demographic.87 Representations of diverse residents and development names such as the World on Yonge and The Cosmopolitan signal a cosmopolitan urbanity.

Some councillors described an aspirational, yet “more modest” (C05) vision for knowledge- economy-generating urbanity that has:

that kind of energy and urban feel […] that kind of vibrancy that attracts frankly millennials and jobs, and moves us forward into the future […] you know, the Richard Florida stuff, and that you have to build the place where the knowledge workers want to be, and the millennials, and the creative class, and the companies will follow that (C05).

Another councillor characterized the challenge going forward as “how do you develop Barrie into a – I don’t say world-class city on the level of Tokyo and Paris, but how do you develop Barrie into a class city, but at the same time maintaining its roots, its culture, its heritage” (C13).

Planners explained that producing a globally competitive image of the municipality relied on attracting and retaining young people, for example: “Image is very important nowadays. It’s a global competition” (P13). and:

When I first started working here, I don’t think that Brampton had an image that was much beyond bedroom communities […] I think that image is changing. I think that we’re maturing, for want of a better term. I think we’re being seen as less as of a suburban and more of an established urban identity based on a young population, dynamic individuals who want to stay here (P15).

Developers positioned themselves as the catalysts of suburban change, building “world-class urban homes” and leading the smart growth “solution:”

We’re introducing world-class urban homes that address the need for smart growth in Burlington. We want to be part of the solution and the status quo just won’t cut it […]

87 According to the 2016 census, 51.4% of residents in the GTA (including City of Toronto) identify as visible minorities. In the two case study municipalities highlighted in this paper, 77.9% of residents identify as visible minorities in Markham, and 73.3% in Vaughan (Statistics Canada, 2016).

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The city’s urban landscape is changing and we’re happy to be the catalyst at the forefront of that change.88

Some advertisements used the discourse of “pioneering” to describe both target buyers and the developer’s role. For example “pioneering” buyers are encouraged to bring their world-class urban tastes and investments to the suburbs:

Buying in the area will give those with a pioneering spirit, but devotion to city living, a chance to put their fingerprint on something new that is destined to be big for the city’s lake shore, both culturally and financially. [...] This is a real opportunity to leave your mark on a neighbourhood bound to become a world-class location and destination.89

Another developer referenced their “pioneering vision” in bringing “[t]he evolution of urban living” to a shopping mall area turned high-density node.90 With these appeals, multifamily housing advertisements target relatively wealthy, young adult, would-be gentrifiers who may be priced out of the city core.

Contemporary architectural design acts as a diffuse signifier of the world-class urbanism to which densifying suburban areas aspire. Developers identified architectural clean lines, large windows, and flat roofs as the new urban-signifying trend across North America. Contemporary architectural style was advertised as adding urban style and value to suburban developments:

Urban living with an Oakville address…breaking with tradition for all the right reasons… an entirely new urban architectural language... a beacon of style in the suburbs.91

Modern style was also referenced in development names like Moda, Moto, Mod’rn and Nuvo and references to the on-trend aesthetic as “ultra urban by design.”92 One developer retained Toronto-famous interior designers to “bring the aura of the downtown core to Woodbridge. Their modern design expertise shines through with impeccable contemporary finishes to lift these

88 LINK, apartments and stacked townhouses, Burlington, New Condo Guide, 2014, v.18-19, p. 130, pdf p. 144. 89 Anchors at Lakeview, apartments and stacked townhouses, Mississauga, Dunsire, New Condo Guide, 2014,18(11). p.128, pdf p.138. 90 ARC, apartments, Erin Mills, Mississauga, Daniels, online and New Condo Guide, 2016, v.20(5), pdf p.17. 91 Trafalgar Landing, townhouses and apartments, Oakville, Great Gulf, New Condo Guide, 2016, v.20(1), p.20. 92 Nautique, apartments, Burlington, Adi, New Condo Guide, 2015, v.19-18, pdf p. 125.

148 spaces to a new standard of urban aesthetic.”93 The contemporary architectural aesthetic targets “sophisticated” and aspirational suburban buyers:

in a bold shift that injects contemporary design into Burlington’s residential story […] Lofts and condos at the LINK are designed for a sophisticated urban individual, who wants something that complements their lifestyle.94

Vista Parc offers one of Woodbridge’s most prestigious addresses for the sophisticated suburbanite seeking new heights in luxury and outstanding value95 [...The developer] embraces modern architectural contrast rather than “Stucco and Brick” to which Woodbridge has become so accustomed.96

Interview and advertising narratives regarding higher density nodes and corridors across the study area reveal the common themes of the pursuit of a “world class,” high-style urbanity that is capable of attracting knowledge economy workers, and the visionary role of both public and private actors in the housing market to produce a different, urbane, post-suburban image in the suburbs. These themes are further unpacked through examinations of two case studies: Markham Centre and Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.

4.6 Case one: Markham Centre

Be among the visionaries who already call Downtown Markham home, and be a part of a landmark destination complete with retail and entertainment, as well as thriving small businesses and global corporations.”97

Markham Centre represents the municipality’s evolution from a “typical suburban community” to “trying to become a real place, a real city” with a “real downtown” (P04). The municipality of Markham, bordering the City of Toronto’s northeast, has envisioned a new-build suburban downtown, distinct from its historic main street, since the late 1980s. Relph (1991) critiqued the

93 Moda Urban Living, townhouses, Vaughan, Treasure Hill, New Home Guide, 2016, v.24(1), p. 34 pdf p. 38. 94 Link apartments and townhouses stacked, Burlington, Adi Developments, New Condo Guide, 2014, v.18(19) pp. 130-131. 95 Vista Parc, apartments, Woodbridge, Quadcam, Condo Life, 2013, v.2, p.70. 96 Vista Parc, apartments, Woodbridge, Quadcam, Condo Life, 2013 v,2 p.71. 97 Downtown Markham, The Benchmark Town Manors, townhouses, Remington, Homes, 2013, v.3, p.61, pdf p. 69.

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1987 plan as a car-oriented and “disaggregated” vision linking a new City Hall with a cluster of apartment buildings and a regional shopping mall “strung out along several kilometres of a provincial highway.” (p. 423). Over the years, the municipality concentrated their planning on a 988-acre area near City Hall, designated as Markham Centre, which had remained undeveloped due to servicing constraints and costs. As an early adopter of new urbanism, Markham hired the design firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) to plan Markham Centre several years after DPZ planned Cornell, a Markham greenfield area. The DPZ plan for Markham Centre featured ground level retail and services, a wide boulevard, and restricted surface parking lots (Filion, 2009). A Planner described the new urbanist plan for Markham Centre as “a midrise, 8-storey kind of midtown, kind of a downtown” (P04).

The current Markham Centre plan “has now evolved” past both the city hall-to-shopping mall plan and the new urbanist design to “tighten the street grid up” (P04) and envisions higher densities and building heights enabling 20,000 residential units to house 41,000 people, and provide employment for 39,000 within a fine-grain of mixed uses enabling “live. work. play.” (Markham, n.d., online). Construction began in 2007 following a “perfect storm” (D02) of land use and transit planning for a high-density growth centre around an existing on-site commuter rail station, and funding for a new bus rapid transit system, put in place through a public-private partnership. Interview participants highlighted its transit oriented development (TOD), the implementation of a district energy system, and high quality urban design. One interview participant described the mayor’s involvement in reviewing the quality of materials for proposed apartment buildings, and the architectural control process leading to a particular aesthetic of buildings with more “solid” brick and concrete than glass curtain wall cladding, common in downtown Toronto (P04).

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Figure 4.2: Emerging skyline of Markham Centre (Source: author photo)

Attracting residents, employers and visitors is central to the strategy for success in Markham Centre, and developers have installed public art as an attraction:

You can’t force people to come. They have to want to come. […] you do have to have a certain amount of uses and things that are practical and serve needs, but you can sprinkle in things that will attract people to come because you need people there (D02).

Markham has a history of accommodating high tech businesses in office campuses and business parks, and a planner articulated that the current challenge for Markham Centre is offering the range of land uses and amenities that will attract the next generation of knowledge economy workers:

There’s a great fear that we’re just going to end up with all residential and not have the office. […] I mean that’s part of what Markham Centre is all about – it’s to create a desirable location for employees of choice. We want a complete community that offers the amenities that will attract talent. One of the things we managed to get was York University. That helps. But just getting the amenity package, […] so it’s not just the standard suburban office park. Which is of course deadly boring. It’s not a place that you’re going to attract a 25-year-old techie to (P04).

The presence of an “urban” university campus is advertised to attract students of the knowledge economy, and the investors who will rent them “sophisticated urban condo units:”

York University is building a brand new, 21st century campus in the heart of Downtown Markham. With fast growing demand for high-quality education in Ontario’s new knowledge economy, the campus will offer professionally-relevant academic programs to over 4,000 students. With easy access to transit, highways,

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major employers and research hubs, the York University Markham Centre will be a truly integrated, urban campus.98 […] Sophisticated urban condos in a spectacular, master-planned community. Steps from VIVA, YRT [transit], shops, cafes and more. This is the future. Make it yours.99

Site amenities and travel to work were concerns raised by a large company that recently relocated its Canadian headquarters to Markham Centre. The developer explained that

In most office buildings you have 75-85% of the workforce who are the secondary wage earners. They rely on transit to a large degree. Where do they live? They don’t live in Toronto, they live in Brampton, Mississauga, Pickering, in the 905 [other suburbs]. If you want to get from Mississauga to Markham by transit, good luck, because you really can’t do it in a direct fashion. You have to go downtown and come back up (D02).

Because the commuter rail and subway systems are oriented towards the Toronto core, the company was concerned about limiting their employees’ ability to take east-west trips across the suburbs. At the developer’s expense a shuttle bus was organized to take employees from Markham Centre to the nearest subway station for the first few years. The developer hoped that an east-west transitway100 across the suburban municipalities would eventually be constructed. The company also put pressure on the developers to pursue a broader range of urban amenities to attract employees to relocate to Markham Centre and for employees to use before and after work:

The next thing they wanted, which worked out great for us, is they wanted restaurants, they wanted fitness clubs and they wanted things for their employees to do before work, at lunch hour, and after work so they enjoy coming to work. Makes total sense. We’re doing that now, so it is working. We still want to get a few big office users because we have to, but I can see it happening now (D02).

One developer described signing “high end” restaurant tenants as part of the amenities necessary to position Markham Centre as a competitive urban hub:

We wanted to get a higher end type user in there. Now we still have other users that cater to a broader spectrum of people but we want to be set above, and we want to be a little different, and we have to be. We have to compete that way […] But once we get the bigger users in there, and they start seeing that there are all these people it will all evolve and then you’ll have everything there (D02).

98 York, apartments, Markham Centre, Remington, online 99 York, apartments, Markham Centre, Remington, Condo Life, 2016, v.3(Mar.), pdf p. 17. 100 The 407 Transitway, currently in the planning stage.

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The Markham Centre case study illustrates the shift in planning and development strategy for suburban intensification from city halls and malls, to mid-rise new urbanism, and now as a high- density, mixed-use, amenity-rich and urbane downtown capable of vying with Toronto for head offices, university students, and educated employees.

4.7 Case two: Vaughan Metropolitan Centre

We want great quality urban lifestyle […] the excitement of a fantastic lifestyle to enjoy. Maybe you want to move to the VMC? (C02)

The Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) was previously envisioned as an office park called the Vaughan Corporate Centre. The extension of the Toronto subway system beyond the City’s northwestern border into this suburban area prompted a new planning process in 2009 and a rebranding competition that led to the change from “corporate” to “metropolitan” centre. When describing the municipality’s early attempts to plan the area as an office park, one councillor said, “we weren’t as sophisticated, lets put it this way” (C01), and the municipality hired young planners to define the appropriate growth and target population:

We brought in experts now, we brought in fresher ideas, newer - younger generations […] We started to form what we thought was the appropriate type of growth […] and also the target of what population and office component that we wanted to see in this area (C01).

One planner identified his value on the team in having an urban mindset:

A lot of us here are still of the mentality of greenfield. And we really have to get into the mindset of urban. How do you do that? We’ve never done it before. And we’re all learning. It’s a learning curve for everybody here. But I think maybe that’s why I was brought on – because I have a more urban mind to it (P09).

The urban lifestyle enabled through the VMC is seen as key for keeping young adults in Vaughan: “the VMC will be critical in providing that sort of environment for these young and upcoming professionals. I think that will be the hub” (P11).

Attracting attention and distinguishing the VMC has been a cornerstone of site planning:

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So we’ve gone through these exercises of trying to figure out first how to make this distinguished…to distinguish the VMC from Markham Centre or the other places. And second to see what we can do to bring in…to attract attention to the VMC (P09).

A promotional video released by the Vaughan Economic Development Department (online) shows architectural and streetscape renderings for the new VMC interspersed with images of people shopping, wearing suits working in office buildings, and engaged in entertainment activities like a concert. Text captions over these images include: urban lifestyle, prestige office, amenities at every turn, welcoming the world, a centre of inspiration, imagination and innovation (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3: Screenshots from the VMC promotional video by the Vaughan Economic Development Department (Source: https://www.vaughan.ca/business/vaughan_metropolitan_centre/Pages/default.aspx, used with permission).

The VMC, comprised of 442 acres, is planned for 25,000 residents and employment-generating land uses that can sustain a target of 11,500 jobs. Planning documents emphasize creating an attractive setting for big businesses and institutional uses. In Vaughan’s Official Plan, the VMC is “anticipated to attract new major office developments and corporate headquarters” (Vaughan

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OP, 2015, p. 153). The more detailed VMC Secondary Plan (2015) states that the current suburban setting needs to be “overcome” and replaced with an attractive public realm:

To overcome the VMC’s industrial and highway setting, the Secondary Plan proposes naturalized open spaces, parks and streetscapes that will establish an attractive setting for development. It calls for the creation of complete neighbourhoods within the VMC to support vitality in the future downtown core (11) […the] plan also sets out a framework and policies intended to lead to an attractive public realm, distinct and diverse neighbourhoods, and beautiful architectural and cultural legacies (p. 12).

The VMC Secondary Plan sets out the objective of a distinctly urban character and architectural aesthetic:

Ensure all development exhibits a high quality of urbanity, materials and design. The most interesting and attractive downtowns contain a variety of building types and architecture. They are the place for a city’s finest buildings, and the overall quality of the built environment should be outstanding. First and foremost, development in the VMC should be urban” (p. 22).

The contemporary design aesthetic envisioned for the VMC was described by one planner as an exciting new aesthetic driven by the demands of a younger generation:

In the VMC everything is that aesthetic by its very nature. We have really strong design guidelines […] It’s an exciting thing to change up the landscape and offer different choice. It’s a generational thing too. The kind of users that are coming into these areas are looking for something different (P12).

Distinctly non-suburban and more akin to the highest rent offices downtown Toronto was how one of the developers described the materials and architectural style of a new office tower being constructed (see also Figure 4.4):

It’s quite beautiful. People go into the building and it truly looks like a Class A downtown building, it doesn’t read as suburbia (D07).

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Figure 4.4: VMC transformation, office tower construction (Source: author photo)

Interviewees described the evolution of suburbs to cities, but also a hierarchy of aspirational world-class cities. While the earlier office park plan was to abut an “LA style” (D07) highway interchange, one developer described the new VMC plan as emulating a European look and feel, with a central park paying homage to New York:

You know, how do they do things in Europe, how do they do things in some of these great places that you go to that you don’t know why you love it, but you do. There’s a feeling to it. So, that’s what we’re trying to apply here so that people feel like this is a completely different type of development than what is out there right now in the GTA. (D07).

A planner compared the envisioned shopping district as similar to Toronto’s upscale Yorkville neighbourhood (P09). The urban design plan for the large multi-lane arterial101 running through the VMC is being re-envisioned as a grand boulevard like the Champs-Élysées (P12). Clean, efficient and mixed-use transit stations in Hong Kong offer inspiration for transit hubs for the VMC (C02).

Advertisements for condominium apartments and townhouses in the VMC emphasize the new subway extension, new bus station, and adjacent public spaces (resulting from negotiations

101 Highway 7.

156 between public transit providers and private land owners). Advertisements also touted mixed- uses, prestigious offices and downtown lifestyles. Developers positioned themselves as leaders in bringing about the new urban future of the VMC. One condominium apartment development called EXPO City, signifying the world fairs where nations have showcased architectural advances, advertises its transformational role in “Vaughan's most anticipated community. Brilliantly designed, this exceptional master-planned development will change the city forever.”102 Another advertisement for EXPO describes the developers as “part of the new breed of developer:”

the enlightened, responsible custodian of the tenuous balance between the environment and the human need to seek shelter. They are strong believers in their responsibility to create environmentally sound communities that respect the land and the nature within them. The [developers] maintain a vital leadership role in the creation of communities that are “complete communities,” communities that combine work, live and play with public transit accessibility in close proximity. They are supporters of pedestrian- friendly systems within their communities, linking neighbours through a network of treed boulevards and walkways that support walking, running and cycling.103

The Toronto-based developer of The Met condominium advertised its venture into Vaughan as sensible because they know how to define downtown living:

Everyone knows Plaza is a downtown builder, but when we explain what we’re doing with The Met, it makes sense to the buying populace […] We are helping redefine what downtown living looks like in Vaughan.104

Advertisements for Cosmos condominiums also advertised the developer’s leadership and ability to find and define development opportunities:

Liberty has become the leading developer in the region by constantly looking ahead, anticipating the future and delivering distinctive condominium developments that embrace new technologies, champion new modes of transportation, support new urban environments, and accommodate lifestyle changes […] With the upcoming launch of Cosmos Condominiums, we are not only embracing the future, we’re defining it!105

102 EXPO City, apartments, Cortel, VMC, online. 103 EXPO City, apartments, Cortel Group, VMC, Condo Life, 2012, v.7(Jul/Aug.), p.76. 104 The Met, apartments, Plaza, VMC, Condo Life, 2016, v.5(May), p. 64, pdf p. 72. 105 Cosmos Condominiums, apartments, Liberty, VMC, New Condo Guide, 2016, v.20(8), p.24.

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One planner was generally on board with the urban vision, but was interested in producing a more inclusive and “complete urban environment,” expressing concern about the idea emerging

that the VMC is geared to young, hip, fashionable, attractive people […] In my opinion as a planner, a downtown can’t prohibit different lifestyles. I would like to see a downtown that has more office and seniors - young, hip, happening establishments as well […] it should encompass a larger array of different types of people (P09).

The Vaughan case illustrates not only the constellation of actors coming together to produce a world-class urban aesthetic, but also the new subjectivities of producers. Councillors interviewed talked about recruiting young, sophisticated planners, who in turn shared their urban mindset and vision for the new downtown. Developers mobilize a discourse of urbanity as value-added for their condominium apartments and position themselves in the roles of leaders and innovators in the post-suburbanization process. While the overarching vision appears aligned, the discourses also reveal tensions and contradictions about who the new downtown is for.

4.8 Conclusions: Aesthetic governmentality and post- suburbanization

Literature examining post-suburbanization has considered temporal shifts, geographical and typological differences, and emphasized the roles of actors in shaping new politics, ideologies, ways of life and built forms on metropolitan edges. This paper contributes to the literature on post-suburbia by mobilizing an aesthetic governmentality framework to demonstrate how “rule by aesthetic,” namely the production of consensus around an image of world-class, high-design urbanity is a characteristic of the politics and ideology of post-suburbanization, using examples within metropolitan Toronto. While the post-suburbanization literature debates what economic or morphological conditions represent a shift from conventional to “post” suburbia, this study finds a post-suburbanization of aspirations among housing producers, and has further illustrated the role that planning, design, architecture play in this ideology of attraction and competition.

The contemporary planning and packaging of suburban intensification in Toronto is characterized by world-class, high-design, urban condominium apartment towers and high-rent office towers. This emergent place image is distinct from the packaging of local, lower density greenfield developments that more commonly draw on long-standing North American suburban

158 tropes like proximity to nature, small town idyll, and a desirable place to raise children. The contemporary strategy for suburban intensification also breaks with the city halls and malls approach of the 1980s, and more closely reflects the dynamics of condo-ism described by Rosen and Walks (2014) in Toronto’s core. The urbanity associated with condo-ism is mobilized for adding aesthetic value to high-density developments in suburban locations. The discourses, however, also signal more substantive restructurings of planning and development in the suburban municipalities as condo-ism expands beyond the urban core. For example, suburban residential developers are branching into higher density buildings for sale through condominium tenure, big box retail developers are embracing mixed-use, and downtown condominium apartment builders have brought their operations to the suburbs.

The findings in this “suburban” study echo “urban” case studies in the literature that demonstrate a growing alignment in a shared vision between developers, planners and politicians towards the production of contemporary, urbanized suburban nodes and corridors regarded as attractive to young knowledge economy workers and competitive within and beyond the region. The roles that various producer groups take on demonstrate crossovers that produce tensions or contradictions: planners and politicians roles’ become more entrepreneurial, and developers are providing public-style spaces and amenities on private lands. Developers call themselves leaders and visionaries and have become involved in the provision of urban amenities including squares, large parks, and art on a scale more typically produced as “public” by a municipality. Because the land in the UGCs and along the intensification corridors is largely privately owned, and because increasing land values make attaining parcels difficult for municipalities, this type of privatized, public-style spaces and amenities may become more common and worthy of future study. By highlighting the positioning of planning and development practitioners as placemakers, tastemakers, and promoters of a designed urbane aesthetic, this paper contributes to the literature on the roles or subject positions of the constellation of actors involved in the post- suburbanization process. The aligned post-suburban aesthetic embedded in the vision of intensified nodes and corridors in the suburban municipalities may be easing plan implementation, but not without tensions surfacing in the practices and reflections of actors. Planners are tasked with implementing policies promoting “complete” and inclusive communities, while also promoting economic competition and attractive design. Interviewees stressed the importance of attracting the young, knowledge economy workers to ensure the

159 success of the intensification plans, but a planner directly acknowledged their discomfort with the exclusive image being represented in the VMC. Similarly, a developer of Markham Centre acknowledged their uneasiness in targeting high end users, but defended the approach as necessary to compete with downtown Toronto, other UGCs, and meet the company’s bottom line.

Advertised ‘starting at’ housing unit prices in the UGCs are lower than the average prices in the region, and as these developments are built out, a clearer view of neighbourhood demographics and housing prices will unfold for further analysis. These higher density urban developments may provide choice, affordability and robust mobility alternatives. The extension condo-ism may also reproduce the exclusions and inequalities of urban areas layered on top of those already- existing in suburban areas, bringing the condofication blueprint to the suburbs.

The aesthetic governmentality lens offers the literature on post-suburbanization a theoretical framework for examining discourse, image, and producer subjectivities as part and parcel to the restructuring of the suburbs. Ghertner (2015) has argued that aesthetic politics will “play an increasingly integral role in how the twenty-first century metropolis is shaped.” (p. 22). This can be seen in planning trends beyond the study area in the emphasis placed on design and placemaking. Harvey (1990) identified the rise of aesthetic concerns and the risk of aestheticizing political issues as a defining trait of postmodernism. Walks (2006) also linked neoliberalism with the aestheticization of politics, defined as “the emergence of a politics driven by aesthetic motivations, delineated by aesthetic concerns and/or masked by aesthetic appeals” (p. 466). Attention to aesthetic governmentality exposes how suburban “problems” defined aesthetically, lead to aesthetic post-suburban solutions. Embedded in the normative calls to urbanize the suburbs are critiques of the suburbs as placeless, ugly, and monotonous. Producers discursively reinventing the suburbs respond by emphasizing placemaking, attraction, and mixed-use. This study has shown that in addition to changing economic functions, morphology, and actors involved in the production of post-suburban edge cities and suburban downtowns, the discursive production of particular urbane image and the role of aesthetics in governance also factors into the political-ideological processes defining what comes after suburbia.

Chapter 5 Third Empirical Paper

Building the “Best of Both” Urbanism and Suburbanism? Practitioner Perspectives on the Promises and Challenges of Planning Compact and Complete Communities

ABSTRACT: Compact urban form and densification have become central tenets of planning practice in Canada and in metropolitan regions around the world as part of efforts to urbanize the suburbs. In this paper I examine how key actors in Canadian planning and development regimes (planners, developers and municipal politicians) discursively produce visions of densified suburban transformations in planning policy and development advertisements, and how those same actors reflect on the successes and challenges of pursuing the vision for compact and complete communities Advertisements spin the densifying, in-between character of the suburbs positively, drawing on long-standing tropes of the suburbs representing the best of both worlds. Practitioner interview narratives, however, reveal how increasingly compact but “incomplete” developments exacerbate old problems of car-dependency and traffic and produce new issues related to parking and “car-cramming” in denser neighbourhoods. These findings carry theory and practice implications for moving beyond a focus on density and compact forms to strengthening commitments to transit-service and other factors that contribute to the “completeness” of new-build communities on the metropolitan edge.

keywords: compact city, densification, complete communities, automobility, planning practice

5.1 Introduction: The interconnected promises of urbanity, density, and mobility options

Bringing urbanity to the suburbs has become a primary goal of normative suburban planning theory, policy and practice influenced by the interrelated principles of smart growth, new urbanism, and transit-oriented design. North American suburbs are critiqued as “sprawling” “non-places” that are “neither urban nor rural, local nor cosmopolitan” and representing the victory of the car “over the urban” (Sheller & Urry, 2000, p. 746). The central ingredients to creating “urbanity” in new communities include: density, transit, walkability, mixed land uses

160 161 and housing types, attractive design, and narrow streets (Duany et al., 2000). Dunham-Jones and Williamson (2009) argued that planning’s urgent goal moving into the future is retrofitting suburbia with high-density, transit-serviced built forms. Nelson (2013) outlined a future of the American suburbs that will be impacted by shifting demographics and younger generations’ preferences for urban living combined with economic factors like rising energy costs, falling incomes and tighter mortgage rules. He argued that attaining “a certain level of urbanity” may be necessary for suburbs to succeed (p. 394). Major homebuilders throughout America are now engaging in efforts to “effectively urbanize the suburbs” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 128).

Increasing the density of the built environment is a central tenet of “urbanizing” the suburbs. The promises of higher density include greater efficiencies in infrastructure servicing, agricultural land and green space protection, housing choice, better urban design, and transit provision (Boyko & Cooper, 2011; Duany et al., 2000). Newman and Kenworthy (1999), among others, have argued that compact city form is strongly correlated with higher transit-use, lower energy consumption for travel, and reduced auto-mobile dependency (see Boyko & Cooper, 2011 for an overview of studies). Extending from the compact city literature are various recommendations on minimum or desired densities of population and/or housing units required to support varying levels of public transit service; these recommendations have influenced urban planning polices throughout the UK, Europe and North America through the setting of density targets, and related “intensification” targets that specify the percentage of new development that must occur within the boundaries of an already built-up area. (Boyko & Cooper, 2011; Breheny, 2001; Touati- Morel, 2015).

The promises of densification and the related impacts on policies have also been met with public and academic debates. Despite widespread acceptance within American planning of the idea that density and compact city forms are necessary conditions for sustainability and a shift away from auto-dependence, some commentators and scholars have raised concern about the claims being made about density. On the far end are those who defend the “American dream” of owning a low-density suburban house (Cox, 2006), or who advocate for modest improvements within the low-density milieu (Kotkin & Berger, 2017, Nov. 18). Others, like Bruegmann (2006) have argued that people prefer low-density environments and object to the negativity associated with “sprawl.” Neuman (2005) characterized compact city policies and sustainability ideals as paradoxical to American preferences for suburban living, and contrary to the planning

162 profession’s initial concern with solving overcrowding. In the UK, pursuit of an “urban renaissance” and championing of new urbanist principles by the Prince of Wales coalesced in a policy agenda promoting “traditional” compact form (Grant, 2006). Strategies have included setting intensification and density targets, but have been met with concern over “town cramming” by residents and local politicians fearing traffic congestion, lost green spaces, and deteriorated quality of life (Breheny, 2001). Some British scholars argued that the government’s targets should have been more ambitious (Rogers & Burdett, 2001). Hall (1999) suggested that to offset concerns about “town-cramming,” planning for density needed to consider the tradeoffs of tall buildings, like larger parking lots supplied to accommodate more vehicles, and consider more market-supportive ways to boost residential density, such as through closely configured detached and row houses. In Australia, responding directly to Newman and Kenworthy, (1999) Mees (2010) questioned the “density is destiny” promise for altering mobility patterns (p. 5). While Mees shared the goal of reducing automobile dependency and improving public transit, he argued that if improvements in mobility are dependent on increased density, then regions will have to wait a long time before any large-scale shifts can be expected. He suggested that publicly governed “multi-modal network planning is the key to public transport success in dispersed urban regions” (2010, p. 81).

Canadian suburbs are generally denser than their American counterparts (Hess & Sorensen, 2015; Nelson, 2013). Nevertheless, concern about sprawl across Canada’s largest regions has led to the wide adoption of smart growth and new urbanism-influenced policies, and targets set with the aim to increase building densities, intensify built up areas through infill, mix land uses, and improve transit-access (Charmes & Keil 2015; Grant, 2009; Moore, 2013; Quastel, Moos & Lynch, 2013). Charmes and Keil (2015) have argued that the successful acceptance of density as an urbanization strategy in Canada reflects the converging interests among key actors in “densification regimes;” planners seek growth management, local politicians embrace the bonus growth and tax revenues from increased density, and developers seek new opportunities for profit-making. Densification is thus a political, and not a neutral logic. “Compact” and “complete communities” are the policy keywords representing new urbanism and smart growth in contemporary Canadian planning (Grant & Scott, 2012, see further discussion of Canadian policy discourses in Section 5.4).

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The Toronto region has been featured centrally in debates about the compact city. Newman and Kenworthy (1999) suggested that the City of Toronto be regarded as an example of dense, transit-supportive “European” style compact form (their use of Toronto also discussed in Forsyth, 1999). For Mees, (2010) the City of Toronto also offered a positive example of how transit can be improved by closely matching service with demand during peak periods. He challenged, however, Newman and Kenworthy’s use of Toronto as a model for high-density, since their density calculations initially only focused on the city core and not on the entire urban area including the suburban municipalities surrounding Toronto. “Wasted density” is how Filion, McSpurren and Appleby (2006) characterized the high-density pockets scattered throughout the Toronto region in a disconnected pattern that inhibits the fulfillment public transit use and walking benefits associated with high-density. Filion (2013) argued that “the active ingredient of the North American suburban form and dynamics is not density alone. Dense sectors within suburbs function exactly like lower density areas; they reveal few modal share and journey pattern differences” (p. 412). Filion acknowledged the potential for the urbane preferences of younger generations to increase residential density in North American suburbs, but noted that car-dependency and other suburban dynamics remain “deeply entrenched” (p. 413). Filion (2015) has described this resistance to change as “suburban inertia” (p. 633), where powerful path dependencies shape development practices and lifestyles to sustain “dispersed suburbanism,” which is characterized by “low density development, rigid functional specialization and geographic scattering of activities” (p. 633).

The “automobility” literature provides another theoretical framework for examining the relationships between the built environment and car use that may help push through and beyond the density debates, by bringing attention back to the logics of mobility. Automobility is considered a broad regime of historically established practices and power relations that “reconfigures urban life” through “distinct ways of dwelling, travelling and socializing in, and through, and automobilized time-space” (Sheller & Urry, 2000, p. 738;). The influence of Foucault’s (1991; 2008) theories of governmentality within the automobility literature exposes how various actors and agencies sustain the regime of automobility through discourses, strategies, and tactics that intersect with the aspirations, decisions and lifestyles of individuals and groups. In this way, automobility is also an ideological or discursive formation “embodying ideals of freedom, privacy, movement, progress and autonomy,” which legitimate and facilitate

164 the expansion of car-oriented mobility (Bohm, Jones, Land & Paterson, 2006, p. 3). Walks (2015, p. 16) proposed the term “auto-city” to describe the built environment produced and reproduced through the logic of automobility rather than focusing on the outcome (i.e. dispersed). The “auto” in automobility and auto-city articulates with notions of “autonomy” or freedom associated with automobile use. It also signals an “autopoietic” meaning, as in relating to the “self” in two ways. First, automobility functions, in Foucaultian terms, as a “technology of the self” enabling or constraining the subjectivities of actors within the auto-city. Second, the auto-city appears to self-generates through political, economic, social and cultural processes and relations that maintain automobile-dependent built forms. Walks (2015) has suggested that “the relationships between automobility and urban transformations remain underexplored” (p. 4, italics in original).

In this paper I examine how key actors in Canadian planning and development regimes (planners, developers and municipal politicians) discursively produce visions of densified (sub)urban transformations in planning policy and development advertisements, and how those same actors reflect on the successes and challenges of pursuing the vision for compact and complete communities. I consider the relationship between automobility and suburban transformation by drawing out the discursive formations in the promises, challenges, tensions, and opportunities involved in transforming the auto-city. I ask: How do practitioners structure the field of possibility for transforming the suburbs, by discursively mobilizing the compact city framework; how do practitioners characterize the successes and challenges that emerge in practice; and what do the limitations in planning practice signal for compact city theory and policy? I explore these questions through content and discourse analysis of policies, development advertisements, and interview narratives.

I find that the planning and policy emphasis on prescribing transit (or pedestrian) “oriented” and “supportive” densities discursively defers the improvement of transit and other mobility alternatives to an uncertain, densified future, and limits the improvement of transit in the present across variable densities. Practitioners characterize efforts to urbanize the suburbs as producing mixed results, with density gains in residential neighbourhoods, yet still within the broader landscape of auto-dependence and function separation of land uses; these findings contribute to the literature describing a range of “in-between” suburbanisms discussed in the following section (Walks, 2012a; Young, Burke Wood & Keil, 2011). Advertisements spin the densifying, in-

165 between character of the suburbs positively, drawing on long-standing tropes of the suburbs representing the best of both worlds. Practitioner interview narratives, however, reveal how increasingly compact but “incomplete” developments exacerbate old problems of car- dependency and traffic and produce new issues related to parking and “car-cramming” in denser neighbourhoods. While density may be an important factor in the transformation of the suburbs, practitioners’ perspectives lend support to Filion’s (2013) assertion that density is not the sole ingredient of suburban forms and dynamics despite the popularity of compact city theory. These findings carry policy implications for reinforcing political commitments to transit service and other mobility alternatives, and strengthening the tools for implementing the “completeness” of community development alongside compaction and densification.

The paper proceeds in the following section, with a discussion of the literature on the relationship between, or dialectic, of urbanism and suburbanism and resulting “in-between” suburbanisms. I review my study methods and discuss the discursive emphasis placed on compact, complete communities in Canadian and Toronto-region planning. I then present findings comparing and contrasting advertisement and practitioner discourses on suburban density, infill, mobility options, and access to work and amenities. I highlight the case study of Mount Pleasant, which is a master planned community designed around a regional commuter rail station in Brampton, located northwest of Toronto. Local practitioners regard Mount Pleasant as one of the best recent examples of efforts to urbanize the suburbs (CanU, 2014). As distinct from the spectacular and globally competitive office and apartment towers planned for the region’s Urban Growth Centres (discussed in Chapter Four), Mount Pleasant is a greenfield development on the edge of the built up area, and offers lessons learned for similar peripheral areas. I conclude by considering the implications of my findings for planning theory and practice.

5.2 Urbanism, suburbanism, and the “in-between”

In the early 1970s, scholars observed the inevitability of suburban expansion, but questioned the advantages and disadvantages being produced:

Suburbia is the new American frontier. We are too deeply committed to reverse the trend. But while we are completing the task, it is perhaps appropriate for some to ponder the question of what happens next if we discover that the environment we have

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created has the advantages neither of urban nor of rural living, and the disadvantages of both? (Hadden and Barton, 1973, p. 111, emphasis added)

The idea that the suburbs should reflect the best of both urban and rural living can be traced back to Ebenezer Howard’s (1902/2011) conceptualization of the Garden City as produced by the magnetic push and pull of town and country. The Garden City became an influential model for how suburbs were planned and advertised throughout the twentieth century in the UK and around the world (Gold & Gold, 1990). Howard’s intention was to design a socio-spatial model that could offer an alternative to the crowded industrialized city. Howard envisioned the Garden City as a “marriage” of town and country, offering the best of both without the disadvantages of either. Howard used the metaphor of magnets whereby both the town and country had a combination of attractions and disadvantages that pulled or repelled residents. The Garden City was represented a “third alternative, in which all the advantages of the most energetic and active town life, with all the beauty and delight of the country, may be secured in perfect combination” (1902/2011, p. 330).

Recent critical scholarship has shifted away from theorizing suburban built forms and ways of life on a continuum between urban and rural, and pays greater attention to how contemporary developments and lifestyles in the areas beyond the urban core lie in tension between urbanism and suburbanism. Walks (2012a) has theorized the relationships between urbanism and suburbanism drawing on the spatial dialectics of Henri Lefebvre. In this dialectical logic, suburbanism is “both a form of urbanism produced by and through it, and its anti-thesis, separate and inseparable” (p. 1485). Urbanism and suburbanism are also conceived as processes and conceptually distinct from fixed places regarded as urban and suburban. Walks described six dimensions of urbanism-suburbanism, which “are always interacting in a simultaneous constant co-present productive tension” (p. 1479). The mix of dimensions can produce various “suburbanisms,” with their own ways of life, social relations, built forms, and politics. The first dimensions relate to centrality. In the built form the tensions lie between the poles of clustering (urbanism) and dispersion (suburbanism). Socio-politically the tensions of control and power lie between centralization and subordination. The second dimensions hinge on difference. Forces of urbanism produce mixed use in the built form and forces of suburbanism produce separation. Sociality, plurality and encounter are in tension with division and segregation. The final two dimensions relate to functionality. Forces of urbanism can produce multiple options, like multi-

167 modal transit or functionality can be reduced to singular systems, like the car-dependence of suburbanism. Socially, public political life lies in tension with interiority and privatism. Walks suggested that operationalizing this dynamic theory of space “can be used to identify the forms that suburbanisms take in different cities and nations, and thus enable a better understanding of suburban diversity” (p. 1484).

The dynamic, dialectical framing of urbanism and suburbanism as interacting forces provides two key benefits for theory. First, this approach draws attention to the built forms, politics, and lifestyles that are produced in between the processes of urbanism and suburbanism. Second, the dialectical approach views urbanism and suburbanism as perpetually constituted and reconstituted through processes that can simultaneously support and undermine each other, while also revealing the contradictions of capitalism that are manifest through planning and development. For example, Young, Wood, and Keil’s (2011) work on politics and infrastructure has drawn attention to the “in-between” places and interactions that resist easy classification in terms of rural, urban or suburban and can fall between the cracks of political attention and funding. For Fiedler, (2011) the “in-between city” is a dynamic and “emergent urban condition that reflects the myriad of practices” that produce the Toronto region in ways both real and imagined. Grant (2011) has reflected on how Canadian planners’ advocacy for “urbanizing new development” met resistance from developers resulting in an “in-between character: not quite city, not quite suburb” (p. 102). Grant concluded that these “outcomes reflect the continuing tension between government efforts to regulate development and developers’ attempts to earn the optimum return on investment,” which leads to the continued reproduction of an auto-centric landscape (p. 113). Essex and Brown (1997) highlighted contradictions that emerge in the planning process in Australian suburbs as contemporary post-suburban values including environmental protection clash with values established during previous decades, such as preferences for large lots and low density built form. A dialectical, relational consideration of urbanism and suburbanism also foregrounds how suburban-urban dynamics are shaped by regional and global relationships (e.g. Keil & Addie, 2015), and how investments in one place relates to disinvestments elsewhere (Cowen & Parlette, 2011). Keil (2018) suggests that density and sprawl are dialectically related, and “the discourse on density pits one against the other in a rather unproductive manner” (p. 159). This paper contributes to the our understanding of how long-standing suburban planning theme of the suburbs representing the “best of both worlds,” in

168 between town and country has been reconfigured in the literature with attention to the “in- between” character of suburban regions emerging through the dialectical interplay of urbanism and suburbanism and the contradictions, or tensions, that emerge amidst the simultaneously supportive and undermining logics of automobility, and densification regimes.

5.3 Data and methods

For this study I examined the discourses of housing producers (planners, municipal councillors and developers) in policies, interviews, and new-build development advertisements. Interviews were conducted between December 2015 and August 2016 with a total of sixty respondents: thirty planners,106 fifteen municipal councillors,107 and fifteen developers108 across suburban municipalities in the Toronto region.109 Interviews were semi-structured, approximately one- hour, and in-person.110 Findings derived from a thematic coding of transcribed interviews employing discourse analysis techniques. For confidentiality, participant quotations in the following sections are cited by an alphanumeric code with P# representing planner, C# for councillor and D# for developer. Interview questions focused on producer’s perspectives on the successes and challenges of implementing the policy vision to urbanize the suburbs through compact, complete communities, and development trends. As a way to wrap-up most of the

106 The “planner” category includes representation from the provincial government, regional and local municipalities, and two regional transit agencies: Metrolinx and York Region Transit. Municipal department managers and transit agency representatives doing planning-related work are included in this category. 107 The category “municipal councillor” refers to elected politicians at the local and regional municipality scale and includes a Deputy Mayor, who for the sake of anonymity will be called “councillor.” 108 The category “developer” refers to representatives from land development and homebuilding companies, which in this region are often integrated within the same company or group of companies. Most of the “developers” interviewed are accredited planners who work for the development and homebuilding industry. 109 The study area is roughly equivalent to the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Of the total 60 participants interviewed. 3 participants were in Innisfil and Barrie, municipalities north of Toronto along the GO train and Hwy 400/404 corridor, which has become part of the larger commutershed. The advertisement analysis included Burlingon and Whitby, which border the Toronto CMA to the southwest and southeast respectively. 110 I conducted six interviews by phone, which were generally shorter, but were also recorded and transcribed. Two participants for in-person interviews declined to be recorded. Most interviews were one-on-one, but twice I interviewed two respondents at once, at their request.

169 interviews,111 I showed housing producers a sample of advertisements for new-build communities within the region and asked for their reactions and comments given the conversation we just had about the tensions between urbanism and suburbanism. To examine the advertising discourses, I conducted a content112 and discourse analysis of marketing materials for 304 new-build housing developments in the suburban municipalities. The advertisement sample was drawn from developer websites and the 2012-2016 online archives of four print magazines,113 which are freely distributed in news stands and at sales centres throughout the region. For the Mount Pleasant case study, three planners, four developers, and two councillors interviewed were involved in Mount Pleasant’s planning and build-out. As part of the broader study sample, I analyzed the content of advertisements for ten residential developments in Mount Pleasant marketed during the sample timeframe.

5.4 Planning and preferences for compact, complete communities in Canada & Toronto

“Compact” and “complete communities” have become dominant keywords representing urbanism and planning goals across Canada (Grant & Scott, 2012). The influence of these terms is evident in The Charter for Canadian Urbanism (2013), established by a group of Canadian planning and urban design professionals, which states: “Canada is increasingly both an urban and suburban society” that has both “pioneered smarter suburbs” and “built costly and unsustainable urban sprawl.” Implementing “a better Canadian Urbanism” “urgently” requires more progressive and creative solutions. They propose a new “by design” Canadian urban model, which advocates “complete, compact, mixed-use, interconnected and vibrant neighbourhoods that prioritize sustainable and healthy mobility choices – walking, biking and transit.” The new model “will replace the unsustainable, use-separated, low-density, car-oriented model of the

111 except for a few where there was not time, or they were over the phone. 112 to address the limitations of a single-coder content analysis, I checked through the coding for every development twice to ensure that I was coding consistently throughout the analysis. 113 A full set of archives from 2012-2016 was available for Homes and Condo Life, and 2014-2016 was available for New Home Guide and New Condo Guide.

170 past” (CanU, 2013, p. online). While there are imprints of the American New Urbanism movement, the Charter articulates a distinctly Canadian Urbanism for future planning, design and development.

Building compact, complete communities is the overarching policy vision for planning in the region around the City of Toronto, which is Canada’s largest and fastest growing metropolitan area. The broad region around Toronto referred to in the planning policies as the “Greater Golden Horseshoe” has been growing by roughly 100,000 people per year since the 1990s and had a 2017 population of about 6.5 million (projected to reach 13.5 million by 2041) (Advisory Panel, 2015; Ontario, 2016). The Toronto region provides examples of planning policies and practices that have pursued smart growth for decades, and thus important lessons on successes and challenges for growth management in other regions. A decade ago, the Province of Ontario established a 1.8 million acre greenbelt and enacted the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe (2006). The Growth Plan built on smart growth and new urbanism policies already adopted in many of the local municipalities and streamlined the approach across the region (Hess & Sorensen, 2015). The Growth Plan is subject to comprehensive review every ten years, and was updated in 2017; I focus here on the 2006 policies since they influenced the built form over the past decade and were in effect during this project’s interviews. I discuss where changes to the policy document have bearing on the study findings. The Growth Plan promotes “compact urban form”114 that includes a mix of housing types and reflects a:

meet people’s needs for daily living throughout an entire lifetime by providing convenient access to an appropriate mix of jobs, local services, a full range of housing,

114 In the 2017 update to the Growth Plan this term has been renamed “compact built form” and additions regarding active transportation and a well-connected network were added. 115 In the 2017 Growth Plan update, this definition was adjusted to highlight the idea of aging-in-place. An additional sentence states that complete communities “may take different shapes and forms appropriate to their contexts,” (p. 69) yet the emphasis on mixed use neighbourhoods, convenient access to daily necessities, housing and transportation options remains.

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and community infrastructure including affordable housing, schools, recreation and open space for recreation and open space for their residents. Convenient access to public transportation and options for safe, non-motorized travel is also provided (Growth Plan, 2006, p. 41, italics in original denote other terms with specific definitions in the Plan).

Compact form and changing mobility patterns from the car to transit or active transportation are intertwined discursively in the definitions above, and throughout the planning policies. “Urban sprawl” and its associated traffic is framed as a detriment to the regional economy and environment that limits public transit provision: “Attractive and efficient public transit is difficult to introduce into sprawling communities, and this limits our ability to respond effectively to growing traffic congestion issues” (pp. 7-8). The Growth Plan envisions high-density Urban Growth Centres as multi-modal transit hubs (see Chapter Four), and new greenfield areas as compact and transit-supportive areas that can maximize infrastructure investments. The Provincial regional transportation plan The Big Move connects compact form and transit viability. The plan asserts that people in higher density mixed-use neighbourhoods are more likely to take transit than people in lower density, functionally segregated neighbourhoods that lack sidewalks and bike lanes (Metrolinx, 2008, p. 44). The transportation plan is intended to “help curb sprawl by supporting more compact and efficient urban forms,” as well as “transit- supportive densities and urban design” (p. 17). The language of necessity characterizes the connection between compact form and transit provision in the plan update recommendations made by a government Advisory Panel (2015); for example:

we must curb sprawl and build more compact communities in order to support transit, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect valuable farmland (p. 40, emphasis added).

Compact growth and increased densities along transit corridors are necessary to support the viability of the transit projects outlined in The Big Move and to encourage a shift towards greater transit use (p. 137, emphasis added).

Provincial planning has pursued “transit-supportive land use planning” since the early 1990s. The Transit-Supportive Guidelines emphasize the clustering of mixed residential and employment uses, and suggest minimum densities for the “cost effective” delivery of different levels of transit service (Ministry of Transportation, 2012, p. 24). For example, densities of 22 units per hectares, or 50 residents and jobs combined are suggested to support one bus every 20- 30 minutes. Densities of 72 units per hectare or 160 residents and jobs combined are suggested to

172 support a dedicated bus or light rail transit line (p. 24).

The Growth Plan (2006) has required lower level governments to implement several intensification and density targets, which have been increased in the recent Growth Plan updates (2017): 1) a minimum of 40% of new residential development directed to the already built up area (infill) has been increased to 50%, with 60% set as the longer term fifteen-year goal; 2) the requirement that designated greenfield areas have a minimum of 50 people and jobs combined per hectare has been increased to 80; 3) designated Urban Growth Centres must meet various targets, such as 200 people and jobs per hectare, with specific minimum densities required for various levels of transit service that reflect suggestions in the Transit-Supportive Guidelines. The targets are applied and measured at the scale of the regional municipality; this means that the mix of people and jobs is considered across all of the subdivisions, shopping centres and employment districts at a high-level, coarse scale. Local planning processes determine the mix of land use at a finer scale. These policy discourses and density targets form the discursive context for interpreting practitioner discourses in the rest of the paper.

Mirroring the popularity of compact urbanity in planning discourses, resident preferences in the region also appear to support walkable, transit-serviced neighbourhoods. A recent Toronto real estate industry survey of 1,000 people’s housing locational preferences indicate a strong demand for walkability, proximity to amenities, transit service, and multimodal options for commutes to work. If costs were not a factor 81% would live in an urban or suburban neighbourhood that enabled walkability to amenities and access to frequent rapid transit. The survey report concluded that although detached houses are still desired, “a large house and spacious lot are not as important as living in a neighbourhood that is walkable, mixed-use, transit-connected and that offers shorter commute times” in either urban or suburban areas (Burda, 2014). Given the shifting preferences for urbanity and movement of population towards urban locations, Blais (2013) sees the opportunity to shift regulations and development financing to reshape cities and suburbs in ways that “as planners we have been trying to achieve for decades” (p. 411). Commenting on survey findings on homebuyer preferences in the USA, Nelson (2013) opined that while fewer residents desired the conventional suburb “they do not crave large, dense cities” either, which he calls “a desire for a ‘suburban urbanity’, or, less charitably, ‘urbanity light’” (p. 399). Nelson characterized the preferences for “suburban urbanity” as a desire for housing choices, walkability to a town centre or shopping and sociability, yet within a community with a

173 smaller population and lower density milieu. Preference surveys such as these may be influencing the advertising discourses discussed in the following findings.

5.5 Findings

5.5.1 In between two worlds, but the best of both?

A common theme appearing in advertisements for 134 (44%) of the total 304 developments was that the development balanced the “best of both worlds,” offering the best of urban amenities alongside characteristics of suburban areas, small towns, or rurality. It is evident that Howard’s (1902) initial pitch of the Garden City offering the best of Town and Country still carries salience, in advertisements such as these:

A little bit country; a little bit city.116

Vista will offer the best of town and country life surrounded by wonderful amenities.117

The “country” appeal was stronger than “urban” in advertisements for detached housing developments branded as “estates,” yet where the developer also promotes easy access to amenities, for example:

Edgewater Estates is an exclusive new community of 16 generous lots that offer an unrivalled level of prestige, privacy and proximity to everything Oakville has to offer.[…] a singular lifestyle that brings nature close, while keeping the crowd far, far away.118

Yet even within this refined atmosphere of bounded exclusivity, the many comforts and conveniences of Aurora and the surrounding area are all just moments away, with shops, restaurants, Hwys. 404 and 400, GO transit, conservation areas and more. Commuters will appreciate Aurora's proximity to the city, with Toronto only a mere 30 minutes away.119

116 Spring Valley Village, detached and semis, Royal Pine, Brampton, online. 117 VISTA, stacked, back-to-back townhouses, Geranium, Stouffville, New Home Guide, 2016 v.24(8), p.31. 118 Edgewater Estates, detached, Dicenzo Homes, Molinaro Group, Oakville, online. 119 Timberlane, detached, Brookfield, Aurora, online.

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What emerges in these “best of both worlds” appeals, however, is the shift from the historical town and country pitch, to an updated urban or “modern” on the one end, and suburban, small town or “traditional” on the other; for example:

Richmond Hill is arguably the finest example of suburban living in Canada...Brushwood offers the best of both worlds. Shop, eat, and live an urban life while being surrounded and embraced by the scenery Richmond Hill still has to offer.120

What makes it truly distinct is that it promises the best of two worlds — the verve and style of big city living and the relaxed and easy life of suburbia.121

Looking for a home that allows you to combine an urban lifestyle with the comforts and pleasures of small town living? Come to Emporium at Joshua Creek…where you can live easily in both worlds.122

Saddle Ridge - Urban living in a serene environment. […] Fusing urban living and a traditional environment, Saddle Ridge in Milton has the best of all worlds123

Aspen Ridge calls these homes MOTO Modern Towns, and that’s just what they are - modern townhome designs that motivate exceptional living in an ideal urban-suburban location.124

Only twenty-one developments use the term “suburb” explicitly in their advertisements, but of those, about half are in advertisements for apartments. While over 70% of apartment advertisements highlight the “urbanity” of the development, the references to “suburban” characteristics offer balance. For example, some apartment advertisements appealed to urban lifestyles and promoted the developments’ proximity to Toronto, yet critiqued “the city” by extolling the opposite virtues of the suburban location:

Imagine life in the city without the over-crowded streets. Everything you could ever want is at your doorstep, including shops, restaurants, banks and pharmacies, and yet

120 Brushwood, semis and townhouses, CountryWide, Richmond Hill, New Home Guide, 2014, v.22(16), p.56. 121 Crystal Condominium, apartments, Pinnacle Uptown, Mississauga, Pinnacle, Condo Life, 2012 v.07, p.56. 122 Emporium, apartments and townhouses, Ashley Oaks, Oakville, Condo Life, 2012, v.5, p.76. 123 Saddle Ridge, detached, semis,& townhouses, Greenpark & Starlane, Milton, online. 124 MOTO Modern Towns, townhouses, Kettle Lakes Club, Aspen Ridge, Richmond Hill, New Home Guide, 2014, v.22(7), p.58, pdf p. 68.

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the serenity of the suburbs is yours too, with its golf courses, sports fields, community centres and recreational trails.125

The real beauty of this neighbourhood is an urban lifestyle free from the shadow of a gigantic concrete jungle; at The Anchors you’ll be able to live artfully, culturally and be more in-tune with a green lifestyle.126

Cinemas, fine dining, casual restaurants, cafes, boutiques and shopping malls all tastefully converge here, and provide you with an uncompromised urban experience without ever having to go into the city. The best of everything is right at your front door.127

While the advertisements envisioned new developments as typifying the best of both worlds, practitioners described realities as in between the urban and suburban; they characterized residential areas as becoming increasingly dense, but car dependence and functional land use separation prevents the realization of the promised benefits. One developer, for example, stated that “there is no question our communities are becoming denser.” (D05). Increased residential densities were framed as “the good news” in terms of transit supportive, compact, complete communities (P18). While planners acknowledged density gains from smaller lot sizes and a shift in the balance of housing types away from detached and towards townhouses and apartments, it is a more modest shift than some envisioned (P02). One planner described the trend of putting traditional detached houses on smaller lots, without changing the broader development patterns as “squished-in suburban” (P04). Some new greenfield developments in the region were described as “midway between a suburban and an urban setting. It’s not yet urban, but not suburban too. It’s like a compromise between the two” (P14). Another municipality was characterized as “mostly a suburban municipality. Moving towards urban, but it will take some time” (P08). Despite residential areas compaction, practitioners observed residents’ continued reliance on cars to reach work and everyday destinations.

125 Centro Condominiums, apartments, Kaitlin, Aurora, Condo Life, 2012, v.7, p.84. 126 The Anchors at Lakeview, stacked-back-to-backs, Dunshire, Mississauga, Condo Life, 2014, v.4, p.58. 127 Vista Parc, apartments, Quadcam, Vaughan, online.

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5.5.2 Mobility options

Complete communities provide “convenient access to public transportation and options for safe, non-motorized travel” (Growth Plan, p. 47). In the development advertisements, 84% of the total sample marketed the development’s proximity to highways, 54% promoted proximity to a commuter rail station (GO), and 41% highlighted access to local and express transit routes (bus, subway, LRT, BRT). Advertising proximity to commuter rail and local transit were higher for apartments and stacked townhouses than ground-related housing (Figure 5.1). Nearly half of all ground-related development advertisements, however, promoted their proximity to commuter rail, and a third of all ground-related development advertisements highlighted proximity to local transit. Cycling was typically promoted as a leisure activity. Ability to access amenities or daily needs by walking was emphasized most in the higher density housing types, although walking for leisure was evident in advertisements for all housing types. Advertisements promoting proximity to transit reflect real estate industry survey indications that at least some consumers want neighbourhoods that enable alternatives to driving.

Figure 5.1: Mobility advertising appeals by housing type (calculated by the author).

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When shown a selection of advertisements in the interviews, planners were generally surprised and pleased to see advertisement references to public transit. One planner commented on the lack of people and cars in the advertisement renderings emphasizing detached house design: “There’s no people to be found anywhere. But also no car, which is interesting to me. Because usually this would be all cars” [in front of the houses] (P08). In general, practitioners characterized the region as car-dependent. The recent construction of new bus rapid transit lines and the first subway extension beyond the City of Toronto’s boundaries and into a suburban municipality were recognized as encouraging infrastructure developments, but major lifestyle, commuting, and mobility shifts remain unobserved.

Planners working on compact new master planned areas with smaller lots were wrestling with the need to accommodate cars: “how are we going to make sure that there’s enough parking for the cars? And so there's a whole function of not only looking at the smaller lot but the urban form that comes with it” (P06). Transit service at the neighbourhood level is seen as a problem for new compact, but still ground-related communities: “Without the transit service to meet the needs of the new communities, all you’re doing then is increasing congestion into your urban areas” (P18). One planner, responding to a question about challenges in implementing the vision, commented that “planners sometimes don’t live in the real world and write plans that are insufficiently anchored to reality” (P30). Shifting mobility patterns from the car to transit and other active modes represents one of the “many examples in this region of aspirations that we don’t really know how to fulfill” or the means of implementation are lacking, or the aspirations themselves “fly in the face of economics.” The planner also commented that “transforming lifestyles” and other changes “need much more systemic changes” beyond the reach of planning (P30). Another planner joked about road sizes in the suburban municipalities that inhibit a finer- grained block pattern: “I mean you look at these arterial roads in the 905 [suburbs], they’re 10 and 12 lanes in some cases. You need a tent to get across them to camp overnight” (P02). Arterial roads are also protected in the Growth Plan as part of the regional strategy for economic development and movement of goods, which is increasingly important in a warehouse and logistics economy. At the neighbourhood scale, developers are often eager to reduce road widths because it provides more developable land, but municipal engineering standards generally force large ones. The regional suburban pattern of large development blocks feeding into busy arterial roads and highways remains intact.

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In policy, complete communities provide “convenient access” to “an appropriate mix of jobs” (Growth Plan, 2006, p. 47). Practitioners describe employment areas, including office and industrial parks, as poorly serviced by transit and “really low-density. You get off a bus in one of our employment areas and you’ve got a long walk to get to wherever you are going, so that’s a major issue” (P18). Suburban municipalities attract logistics, freight, warehousing, and technology industries that have large building footprints and space requirements. Certain industries rely increasingly on automation and robotics and the number of jobs those types of businesses contribute to the density targets may be minimal. As one planner explained, “Those are very difficult types of land uses to intensify (P18). Low densities in non-residential employment areas were described as inhibiting transit service and contributing to the continuation of auto-dependence, despite density gains in the residential areas.

In some municipalities, developers have placed pressure on planners and politicians to convert lands designated for employment to residential. While Councillors expressed strong commitment to retaining those lands to help achieve a live-work balance, some practitioners questioned why they are holding those lands if they were going to be developed for warehouses that provide few jobs. The Urban Growth Centres are planned to include high-density office towers (see Chapter Four). Practitioners were concerned, however, about competing with the City of Toronto, and other suburban municipalities for the limited number of new-build Class-A office buildings anticipated in the region. Although some practitioners define “complete community” as the ability to live and work in the same municipality, some admit that they do not live in the same municipality as their workplace due to a range of personal reasons and complicated by households with multiple income-earners.

Alternative mobility options to driving, especially the GO regional commuter rail service, are saleable elements featured in the development advertisements. Highway access, however, was more commonly advertised, and unsurprisingly so given the practitioners’ characterizations of employment areas lacking transit service because they are regarded as not having “transit- supportive” densities.

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5.5.3 Amenity access

Related to general messages about mobility options are discourses relating to the ease of accessing a range of amenities. The planning policies emphasize that compact, complete communities “meet people’s needs for daily living” through convenient access to stores and services, schools, recreation and open space (Growth Plan, 2006, p. 47). Advertisements for new developments emphasized access to a range of amenities. Figure 5.2 shows the amenities advertised from most to least frequent across the full development sample, and compares and contrasts among different housing types. Of all the amenity appeals, proximity to parks and open space was advertised for 90% of the developments, followed by shopping, schools, and a range of other amenities. While there were similarities across housing types, schools were slightly less commonly referenced in apartment advertisements, whereas proximity to entertainment and Toronto were marketed more frequently in apartment advertisements. Stacked and back-to-back townhouses advertisements placed high emphasis on access to a range of amenities.

Figure 5.2: Percentage of developments marketing particular amenities, by housing type (calculated by the author).

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Access to “all” amenities or “everything” was used as a marketing appeal in 38% of advertisements for all developments, for example:

all of Brampton’s best urban and natural amenities are yours to enjoy128

Urban Culture. Located within Woodbridge, MODA provides you with the convenience of having local amenities right at your doorstep. From fine dining to quality schools, prestigious golf courses to amusement parks, and fantastic shopping to nearby highways, living an urban lifestyle has never been easier. With the entire GTA at your fingertips, convenience is not sacrificed for quality design. To be fair, that’s the point.129

While advertisements emphasized easy access, planners were more skeptical about the proximity of stores to new houses. “Basically business as usual” was how a planner described continued suburban plaza development because “you have to drive everywhere to get a bag of milk” (P05). Another lamented the continuing applications for big box retail developments: “we always get the suburban prototype” and planners struggle to convince commercial developers “that we are no longer that suburban community like we were ten years or fifteen years back…We have had some success, but I would say we are not there yet” (P14).

Councillors pointed out that municipal recreational service provision is moving increasingly towards large, expensive facilities that combine facilities like ice rinks, pools, gyms, and libraries and serve broad geographic areas. These facilities preclude the ability to walk to activities in most neighbourhoods, and leave some political wards without suitable meeting places. Practitioners expressed concern about a lack of planning tools to achieve the broader goals of completeness, not just density:

You can’t be a complete community unless you can provide the services to the residents that they need (C14).

If we’re creating these more dense forms of development, it can’t just all be about housing. It’s got to be about the other soft-sides (D10).

128 CityTowns, townhouses, Fieldgate, Brampton, online. 129 MODA Urban Living, townhouses, Treasure Hill, Vaughan, online.

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If you don’t have the parks and recreation type services in these areas, you’re just putting people in there – that’s a problem (P18).

One councillor described a scenario where residents bought into the complete community concept advertised then complained to their local councillors when the proximity to a fine grain mix of amenities in the advertised concept renderings were not delivered. For example, one new urbanist neighbourhood has a street with some small shops and services, but residents must still drive for recreational activities, and daily needs like grocery shopping. A councillor explained that “the reason why people in the Cathedraltown area were so upset is because they found that ‘Our community is not complete! Where is the community centre? [or] even a grocery store’” (C04).

Access to parks and natural areas was the most frequently advertised amenity across the sample of development advertisements, and yet, the tension between the compact urban ideal and the realities of dispersion was evident in some developers’ characterization of big parks, sports fields, protected natural areas, and the greenbelt itself as “environmental sprawl” and “green sprawl” (D01; D05; D12). “Green sprawl” represents a contradiction in the vision of compact urbanism with the increase of environmental protections. Even though many developers saw intrinsic, long-range value in environmental protection, they commented that the idealized vision of compact, walkable urban fabric would not be possible in the suburbs under the current regulatory regime. Developers explained that setting aside so much of their land for environmental and public uses reduces their developable land area and requires them to fit more units into less land to meet the same profitability while also satisfying density goals. Resulting residential areas are compact, yet gross densities can still be low in the overall planned areas.

5.5.4 Density and its discontents

Intensification or “infill” of a minimum of 40% of new development within the already built up area is a key strategy of the Growth Plan. For planners and developers, residential intensification through infill is a familiar and straightforward matter of “popping” in additional units, but for they report that in some areas residents regard higher density housing products as “creeping” or being “squashed-in” to their neighbourhoods:

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as soon as you try to pop like six townhouses into an existing community, you get like 200 people come out for that, and everyone's got an opinion as to why townhouses should or shouldn't be in that particular location […][Complaint is] usually that the developer is squashing them on the site […] They are not ready for the townhouse to sort of creep inside these single detached blocks (P08).

Developers are willing to do infill projects, especially in municipalities with high land values, and recognize the challenges of living in closer proximity than expected:

I think the public is acutely more aware of how their communities are being built now, or they want to be more aware, they want to be more involved. It’s hitting closer to home because we’re all living in tighter spaces. Even in places where they thought they weren’t going to be (D08).

Infill developments are marketed as rare opportunities to get the best of a new house in a desired neighbourhood:

Once in a while, something extraordinary happens. At Coventry, you get the best of both worlds, a new home in an established community.130

The pent-up demand for luxurious townhome living in Richmond Hill is making Hampshire Mews a sought-after infill community. Jump on the opportunity to own now131

Councillors anticipate strong reactions to most new developments and described “a mentality of once somebody moves in, they want to see the growth stop” (C09). Proposed projects that conform with planned intensification, but are unwanted by residents position councillors with supporting politically unpopular intensification, or they can either vote against the project (and risk developer’s appeal), or stall decision-making for a long enough period that the developer has legal grounds to appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board for non-decision. The appeals process is costly for all parties and removes the decision-making process from elected council to a non- elected quasi-judicial appellate body. One developer expressed the view that:

Intensification is a pipe dream because nobody, no politician that wants to keep his [sic] job is comfortable with intensification projects. […] then there’s this push-pull. The planners are saying, “tighten it up, tighten it up” and they’re [councillors are]

130 Coventry, detached and townhouses, Remington, Richmond Hill, Homes, 2012, v.3(Mar.), p.42. 131 Hampshire Mews, stacked and back-to-back townhouses, Heathwood, Richmond Hill, Homes, 2013, v.9(Sept.), p.56, pdf p. 64.

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saying “yeah, but if we tighten it up we’ve got to have more of these corners and backyards being developed and we have to take the political flak, we don’t want to do that.” So, you’ve got this whole dichotomy (D13).

Another challenge with achieving compact residential form is the pressure from some developers to offer mid and low rise housing products in areas identified for the highest density development. The Regional Municipality of York (2015) reported nine applications for reduced densities, generally to permit townhouses in areas envisioned for apartments, or what interview respondents described as “downzonings”132 in three municipalities: Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan. The report takes a strong stance in support of the long-range vision for higher density transit oriented development, stating that density reductions react to short-term market conditions, and “once a development is built [at] a lower density, the future residential intensification opportunity is lost (York, 2015, p. 3-4). One developer similarly acknowledged downzonings as a disconnect between short-term industry timelines and long-range municipal timeframes, and yet in contrast to the planning report, the developer faces pressure to generate profits sooner rather than later: “What’s the point in launching a 25-storey tower that’s going to take you eight years to sell? Where you can launch stacked towns and sell them in a weekend” (D14). Developers recognized the planning logic of putting high rises in growth centres and along the transit corridors, but density has to be saleable and profitable: “Density is great. A developer will tell you that density is great. But density - you got to balance that with what can be absorbed” (D14). Developers also identified development charges for infrastructure, and cash- in-lieu of parkland as deterrents to high-rise development. Recent legislative changes have eased parkland provision requirements to reduce developers’ costs when building suburban high-rise, but the question of market demand remains. Townhouses are popular with buyers and “where [developers] are making all their money,” but “of course the problem with this product is that it’s not a transit-supportive product (P04). Although rising prices increase demand for smaller parcels and higher density housing types, developers found that more buyers are willing to tradeoff detached for multifamily townhouses, but there are limits to demand for suburban high-

132 The term “downzoning” refers to a development application for lower density than designated in planning policies or secondary plans, and does not necessarily mean a literal application to change the zoning, because in some municipalities, areas are designated for high density through plans but are not “pre-zoned” in order to allow for more flexibility and negotiation in the block planning and/or development application processes. This process is distinct from most American planning contexts, see Sorensen & Hess, 2015.

184 rise units. While potentially more compact and dense than detached houses, townhouses are not perceived as providing the densities required to support public transit service.

Practitioners characterized development patterns as increasingly compact in residential areas, if not as high-density as some would envision, but falling short of “complete” in terms convenient access to public transit and thus workplaces, shops, and services due to continual separation of land uses, low-density non-residential uses and the perpetuation of dispersed and car-oriented suburban patterns. Advertisements characterized new communities, not as a compromise but displaying the best of both urbanism and suburbanism. While some housing producers expressed frustration over limits to suburban change, they also expressed excitement over new possibilities of shaping emergent urbane suburbanism:

I think we’re doing a really good job at being seen as being urban progressive. I like to joke and say like, you know, we’re trying to represent urbanization in a suburban setting. What can that look like? It’s a really undefined concept yet at this point (C05).

I turn now to a detailed look at a new greenfield area that exemplifies contemporary best practices in planning compact, complete communities and is advertised as offering the best of both suburban and urban worlds.

5.6 Mount Pleasant case study: Planning for a compact and complete greenfield community

Mount Pleasant is a new greenfield area currently being built out across 870 hectares (2,100 acres) on the edge of the City of Brampton, northwest of the City of Toronto. The Mount Pleasant community extends north from a commuter rail (GO train) station that was previously functioning as park-and-ride. Mount Pleasant is the Toronto region’s new leading demonstration project in new urbanism, TOD, and smart growth influenced design. Local planners are frequently asked to show the community to groups from other locations and the group of professionals (CanU) who established The Charter for Canadian Urbanism brought delegates to Mount Pleasant as part of their 2014 conference on “Cities at the Edge: Urbanizing Suburbia in the Regional City.” Planners and councillors said that Mount Pleasant was working to change the image of Brampton from a suburb to successful, innovative place, for example: “Mount Pleasant is so important because it shows a different face of Brampton” (P13). Mount Pleasant’s plan reflects the regional goals for compact, complete communities, and the advertisements

185 demonstrate that qualities like walkability, and transit-access are marketable. One councillor described the community as: “it’s just nice. It’s close to everything. It feels like it’s far away, but you’re very, very close to everything else in town” (C06).

The planning process initiated in 2004 involved the formation of a landowners group133 who worked with the municipal planners to establish the Secondary Plan, in consultation with the public and other local agencies such as conservation and transit authorities. The Mount Pleasant Secondary Plan (2006) outlines the vision, objectives and detailed land use policies for the area. The vision for Mount Pleasant is for “a transit-oriented community that promotes environmental sustainability and superior community design” (p. 7). The plan emphasizes the development of a compact, complete community with a variety of housing types, the restoration of local ecosystems, establishment of an interconnected natural heritage system, and the facilitation of local transit, cycling, and pedestrian routes to the commuter rail station. Although the Plan envisions a predominantly residential form, it requires the establishment of mixed use nodes including retail, institutional, and live-work units (where residential use is enabled on the second storey above a commercial use). The initial phase of development included public, private partnerships to established the “Mount Pleasant Village,” adjacent to the commuter rail station. The village area contains a two-storey elementary school, library, public square ringed by small- scale retail, live-work, and stacked townhouses. Additional public investments from various levels of government produced a highly landscaped public square in the village, which housing producers acknowledged would not have been possible in a typical financing scenario.

Mount Pleasant developments were advertised as having the best of both urban and suburban, traditional and contemporary attributes. For example, Centretown is advertised as “a neighbourhood that truly offers the best of both worlds” where buyers can find “urban-style amenities with a charming community atmosphere.”134 Newtowns advertised that buyers can

133 The Mount Pleasant landowners group was primarily comprised of developer/homebuilding companies. P15 attributed the relatively smooth planning process to one developer’s leadership in this landowners group. The importance of negotiation between developers and planners is a distinctive feature of planning in the Toronto region (Sorensen & Hess, 2015). Landowner groups also work out various land and/or financial swaps to help balance out the site development costs and benefits, so that one developer is not disproportionately giving up developable land designated for a school, park, or other public benefit (or amenities that are marketable by all developers). 134 Centretown, townhouses, Primont, Mount Pleasant, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2014, v. 22(3), pdf p. 42.

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“live connected; live natural; live urban.”135 Advertisements emphasized the planning and design of Mount Pleasant, which draw on, but go beyond new urbanism. For example,

The design premise aimed to build a community that was fully connected to everything a modern family would need nearby. The design brief was to create a place where the most common needs of modern living could be accessed in a five minute walk.136

Inspired by the concepts embraced by New Urbanism, The Neighbourhoods of Mount Pleasant is a forward-thinking, pedestrian-friendly community with a major greenbelt, parks, trails, woodlands and wildlife habitat perfect for every family that loves the great outdoors.137

At The Neighbourhoods, [the developers] have taken the concept of New Urbanism to the next level.138

Advertisements for Upper Mount Pleasant advertised the community’s balancing of nature and city and emphasized the importance of greenspace, not only for human use, but for restoring habitat linkages in the urbanizing region:

Upper Mount Pleasant is a community that has abundant natural areas and green corridors, which are vital to the sustainability of native plants and wildlife within an increasingly urbanized setting. It is this balance of nature and city, of environmental concerns and community interests, that have helped make the development such a success 139

Retail in the village and mixed-use commercial-based nodes throughout the plan area are advertised as offering “everything […] at your fingertips.”140 All of the Mount Pleasant developments advertised during the sampling period advertised proximity to the GO commuter rail station. For example,

135 Newtowns, stacked townhouses, Primont, Mount Pleasant, Brampton, online. 136 Mount Pleasant North, detached, back-to-backs, townhouses, Mattamy, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2016, v. 24(6), p.39. 137 The Neighbourhoods of Mount Pleasant, detached and townhouses, Rosehaven & Townwood Brampton, Homes, 2013, v.7(July/Aug.), p. 80. 138 The Neighbourhoods of Mount Pleasant, detached and townhouses, Rosehaven & Townwood, Brampton, Homes, 2013, v.10(Oct.), p. 74. 139 Upper Mount Pleasant, detached, semis, townhouses, Paradise, Brampton, Homes, 2013, v.9(Sept.), p.68. 140 The Neighbourhoods of Mount Pleasant, detached and townhouses, Rosehaven & Townwood, Brampton, Homes, 2015 07(July/Aug.), p72.

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Commuters love the ease of getting around the GTA with Highways 410 and 407 a short drive away, while non-drivers can easily access the nearby Mount Pleasant GO Station.141

Live at The Neighbourhoods and you really can leave the car at home.142

One of the developments had no mention of highways at all. Local bus transit was advertised by eight developments, and four advertised biking for either leisure or daily needs. All developments advertised the ability to walk either for leisure or daily needs. There is a high level of continuity between the planning vision and developer’s advertised image.

Interview respondents involved in the planning process expressed pride in the successes of Mount Pleasant, especially transit integration and habitat restoration amounting to 360 acres forming a “green spine” of natural heritage across the community (D03; D05; D15; P13; P14; P15; C07). As distinct from Cornell and other new urbanist greenfield developments in the region, the adjacency of the commuter rail station has resulted in strong planning emphasis on transit. The City of Brampton committed to running buses through the community early on, and the developer’s group contributed two hybrid buses as part of their development impact fee negotiation (D05). Urban design on site intentionally separates blocks to incorporate pedestrian connections through the community towards the village and station (P14).

In terms of challenges, or lessons learned for other areas, housing producers identified struggling small-scale retail in the village, lower residential densities than originally planned for the village area near the station, and in general more cars than residential parking spaces. One councillor described the village retail as suffering because the train track divides the parking lot from the village and train passengers are not directed through the retail space before reaching their cars (C07). Practitioners expressed concern about the viability of live-work units. They reported uses like nail salons, tanning salons, variety stores, and office uses that do not require foot traffic customers as the primary active storefronts. From a developer’s perspective, live-work, “just doesn’t work” (D03).

141 Mount Pleasant Meadows, detached and semis, Starlane, Brampton, online. 142 The Neighbourhoods of Mount Pleasant, detached and townhouses, Rosewood & Townhaven, Brampton, Homes, 2013, v.3(Mar.), p.85.

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Planners originally envisioned potential for high-density apartment buildings overlooking a town square near the station, but the developer insisted that high-density apartment units would not sell. A negotiation process resulted in the building of four-storey stacked condominium townhouses and live-work units instead. The developer reported slower sales than they were accustomed to, even with those medium-density units. For the developer, market demand is the test of a planning vision:

when we hear the municipality saying ‘oh you’ve got to do this, and this is the right location,’ why did it take me over a year to sell 100 units overlooking the GO train? You can almost roll out of your bed in your pajamas into the GO train [laughter], and I couldn’t sell them. People didn’t want them. Why? Because if they wanted an apartment, they wouldn’t move to the most westerly part of the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] […] they would move to Mississauga or Toronto or some other urban place that has other things: restaurants, clubs, everything that a younger set would want, not some almost-rural location […] Sure, it would be nice to see some towers and all that. But, they’d be empty (D03).

One of the municipal planners described the result as not what they initially envisioned but it was “fine” and “at least we got something” more than detached houses (P15). Although rising prices increase demand for smaller units and higher density housing types, developers observed that buyers are not always willing to tradeoff expectations of detached housing in suburban locations.

More cars than space to park them is an emerging challenge in new compact developments, even in transit-oriented Mount Pleasant. The street grid in Mount Pleasant is intentionally tight with some back laneways and townhouse condominium developments built on private roads, which have narrower right-of-way requirements. Smaller lots and houses mean more single-car garages and smaller driveways, which is causing problems for parking (P14). Residents have reportedly called the municipality to complain about receiving tickets for parking on Mount Pleasant’s streets. One councillor responds by asking residents how many cars they have, asking: “Were you aware when you bought into the village that that was a single car, two-at-best community?” (C06). In the councillor’s opinion, the marketing materials needed to be clearer about the parking limitations. While densities near the train station are not as high as envisioned, overall the community is regarded as a more compact development form than the historical norm for Brampton. The struggles with retail in Mount Pleasant further confirm the findings of Grant and Perrott (2012) that planning for small-scale and live-work retail does little to impact the broader commercial landscape and consumer shopping preferences. There are few non-service-based

189 employers in the community, so for many residents it remains a commuter suburb or bedroom community. The efforts to integrate local bus transit with city-wide bus rapid transit and the regional commuter rail network demonstrate best practices in planning and design; however, the issues with parking reveal that households still desire or require multiple vehicles. Both P13 and C07 said that the popularity of Mount Pleasant represented a case of “if you build it they will come.” In terms of the transit infrastructure, however, if you build it, residents still may not take it. Further study as the community completes build out could consider ridership trends and survey residents about whether need for multiple cars relates to the lack of transit options to their destinations, or preferences for driving.

Figure 5.3: Mount Pleasant billboard by commercial node (Source: author photo).

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5.7 In-between suburbanisms, car-cramming, and the limits of density as destiny

The findings support interpretations in the literature about Canadian suburban areas reflecting a character “in-between” urbanism and suburbanism. Contemporary housing advertisements continue to sell the Garden City-influenced message of the best of both worlds, while practitioners in interviews are more cautious about the pastiche of results from a decade of implementing the Growth Plan’s compact city approach. The practitioner perspectives on the successes and challenges reported in this paper support the government-appointed Advisory Panel for the Growth Plan update finding “that implementation of Growth Plan policies to focus development in existing urban areas and develop more compact communities is showing mixed results so far” (2015, p. 26, emphasis added). Practitioners characterize the region as generally becoming increasingly compact in newly built out residential developments, but those new neighbourhoods are situated within an established built form of functionally separated land uses and persistently low-density retail and employment areas, which practitioners state are especially not transit-supportive, thus perpetuating car-dependency. What practitioners describe is a boost in residential densities within a dispersed suburban landscape. Using the terms used by practitioners, this emergent suburbanism could be characterized as “squished suburbanism.” In a related vein, Roy-Baillargeon (2018) described the trend as “concentrating dispersion.”

The Toronto region suburbs exhibit properties of increasingly clustered, of dense housing, yet in a dispersed built fabric. Examining the Toronto region using Walks’ (2012a) Lefebvrean dialectic to consider the interacting discourses of urbanism and suburbanism, the region exhibits a mix of jobs and people, but it is at a coarse or high-level, maintaining potentially long distances from work. In terms of functionality, alongside new infrastructure investments in commuter rail, subway, light and bus rapid transits, car-reliance in the suburban region remains entrenched, even in transit-oriented neighbourhoods, exacerbating the old issues of traffic congestion and producing new problems related to parking in more compact neighbourhoods.

Contributing to the wider response to Walks’ (2015) call to consider the relationships between automobility and urban transformations, the perspective of practitioners illustrate some of the emerging contradictions and conflicts with planning strategy to densify the auto-city. The impacts on parking and traffic were the primary challenges that interviewees identified with

191 increased residential density. Although planners reported concerns about higher density housing perceived by residents as “squashed” into existing neighbourhoods, it is unclear that what is happening in the Toronto region amounts to the fears expressed in the UK over “town- cramming” (Breheny, 2001). Demographic trends towards reduced household size may offset some of the population gains, even if residential densities increase (Boyko & Cooper, 2011), which would also reduce concerns about crowding in general. Car-cramming, however, does appear to be a growing concern across the Toronto region as traffic congestion is a mounting quality of life concern, and compact neighbourhoods lack parking sufficient for residents’ cars. Relph (2014) has characterized traffic issues in the Toronto region as an old problem, but one that remains “persistently unsolved” (p. 117). Filion (2015) has suggested that if regions implement recentralization strategies alongside quality public transit connections in regions characterized by dispersed suburbanism “while largely avoiding confrontation with the interests, values and lifestyles” of those attached to the dispersed model, then over time a “concentrated public transit-oriented realm” could be superimposed on dispersed suburbanism (p. 639). The car-cramming and traffic issues reported by practitioners, however, demonstrate a confrontation between densifying suburban residential areas and the dispersed realm. In Lefebvrean terms, the forces of suburbanism and the regime of automobility are in constant co-presence with the forces of urbanism and the regime of densification, which produces the contradiction of car-cramming.

The paper’s findings align with Grant’s (2011) insights that many Canadian regions “show a kind of in-between character: not quite city, not quite suburb” (p. 205); however, in Grant’s study planners pointed to developer and consumer resistance to densification as limiting the production of more new urbanist developments. As housing prices have risen over time, there has been a shift in the production and consumption of housing in suburban locations. My study finds that developers are producing denser, if still many ground-related and primarily residential neighbourhoods; and yet, practitioners continue to characterize the resultant suburban forms and ways of life as having an in-between character. If the “blame” so-to-speak for the continued influence of the logics of suburbanism and automobility can no longer be so readily placed on developers and consumers, then perhaps the “problem” lies not the implementation of the compact city approach, but in the limitations built into the compact city, “transit-supportive,” densification-as-destiny approach itself? The policy and practitioner discourse about densification, transit-supportive/oriented development, and compact form structures the field of

192 policy possibilities in a particular way that makes densification the solution to a range of issues related to, but also beyond the influence of planning including transportation, public transit provision, land use separation, employer and retailer preferences, politics, and lifestyles. The approach places high responsibility on developers for producing required “transit-supportive” densities, following which transit service can be put into place, and then residents can make alternative mobility choices. Mees (2010) warned that this reliance on change in the built form necessitates waiting a long time before transit service can be substantially improved, and transit policy changes can be made much more readily than urban form. Bourne (2001) argued that

[r]esidential density, then, is not the crucial question (although it is obviously relevant) in planning new suburban areas. Rather, the issues are the mix of uses, declining non- residential densities, and the lack of strategic coordination between housing and other land uses in ways that facilitate service provision, conservation and transit use (p. 28)..

In other words, all of the other factors captured in the policy term “complete community” are as important as density; and yet, density and intensification targets are the main policy “levers” (P02) or “core indicators” of the Growth Plan (MMAH, 2015). Rather than focus on density, Mees (2010) advocates for strong public commitment to the provision of a well-networked transit system that serves employment clusters across the spectrum of densities. The recent updates to the Growth Plan have amended the definition of “compact built form” to include language about a “well-connected network” of transit and active transportation. At the same time the policies have doubled-down on the compact city approach by increasing the density and intensification targets. Emerging issues with car-cramming may necessitate the promotion of transit planning to levels on par with density targets. The planning perspective that particular housing types and destinations are not “transit-supportive” enough may eventually be re- evaluated in the political and public sphere as the cost of strengthening transit networks in low- density areas, may begin to outweigh the costs and frustrations of traffic congestion and parking constraints.

Practitioners characterize the case study neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant as a success by many measures of a compact, complete community and advertisements demonstrate that the planning principles are considered marketable and desirable. The impacts of efforts to design the urban form with pedestrian pathways and shortcuts through the neighbourhood and establish transit routes early on are worth examining through follow-up study as the community continues to be

193 built out. To date, however, practitioners describe an area that is primarily a residential commuter suburb with more cars than can be parked.

To be clear, my purpose is not to prematurely dismiss the planning efforts, nor to champion unchecked low-density development; rather, practitioner perspectives illustrate how particular types of solutions, such as emphasizing residential intensification and densification, generate new challenges. Since planning in the Toronto region has a history of applying smart growth and new urbanism principles, the findings presented here can act as lessons learned for other regions considering implementing residential intensification and density targets. While a glossy representation of the best of both worlds offers a tried-and-true sales pitch for higher density housing in an increasingly expensive region, the dispersed built fabric and suburban ways of life prove difficult to urbanize when density is destiny, and the logics and broader patterns of the autocity remain in place.

Chapter 6 Dissertation Conclusion

Reinventing the Suburbs: New Myths and Old Realities? Continuity-Discontinuity in Suburban Discourse

6.1 Old and new “myths” in discourse, returning to Bourne with Lefebvre

“Reinventing the suburbs: Old myths and new realities” was the title of an article written by Toronto-based professor of urban geography and planning, Larry Bourne, in 1996. Bourne argued that persistent traditional images and attitudes about the suburbs required a reinvention of terminology and understanding of the suburban experience because “the forms, functions and images of newly-urbanized spaces at the margin are different from those of the past, and more unequal, as are the societies they mirror” (p. 181). To conclude this dissertation, I flip his twenty- year old title around to argue that contemporary narratives about the Toronto region reflect various continuities and discontinuities in the suburban discourse. New urbane myths are told about compact neighbourhoods, while old suburban myths are invoked with a positive spin to market detached homes as “estates,” or negatively to cast detached housing as “sprawl” and thereby frame higher density housing developments as new and improved. Higher density housing construction and neighbourhood compaction mark new realities, and yet practitioners report the persistence of old realities, such as car-dependence. The co-presence and tension between both new and old can be captured in Lefebvre’s (1996) dialectic of “continuity- discontinuity” (p. 106). Lefebvre argued that ongoing global processes and transformations in social relations produce spatial change, and the resulting city is the dialectical synthesis of both old and new forms, structures, and functions.

The contemporary challenge for urban theory, broadly speaking, is to resituate the suburbs from secondary or niche considerations to an integral part of theorists’ explanations of socio-spatial expansion and change. Keil (2018) argues for “writing urban theory from the outside in” (p. 46) and bringing the suburbs into the “dominant geography of theory” (p. 58). He further asserts: “It

194 195 is difficult for urban studies to concede that most urbanization is now suburbanization which creates a theoretical conundrum” (p. 58). Some of the central questions emerging in contemporary urban theory aiming to re-think the suburbs include: By what social processes are suburban places constructed? Why do suburbs take particular forms and shapes? What are the “urban” and “suburban,” and with increasing complexity and centrality beyond the urban core is the urban-suburban distinction useful anymore (in terms of both built form and ways of life)? To what extent can we speak of “post-suburbia” or “post-suburbanization”? For planning theory in particular, theories re-thinking suburban expansion and change will need to ask: What is the discursive content of contemporary planning policies, and what values do those reveal? What are the practices and roles of planners (and other actors) involved in the production of suburban space? What opportunities and constraints do planners encounter in their efforts to “urbanize the suburbs” (e.g. politically, economically, culturally)? What new (and persistent) ethical dilemmas do planners face with increased suburban complexity?

My study offers insights into both these broad questions for urban theory and the more focused questions for planning theory. In this concluding chapter I address these questions alongside a discussion about how contemporary discourses represent various dialectical continuities and discontinuities with, or away from, suburban myth narratives. I return to Walks’ Lefebvrean (2012a) interpretation of the dialectic of urbanism-suburbanism to consider how discourse repeated in the planning and development narratives in each of my research papers map onto this dialectic and discursively frame the suburban as “old” and the urbane as “evolved” and “new.” I then consider the uses and limitations of regarding contemporary discourses as “post”-suburban or part of “post”-suburbanization processes. I discuss the policy implications of the dissertation findings and propose my next steps for research on the topic of urbanizing the suburbs. I conclude by reflecting on the role of planners in shaping the emerging discourses, place images, built forms, and ways of life in the aspirational, urbanizing suburbs.

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6.2 Arguments and contributions

6.2.1 Dialectics of discourse: the temporalities of urbanism-suburbanism

In this dissertation I have examined discourses of suburban change and transition in the Toronto region according to different housing producers (planners, municipal councillors, and developers) and the place images they produce in and through planning policies, advertisements, and interview narratives. Addressing the urban theory question about the processes through which suburban places constructed, each empirical paper has demonstrated various discursive strategies to reinvent the place image of the suburbs as grown-up, evolved urbane places, or less ambitiously in some mid-to-lower-density developments, as having the best of both urbanism and suburbanism. The discursive production of new-build suburban place images reveals frequently invoked pairs of terms that relate to the properties of the urbanism and suburbanism dialectic. These discourses work to mediate ideologies (of planning, housing markets, and suburbs) dialectically in and through relations among texts, moments, and processes. Table 6.1 puts a discourse analysis spin on Walks’ (2012a) Lefebvrean illustration of properties of urbanism and suburbanism that are in constant interaction and “simultaneous constant co-present productive tension” along the dimensions of centrality, difference, and functionality (p. 1479). While a table has the representational limit of freezing into static columns, what I view as dynamic, relationally interactive processes in motion, the table is still useful for illustrating how practitioner discourses mediate the ideologies of urbanism and suburbanism, and how practitioners talk about the emergent “in-between” syntheses of the dialectic in built forms and ways of life. In my study I find that the properties discursively associated with centrality are the morphological characteristics of clustered vs. dispersed and high vs. low-density/building heights. In terms of difference or juxtaposition are the housing type distinctions between attached/connected housing vs. detached. The predominant discourses of functionality describe the tensions between mobility alternatives (especially public transit) and other mobility options and car-dependence. I also find strong narratives about temporality that can be mapped onto the urbanism-suburbanism dialectic, which I have added in Table 6.1 as a type of fourth dimension to Walks’ (2012a) schematic illustration of centrality, difference and functionality. I add temporality, acknowledging Lefebvre’s interests in the relationships between “multiple temporalities and the interplay of time and space” (Kofman & Lebas, 1996, p. 48), which he developed through “rhythmanalysis:” (1996, p. 228) the analysis of rituals, codes and relations

197 acted out in the urban space of everyday life (Lefebvre’s spatial practices). Policy, advertising, and interview discourses set up a series of dialectical temporal tensions between urbanism and suburbanism including: new vs. old, modern/contemporary/evolved vs. traditional/passé, young/next generation vs. older/past generation, and where the types of high-density developments and infrastructures associated with urbanity required longer-term investments vs. shorter term profits.

Dialectics of Discourse Dimensions (Post-sub)Urbanism In-between & aspiring Suburbanism towards post-suburbanism

Centrality Clustered Clusters within broadly Dispersed dispersed pattern

High (-rise, -density) Mid (-rise, -density) Low (-rise, -density)

Difference Connected, Attached Attached within private, Detached separated nodes

Functionality Mobility options, Some limited mobility Car-dependence especially public alternatives transit

Temporality New Aspirational Old

Modern, Contemporary Traditional (but also New, but also “best of both positively advertised as worlds” “established & elite”)

Evolved, Denser form “Squished-in” residential Passé, disparaged form density, “growing pains” (but also positively advertised as “estate”)

Young, youth, future Young generation required Older, past generations generations for shift: investors subjects/target market; suburban re-inventor subjects.

Longer-term “I can’t sell it fast enough:” Shorter-term profits investments timelines of plan vision clash with profit mandate of developers

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Faster movements with Car-cramming, stuck in Slow traffic jams mobility options traffic in densifying, yet dispersed suburban form Table 6.1: The dialectics urbanism-suburbanism discourse, building on Walks (2012a, p .1479) with my addition of the temporality dimension, and the column in-between.

What work do these discourses of temporality do? Discursively associating conventional suburban development, or the “suburban myth” with the past and as passé, allows the new-build densified suburbs to appear as new, improved, trendy, and urbane. Citing one of Bourdieu’s phrases about different and time, Mathews (2010) writes “‘[t]o introduce difference is to produce time.’ This practice relates to the cycle of styles, where naming a new style marks the preceding styles as passé.” (p. 199). If what is regarded as problematic becomes discursively framed as old and out-dated, then it allows for new ideas, discourses and development forms to emerge as a natural evolution.

While urban theorists such as Keil (2018) and Phelps (2015) emphasize pushing past the urban and suburban as distinct dichotomies, policies and advertisements often retain these distinctions. Why might practitioners find this division useful while theorists increasingly do not? In planning policy visions and housing advertisements in the Toronto region where the condo-boom has re- invigorated longer-standing valorization of urban living, policies promote the idea of “urbanity” or a “new kind of urban” as a positive signifier representing the desired future beyond “suburban sprawl.” The discourse of urbanity is also used to signal the acknowledgement that municipalities beyond the city, while interconnected with the metropolitan region are growing, complex, and do not fit the mold of the “suburban myth;” in this way, “urbanizing the suburbs” is a discursive shorthand for growing complexity. Developers rebrand higher density developments at the edge of suburban municipalities as “urbane,” and representing the “future” of development to lend appeal to new housing forms. The discourse of new opportunities and new on-trend forms also discursively opens up new urban spaces in and through which capital can flow as the forms, dynamics, and images of classical suburbanization become barriers to accumulation (see Section 1.1). A place image discursively produced as at the forefront of housing and neighbourhood planning and design trends make newly developed places appear safe for investments and for the intertwined financial and cultural speculations of developers and homebuyers. Interviews with practitioners allow for the more nuanced views to emerge where

199 the realities of “in-between” built environments and ways of life come into conversation with the complexities that interest urban theorists.

In the first empirical paper (Chapter Three: Not Your Parents’ Suburban Home: Planning and Marketing Discourses on Homeownership of Stacked Townhouses in the “Grown Up” Suburbs around Toronto, Canada) I examine the emerging housing market of stacked and back-to-back townhouses. I find that stacked and back-to-back townhouses are becoming a new and popular trend that is currently falling under the radar of official housing construction data gathered by Statistics Canada and CMHC, but is revealed through interviews and residential advertisements. I demonstrate the intertwined naturalizing discourses of young adult “maturity” through homeownership, stacked townhouses as “graduated” suburban housing, and the “evolution” and “growing up” of the suburbs into more urbane localities. Young adults are positioned as homeowner-investor subjects and suburban-reinventor subjects, while taking on the burdens of indebtedness in the context of a financialized housing industry. The planning and packaging of stacked townhouses reveals discursive tensions between connected and detached housing, suburban and urban homes, traditional and modern design, and what producers perceive as desirable by young and old prospective homebuyers. While scholars have demonstrated the significance of single-detached houses for defining the image of the suburbs and establishing household class status (Dowling, 1996; Eyles, 1987), my research contributes by demonstrating shifts in discourse about desirable suburban housing through the policy and promotion of these new, dense housing types.

Why stacked townhouse developments as a particular built form at this moment in Toronto? The emergence of stacked townhouses first relates to housing and financial market conditions including low mortgage rates, high demand for homeownership, rising house prices, and eroding affordability of detached housing across the region. The housing market response by developers is to offer condominium tenure for small units in mid-rise buildings that can be promoted as urban lofts, or brownstones and thus an urbane and culturally appealing, yet still the “ground related” housing that buyers have come to expect in suburban locations as a tradeoff for distance from the core. Planning policies promoting intensification and densification, and some recently updated plans specifically mention stacked townhouses as key for providing housing options, which enable and ease the build-out of these projects. Furthermore, stacked townhouses represent the extension of “condo-ism” (Rosen & Walks, 2014) as a logic for development

200 beyond the city of Toronto into surrounding municipalities, in a form that is lower density than the condo apartments of the core, but still higher rise than the detached housing that has come to signify the dominant form of expansion into the suburban municipalities arcing around the city.

Why is the “evolved” and “urbane” suburban house attached, “contemporary,” and “modern” in architectural style instead of detached and traditional? Toronto’s decades of constructing “seas of conservative, gabled Victorianesque housing that signal more or more less ‘vulgar’ subscriptions to family values and privatism” (Keil, 2018, p. 113) are giving way to different emergent styles of housing. In general, significant shifts in architectural style alongside changes in planning and broader culture represent a turning away from something perceived as a failure and the pursuit of a new solution. In pared down terms, modernism in planning and architecture illustrated discontent with the overcrowded traditional city that lacked modern sanitation, and a redirection of public confidence towards experts for designing a new approach that was bold, functional, efficient, and could provide affordable housing with improved infrastructure servicing and appliances for the masses (Archer, 2008; Curtis 1996; Filion, 1999). This led to both the towers in the park high rise housing complexes in inner city and (now) inner suburban areas like Toronto, St. Louis, Paris, and Stuttgart, and simple, standardized bungalow ranch house subdivisions popular in many North American suburbs (King, 1984; Lancaster, 1985; Urban, 2012). Critiques of modernism included elitism, the destruction of the traditional city, and the concentration of poverty and social issues (See also Section 1.6.2). The manifestations of postmodernism in planning and architecture included a nostalgia for the traditional city and a historically informed “authentic” architecture, aesthetic populism over high culture, glorification of consumption represented in the grandeur of shopping malls, and a pastiche of multiple voices and styles over expert-driven approaches (See Section 1.6.3; Filion, 1999; Harvey, 1990; Jameson, 1984; Klotz, 1984). New urbanism, while in many ways an extension of postmodern nostalgia, also signaled a return to the physical planning valued by modernists (Grant, 2006).

The “breaks” between these periods have been more like gradual shifts than clear ruptures, and changes in discourse and aesthetics have been be more apparent than underlying changes in political or economic logics (Harvey, 1990; Filion, 1999). In terms of aesthetics and architecture, the populist “sprawl” of suburbia since the 1970s has been heavily critiqued for ugliness and environmental damage. Since the borrowing of “Victorianesque” historical styles represented post-modernism’s turning away from modernism, then the return to modern style can be

201 interpreted as a counter-turn, bringing back attractive design where there was ugliness, and density where there was “sprawl.” Advertisements in Mount Pleasant, and some planners, described an urbanism that moved beyond “new urbanism.” In the Toronto region, where the condo boom has revalorized high-density and urbane living, neo-traditional new urbanism can appear quaint as policy visions seek bolder and modern design-oriented solutions. Modern architectural style also became known as the “international” style, mobilized as an aesthetic throughout global cities, and adopted in aspirational (post-)suburban municipalities establishing new centralities, which I discuss in the second empirical paper.

In the second empirical paper (Chapter Four: Aesthetic Governmentality and the Post- Suburbanization of Planning and Development Discourses in the Toronto Region) I examined the discursive place image production of world-class urbanity in the planning and marketing of high-density suburban nodes and corridors, with a closer look at two new-build downtown urban growth centres: Markham Centre and Vaughan Metropolitan Centre. I used Ghertner’s (2015) concept of “aesthetic governmentality” to consider how aesthetic logics come to supersede functional land use zoning to produce high-density nodes and corridors as both locally and globally competitive. I illustrated the discursive importance placed on practitioners (especially young planners) as aesthetic adjudicators and placemakers. The discursive tensions revealed in this paper lie between the aspirational place image of a competitive urban centre capable of attracting an exclusive set of retailers and condo buyers on the one hand, and the planning goal of more equitable and “complete” communities on the other. I argued that the aesthetic governmentality lens can inform our understanding of the political-ideological aspects of post- suburbanization processes. In the efforts to urbanize the Toronto suburbs, there exists a strong discursive emphasis on aesthetics and design to attract young, knowledge economy workers towards the production of a competitive economy Studies examining creative city strategies in Toronto, and elsewhere, have pointed to the multiple factors relating to the attraction and retention particular residents and workers (Vinodrai, 2014), and to the resultant exclusion of lower income and other marginalized people (Catugal, Leslie & Hii, 2009; Lehrer, 2013b). Moving into the future, suburban municipalities will need to address the challenge of inclusion in the face of eroding housing affordability.

Studies of place image have shown how post-industrial cities have been rebranded as world- class, youthful knowledge-based economy cities, and my research shows how aspirational post-

202 suburban places are also being rebranded with similar strategies, while replacing the disparaged image of “sprawl” instead of an industrial place image. This contribution examines the place image production of aspirational edge municipalities, whereas the literature has largely focused on the re-branding exercises of city cores (especially former industrial cities). It foregrounds the role of aesthetics and urban design as part of the planning processes producing new centralities. This helps furnish understandings for urban theory, on the role of discourse in the making of new centralities. Aesthetic governmentality has facilitated the establishment of an image production industry specializing in producing visual renderings of urbanized suburbs that work to generate consent for the new vision of a densified urban edge where condominium forms are presented as alternatives to detached housing. The political economy of this image-production industry is worth exploring through further research. In addition to the practices of marketing firms designing advertisements for housing developers, subsequent inquiry could consider the demand for planners to possess high-level design competencies, and the impact on Canadian planning curriculum.

Why the emphasis on (modern, urbane, and globally symbolic) aesthetics now? Grant (2006) argues that beauty has always been easier to implement than equity through planning and development. While social goals are embedded in planning policies, they require far more integration with broader political and economic processes and change than urban design. Planners and housing developers do not always have the tools, understanding, or time on the job to implement equity goals, and political will is not necessarily present (nor approval from those in power at development companies). Aesthetic change offers distinction from the past, challenges established ideas about what the suburbs comprise and look like, and adds value for some buyers; and yet, aesthetic reinvention represents low-hanging fruit while leaving intact larger-scale challenges for society, politics, lifestyles, the environment, and suburban expansion, such as those addressed in the third paper.

In the third empirical paper (Chapter Five: Building the “Best of Both” Urbanism and Suburbanism? Practitioner Perspectives on the Promises and Challenges of Planning Compact and Complete Communities) I consider how the compact city approach to planning in the region structures the field of possibility for transformation in terms that rely on increased density for bringing about other improvements like transit and other mobility options. While many advertisements characterize new developments as offering the best of both urban and suburban

203 worlds, practitioners describe the outcomes of policy implementation thus far as in between suburbanism and urbanism, but not quite the best of both. Practitioners perceive new problems related to car-cramming and traffic in increasingly compact neighbourhoods with “squished-in” housing, built within the broader context of functional land use separation and car-dependency. The paper explores the discursive tensions between compact and dispersed, complete and incomplete. While policies promote compact urban residential form and other aspects of urban lifestyle and development patterns, they prove limited for densifying other land uses and producing “complete communities.” Practitioner perspectives signal the need for solutions to transit and other aspects of ways of life and built form embedded in the policy concept of “complete communities” that push beyond the compact city approach. As Keil (2018) put it, “[d]ensity as a site-specific quality is almost meaningless if one does not look at the broader societal context and patterns of use as well” (p. 158). While it may be useful within a juridical framework to demonstrate that a numerical measure for density has or has not been met, other important aspects of the planning vision have not been afforded the same policy “teeth” and thus are harder to ensure through implementation. Much of the efforts put into reinventing, retrofitting, or urbanizing the suburbs, across North America and beyond, have to do with densifying new build developments and intensifying already built-up areas through infill. The findings from the Toronto region thus highlight the limits of the compact city approach in general and the need for alternative approaches, and metrics for evaluating implementation.

Overarching the dissertation is the argument that contemporary policies, advertisements and interview narratives are discursively reinventing the image of the suburbs from sprawling, dull and mono-functional non-places to urbane, youthful, high-design, competitive and mixed-use places. Through the dialectical interplay of urbanism and suburbanism, producers invoke discourses of temporality and spatiality to signal the suburban as passé and the urban as the evolved future. In this way, even if realities on the ground may prove resistant to transformation, discursively formed place images of the suburbs represent post-suburban aspirations, and can be considered part of the political-ideological trajectory towards post-suburbanization, which I discuss further below.

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6.2.2 Urbanization, Suburbanization, or Post-suburbanization?

What are the urban and suburban, and is their distinction useful anymore? In this dissertation I have explored and employed these terms while also recognizing their contested and subjective qualities precisely because I am interested in how these concepts, and related ideas about “urbanizing the suburbs,” have come to influence planning and development practice in the swath of municipalities arcing around the City of Toronto. The findings illustrate how the “urban” and “suburban” are mobilized and represented largely in relation to aesthetics, building styles, physical layout or urban design, and the types of mobility options provided to residents; “urbanizing the suburbs” largely rests on improving these elements.

Related to the meaning of these terms is the question: when considering issues related to land, governance and infrastructure in places on metropolitan edges that could be considered “suburban” locations, what are the most useful terms to capture the dynamics and processes at work? I have followed Walks (2012a) in using the terms urbanism and suburbanism when speaking about the dialectically related sociological and morphological aspects of ways of life, lifestyle, and built form. This framework has been a useful heuristic for my study in combination with Harvey’s (1996) “dialectics of discourse;” other researchers have adopted alternate approaches, for example, examining suburban “ways of life” through film, photography, or anthropologically-informed studies of everyday life (e.g. Cizek, 2013; Drummond & Labbé, 2013).

The language used to describe broad processes impacting the suburbs is debated in the literature as suburban areas become more complex, with multiple scales and centralities. Drawing on Lefebvre (1970/2003), Schmid (2018) has argued that all new development is urban and resulting from the forces of urbanization that are not just localized, but rather planetary in scope. Keil (2018) similarly draws on Lefebvre in recognizing the relationship between the urban and suburban, but retains “suburbanization” as a “lens” or “epistemological filter” for placing importance on edge and “in-between” developments and for rethinking or “seeing the urban for what it is: a place of contradiction and spatialized plurality (structured and segregated by state power, market dynamics and private authoritarianism) in which both centrality and peripherality are related values on a continuum and antitheses in a dialectics of ongoing urbanization” (p. 19). In another instance (Keil, 2018) refers to “suburbanization” as a “process of adventurous mixing

205 and reshuffling of the urban,” while cities can become monocultures of the creative class living in condominiums within “safe, sterile, predictable environments” (p. 48). With this latter characterization in mind, perhaps it is city-ifying the suburbs through condo-ism that aspirational municipalities envision in the production of new-build “downtown” urban growth centres, rather than the complexity and spontaneity often associated with the “urban” or how Keil above describes “suburbanization.”

Considering all new development as “urban” and influenced by the same broad processes is useful insofar as economic and cultural processes are global; however, the benefits of big comprehensive theory suffer from the loss of nuance and specificity. Newer-built “suburban” areas of the Toronto metropolitan area, and other large city-regions across North America do have particular histories influenced through different phases and types of spatial fixes than city cores, and thus face some of the same, but also distinct challenges. It is useful to retain a loose and open distinction between urban and suburban, while recognizing emergent “in-between” (sub)urbanisms, and continuing to challenge the negativity associated with the “suburban myth” as new developments are increasingly diverse and complex (and have historically been more so than acknowledged in academia and popular culture). Throughout the dissertation I have found the concept of “post-suburbanization” a useful theoretical approach for capturing the aspirations of planning and development policy and practice in the Toronto region. Phelps (2015) uses the term “post-suburbia” as an umbrella for the debates about suburban change alternatively characterized as the “urbanization of the suburbs.” Phelps and his co-authors have delineated the debates in the literature into three broad categories: 1) arguing whether there has been a temporal break with suburbia of the past; 2) highlighting the geographical and physical differences of new technological hubs and edge cities; and 3) underscoring the political-ideological terrain of suburban change as a constellation of public and private actors converging to produce more urbane suburban forms and ways of life.

I view the contributions of this dissertation on the emergence of urbanity in suburban planning and development discourse as contributing to the conversations in the literature about the political-ideological dimensions of suburban change. My study indicates that discourse about temporality and time remain embedded in the planning and development marketing ideology of the suburbs. My findings are less about taking a position on the question of whether or not there is a clearly demarcated rupture between “suburbia” and “post-suburbia,” but rather demonstrate

206 how temporal discourse is embedded in the ideology of suburban reinvention. Temporal discourses emerge in a range of ways, for example, the emphasis on younger generations in ushering in the urbanization of the suburbs. Discourse about young adults owning stacked townhouses, however, is still very much about homeownership, which is an important continuity in suburban ideology. Densified, urbane and world-class urban growth centres are positioned as modern, contemporary, and even futuristic compared with the outmoded and unattractive “sprawl” of suburbs past. Transit is portrayed positively as a desirable mode of travel for the densified future, and yet transformation in mobility patterns is viewed by practitioners as slow to emerge. Temporal discourses of suburban change are embedded in the policy language, and in professional visioning documents like the Canadian Charter of Urbanism. The discourse posits that we must move forward beyond the sprawl of the past and into the new compact city future.

I recognize and appreciate Phelps’ project of joining together various strands of theory about suburban change under the umbrella of “post-suburbia.” My concern about the how the “post” is used in the literature is that, like the policy and practice discourses, academic discourses can fall into evolutionary terminology, naturalizing what are more accurately political, economic, social, and cultural changes, thus obscuring analysis. In the conclusion of the first empirical paper I discuss critiques of evolutionary discourse in the geography and planning literatures. Lefebvre (1996) too was concerned about evolutionary discourse: “Organicism and its implications, namely the simplifying evolutionism of many historians and the naïve continuism of many sociologists, has disguised the specific features of urban reality” (p. 104). As Buck-Morss (1989) put it: “There is nothing natural about history’s progression” (p.80). As a scholar of suburban change, I have traced the discursive contours of change, and in particular the discursive production of suburban change itself.

Walks (2015) has also raised important flags about the use of “post” as a prefix in theory. His first concern is that it’s a negative signifier that is non-specific about the new urban or suburban forms that emerge in replacement. Second, the “post” in “post-suburbia” can “be incorrectly taken to imply that the contemporary urban structure represents a break from that of high modernism and auto-dependent forms” (p. 15). Harvey (1990) has commented that declaring a time or place as “post” may provide relief for the analyst that something troubling has past, but may not be accurately representing the continuities of discourse and material realities that are maintained alongside the discontinuities. As Lefebvre (1996) highlights, there are both

207 continuities and discontinuities in the social production of urban space, and the spatial production of urban society. My findings indicate that the discourses and aesthetics of place image being produced in the Toronto region to envision and promote higher densities development areas can be conceived of as “post-suburban” in that they aspire to move beyond suburban myths and negative conceptions of sprawl. As Filion (1999) and Harvey (1990) have pointed out, discourse is quicker to change and respond to cultural shifts than underlying economic or political structures and systems. Nonetheless, discourse and image matter in impacting policies and advertisements and dialectically relate to material built forms and experiences of everyday life.

“Post” terminology in suburban theory is most usefully employed in the process-oriented language of “post-suburbanization” (for example in Charmes & Keil, 2015; Wu & Phelps, 2011). In this way the dynamics of change are conceived as part of overarching processes, allowing for continuities and discontinuities, relationships, tensions, and contradictions between the forces of urbanism and suburbanism. In other words, the process framing of “post-suburbanization” can be integrated with dialectical interpretations of urbanism-suburbanism, such as Walks’ (2012a) framework.

6.2.3 “Urbanizing the suburbs” discourse and planning values

The findings in the dissertation also contribute to planning theory literature on planning values, and demonstrate the contemporary importance placed on aesthetic and physical planning in defining planning problems and structuring the field of possibility for planning solutions. There are some common categories of planning values that can be traced through various theories of planning throughout history, including: 1) amenity, beauty, orderliness; 2) conservation, sustainability; 3) democracy, participation, decision-making; 4) efficiency; 5) equity, advocacy; 6) comprehensiveness; health, safety; and 7) economic, strategic planning (Grant 2006a, 2006b; Hodge 2003). These values are often interconnected and some of these rise in popularity at different times in different places, depending on other dominant cultural values and debates at the time.

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The attention to urbanity, framed in the Toronto region as “compact” and “complete communities” reflects, but also attempts to move beyond, wider trends that have dominated North American planning in the past decade under the rubric of the compact city, sustainable development, smart growth, and new urbanism. In the contemporary moment of attention to urbanity and aesthetics, the planning values of economic prosperity, strategic planning, and amenity appear to rise above and attempt to incorporate other values such as equity and environmental protection. A conversation I had while interviewing a councillor illustrates these shifting values and discursive attempts to incorporate some values within the overarching framework of another. The councillor interviewed had held that position for many years described a policy shift from affordability to intensification: “The province has brought forward this term – intensification. Before that, it was affordability. We had to have 25% affordable housing, so that people could afford to buy a home. Now it's intensification” (C02). I followed up by asking: “What precipitated this shift from affordability to intensification? Or what was going on politically that changed?” The councillor responded: “I think the word would be sprawl,” and continued to explain that intensification is supposed to bring about greater affordability through smaller units and providing some incentives for offering a certain percentage of below-market rate units. The belief that attention to sprawl and intensification would generate market-based solutions to affordability are not panning out to the extent the councillor had hoped; despite policy efforts and incentives, “somehow the value of real estate is forever increasing” (C02). What the councillor describes is a script flip, or a discursive reconstruction of a regional problem. Interestingly, when I asked about political change the councillor answered with the word “sprawl,” indicating the power in discourse. How problems are defined, shapes solutions, and “[t]he identification of a problem is intimately linked to the availability of a solution.” (Li, 2007, p. 7). If the regional “problem” is sprawl, or suburban “dullness” or “ugliness” those problems point to the types of densification and aesthetic policy interventions in the Toronto region, but will remain limited for tackling other problems like housing affordability and mobility alternatives.

The dissertation has examined the unfolding place images and visions produced by both planners and councillors (through policies), and developers (through advertisements). Visioning is an important legacy of planning, and will continue to be important in the future. This study has demonstrated how particular visions are discursively constructed as natural and evolutionary,

209 even while they are more accurately the products of cultural and professional planning values, economic forces and political processes. While the ideas of improvement and progression are at the heart of the planning profession, planning needs to further grapple with the potentially contradictory ideas about what a particular vision of progress is for and who will benefit. The values attached to the urban may have radical potential (e.g. Lefebvre 1970/2003; 1996), and yet this study has shown that the aesthetics of urbanity are also readily adopted in the interests of economic progress and competition, which potentially benefit private entities over the broader public interest. While the visions for the UGCs and the images of urbanism displayed in advertisements for high-density developments demonstrate a bolder image than new urbanism’s neotraditionalism, this bolder urbanism is aestheticized as high design and world-class and does not appear to focus on equity goals much more than new urbanism or conventional suburbanism. The emphasis on urbane lifestyles, high-end design, and housing’s function as an investment with exchange value now evident in suburban areas and already demonstrated in the condominium advertising in the city core may, as Lehrer (2012a) suggests, “further alienate us from the idea of dwelling as shelter” (p. 23).

Knox (2008) has described the “enchantment” of the suburbs for aligning with post-war American values, only to be replaced by the disenchantment of “sprawl” as values shifted towards environmental and aesthetic concerns. This has been followed by a more recent American re-enchantment of suburbia through the status value of excessively large, luxurious homes, sold within amenity-rich, themed (e.g. new urbanist, neotraditional, gated) packaged developments that are often private. The dissertation findings about the discursive reinvention of the Toronto region (and similar discourses employed by actors involved in post-suburbanization processes in edge city case studies in the USA, see Phelps, 2015), can be regarded as a distinctly urbane theming or variation on what Knox (2008) calls the re-enchantment of suburbia.143 As urban lifestyles and locations become increasingly desired by younger, middle-class generations (Ley, 1996; Burda, 2014), rebranding the densified suburbs as urbane works to produce the suburbs as attractive (again). While some conventional packaging (old myths) of detached

143 N. Phelps reminded me of Knox’s “re-enchantment of suburbia” idea and suggested I make this connection in our conversations at the After Suburbia conference in November, 2017.

210 developments is still evident throughout the region,144 practitioners report that the emerging trend is for higher density developments and the urban packaging will likely become increasingly common.

6.3 Policy Implications

The Growth Plan updates of 2017 make some important headway towards better integrating growth management planning with transit, climate change, and improving consultation with First Nations. Chapter Five discussed practitioner perspectives on the limitations of the compact city approach. Additional, measurable, and implementable policy metrics beyond the density targets may help achieve communities that are not only compact, but complete. The proposed changes to the Growth Plan increase the minimum intensification target from 40% to 60%, yet the residential-only emphasis remains. Secondly, the density targets for urban growth centres are non-specific on exact mix, and greenfield targets are assessed as an average ratio at the regional municipality scale. This means that the target can still be met at the larger scale despite continued patterns of single use employment areas and residential-only subdivisions. Proposed changes to the Growth Plan would increase the greenfield density target from 50 to 80 residents and jobs per hectare. The changes also, however, allow for more non-residential areas (even prime employment areas) to be taken out of the density calculation, which could limit the general impact of the increase, and intensify the effect of “wasted” and “scattered” (Filion, 2013) islands of high-density residential. In the third empirical paper I discuss how practitioners view the limitations of the compact city framework, and the issues related to traffic and car-cramming emerging from densification, yet in a continually car-oriented environment. Instead of changing the approach, the increased targets Growth Plan updates reinforce and double-down on the

144 Developers explained that some of the new development of detached developments actually reflects approvals from years or even a decade ago. Development in several of the regions including York, were constrained by water and wastewater servicing. Approved developments were therefore ‘on the books’ of the developers and municipalities that are only being constructed now with the extension of required services like the recently developed sewer line to new greenfield areas in East Gwillimbury. Developers paid fees in advance to ‘front end’ the construction of the sewer line and open up their lands. Therefore, while single detached housing is still being constructed in the area, in the context of rising house costs and densification policies, developers expect the trends to shift further into medium and higher density housing products once those previously approved detached developments are built out.

211 compact city approach. Future study will need to examine the implications of this, and continue to explore alternative, affordable means to improve suburban transit service and infrastructure of walking and cycling in the immediate-term, regardless of densities. I affirm the Advisory Panel on the Coordinated Review’s recommendation that “implementing the four plans more effectively and efficiently depends on a more collaborative and coordinated effort involving different levels of government, civil society and the private sector” (2015, pg. 40). Practitioner perspectives highlight the need to continue bringing multiple actors into communication, and especially bringing land use and transit planning into closer coordination.

6.4 Limits of the study and opportunities for future research

This study has focused on the discourse of policy, advertisements, and practitioner perspectives in interview narratives, which has its limits. Future study will need to further assess realities in the “everyday” or “on the ground.” My focus has also been on producer discourses and therefore additional studies examining resident (“consumer”) perspectives will be necessary to fill in the other side of the planning and housing development coin.

Opportunities for my future research include continuing to examine the interface between planning, housing, and urbanism-suburbanisms, with expanded attention to mobility, the public/private dimensions of higher density communities, well-being, and homeownership. In the following section I overview some potential areas for further research extending from this project.

6.4.1 Condominium townhouses and the production of private communities

The type of “urbanized” (sub)urbanism that stacked and back-to-back townhouses will lead to is still unfolding. A potential post-doctoral research project could bring the findings on discourse and practitioner perspectives from this study into an analysis of the built form of condominium and stacked townhouses in the region and the connectivity of these development blocks with surrounding neighbourhoods. While these developments are frequently marketed as “urban towns,” when characteristics of urbanism-suburbanism are operationalized following Walks

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(2012a), how would these new housing forms measure up along the continuum of forces in terms such as connectivity-compartmentalization, multifunctionality-singularity, publicism-privatism and concentration-fragmentation? Would these developments still be considered urbane? Do they constitute the production of new centralities or is “urbanity” merely the packaging for an architecture and urban design trend?

Stacked townhouses require condominium tenure to establish the multiple units per land parcel. In my interviews most developers framed townhouse condominiums positively because more units can be constructed per front foot of serviced street on private roads, which helps generate profits and meet density targets. Condominium format also provides residents with a management structure to negotiate repairs and upgrades that both a councillor and developer described as more difficult in a freehold townhouse scenario. Townhouses have been built for condominium tenure since 1967 when the Ontario Condominium Act enabled them alongside condominium apartments (Grant & Scott, 2012). Suburban condominium townhouses have a history in the Toronto region of attracting young households who expected to build equity in a townhouse before purchasing a single detached house (Skaburskis, 1988). While the CMHC housing construction data does not distinguish stacked and back-to-back townhouses from apartments, data do indicate that of all traditional floor plan townhouses constructed in the region between 1990 and 2016 (105,014), 31% (32,326) are condominiums. Stacked and back- to-back townhouses developed for condominium tenure would increase that number. Mississauga, which borders Toronto’s west side, has by far the most condominium townhouses built since 1990 (11,169 condo townhouses in total, representing and 60% of all townhouses built), followed by Burlington (3,819) and Brampton (3,547) (Source: CMHC, 2017).

With an increase in higher density townhouse developments, there is the potential for an increase in private, condominium developments. Some planners stated that condominium tenure “just made sense” (P16) because of the proximity of units and shared greenspaces. A few planners, on the other hand, expressed concern about enclaving, lost permeability, the visibility of utilities, private waste pick up leading to loss of waste monitoring, and loss of control over interior parks and amenity space provision. These planners were concerned about condominium form affecting street patterns especially when there is only one private drive in and out. Condominium townhouses can lead to lost connectivity: “It’s kind of difficult though when you get a lot of condominium development. You don’t want to create the feel of enclaves. You want that

213 permeability through the community” (P19). One large condominium townhouse development on private streets represented a growing trend for one planner: “It's a huge piece of land to have no public streets, which is kind of crazy, but that seems to be the trend lately too. People want to do condo towns, and not do any public streets anymore” (P08). While condominium format reduces maintenance and snow removal, which can be especially desired by aging residents, some councillors expressed concern that not all buyers understand what they are getting into with condominiums. Residents complain to their local councillors about parking tickets, or private garbage and snow removal even when those services are not the municipality’s responsibility. One Councillor remarked that freehold townhouses were more desired than condominium townhouses in the farthest outlying municipalities because buyers are willing to accept a longer commute in exchange for freedom from monthly rent-like condo fees. Housing and community producers across categories expressed concern about accommodating cars in condominium townhouse developments where only one parking space is provided per unit, but where private, narrow roads do not permit on-street parking for additional vehicles, for example: “if it’s one of these townhomes, so a very small home, you only have one parking space, and you have two cars, where do you park? On the street. But we have a bylaw that says you can’t park overnight. So what happens?” (C01). Developers’ main concern with higher density towns was balancing cost with price as they move to denser products and need to move parking into costly underground lots.

If stakeholders are correct in predicting that townhouse products will become more common throughout the region there may also be more condominium townhouse projects. Residential development in Canada has historically taken place along public roads (Grant & Curran, 2007). More townhouse condominium projects would mark an emerging trade-off between the planning ideal of increased density and the privatization of communities, streets, amenities, and management. Peck (2011) has argued that the American suburbs were key sites for the roll out “neoliberal suburbanism,” a logic producing “devolution and decentralization, exclusions, and secession” (p. 884). The logics of neoliberalism in Canada, and the Toronto in particular, have unfolded through more public management than the deregulated, privatist neoliberal roll-out in the USA (Boudreu, Keil & Young, 2009). However, alongside gated communities, condominium tenure, both in high-rise and mid-rise housing forms appear to be producing particular forms of

214 privatized neighbourhoods. Future research could consider what the expansion of condominium tenure mean for articulating the Canadian expression of “neoliberal suburbanism.”

Furthermore, housing producers interviewed for this study expressed concern about the density consequences of increased traffic and more cars to park in increasingly tight blocks and along narrow private roads (see Chapter Five). Laven and Grant (2009), in a study of condominium traditional floorplan townhouses in Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver, showed how a compact arrangement of townhouses advanced density goals, but undermined street connectivity. If, as interview and advertisement discourses reveal, condominium ownership and management is necessary, logical, and valued for higher density townhouse projects, then municipalities will need to provide greater policy clarity about street and pedestrian connectivity with the surrounding neighbourhoods, urban design, parking, and amenity provision. My future research could also assess these tradeoffs between high-density and increasingly privatized and enclosed built forms.

6.4.2 Higher density suburbs and well-being

Another potential avenue for research is examining resident everyday experience and the changing culture of housing in the suburbs of the Toronto metropolitan area. With new development shifting towards denser housing types and smaller units, the North American “dream” of single-detached homeownership for family households appears to be fading with the realities of increased house prices and growing household indebtedness. Although average households may be declining, the Toronto area suburbs have the highest prevalence of multiple- family, immigrant households in the country. Recent census data also reveals that across Canadian metropolitan areas more young adults ages 20-29 are living with their parents, with a slightly higher prevalence of parental co-residence among immigrants. One of the future challenge areas highlighted by SSHRC is the changing shape of Canadian families and how they might measure their future well-being. This inquiry could address questions such as: How do suburban family households assess their housing and neighbourhood well-being in increasingly densified developments? To what extent is over-crowding occurring, and how is it experienced (e.g. as a resident-crowding within housing units or car-crowding on neighbourhood streets)? How do a sample of suburban households characterize their lifestyles (e.g. mobility, time-use,

215 well-being indicators), and in what ways might lifestyle shifts be related to built form changes? I am interested in examining how new-build housing and subdivision patterns are meeting household needs and desires. Furthermore, if the Toronto region is returning to higher density housing units similar to earlier decades (1960s and 1970s inner suburbs), then examples of higher density suburbanism already exist within our own city. My future research could take stock of studies to date on the successes and challenges of Toronto’s higher density inner suburbs and consider what they might offer in terms of lessons learned and cautionary tales for the higher density new-build areas of the outer suburbs.

6.5 Final thoughts: the limits and possibilities of planning for “urbanity” in the suburbs

Discursively produced place images, expressed through policy visions for the future and new- build suburban developments interest me because they are cultural construction sites that reveal planning values, broader cultural ideology and trends related to the political economy of (post-) suburbanization processes. The ways that planners, politicians and developers define problems can open up or constrain the range of solutions or possible visions for the future.

Visions of possibility are integral to both dialectical thinking and the theory and practice of planning (Harvey, 1996; 2003). Through the dissertation I voice my concerns about the evolutionary framing of suburban change, because these naturalized discourses can package together ideas about urbanity, centrality or amenity with notions of creative class competition, specific aesthetics, and promotion of indebtedness and financial vulnerability through homeownership. Naturalized discourses frame one vision as the inevitable future (e.g. compact city discourse) and can limit our field of possibility for imagining alternative approaches to the same goal (e.g. reducing auto-dependency). What then are the alternatives for planning and development discourse? As a critic of organic discourse, Lefebvre suggested that urban revolution (and not evolution) is necessary to bring about urban change that secures people’s right to shape society and its spaces. Lefebvre conceived of revolution as taking place in urban everyday life, but also saw a role for planners. He was critical of technical-rational planning for concealing the political and economic strategies of capitalism, using discourse and strategies borrowed from the natural sciences (1996). Lefebvre also critiqued planning for being part of

216 the “socialization of society” (1996, 123), a “cog” in the wheel of industrial enterprise that “becomes the material device apt to organize production, control the daily life of the producers and the consumption of products” (1996, 126). There was still hope though; Lefebvre suggests that planners

“can individually or in teams clear the way; they can also propose, try out and prepare forms. And also (and especially), through a maieutic nurtured by science, assess acquired experience, provide a lesson from failure and give birth to the possible” (1996, 151).

Lefebvre called for “planning oriented towards social needs and democratic control of the State and self-management” alongside change in broader economy, politics, and culture (1996, p. 180). Because he approached the idea of the social totality in dialectical thinking as “open,” there are gaps and interstices everywhere, opening up “possible strategic locations of political projects” (Stanek, 2014, p. 137). A useful way for planners to think about openings and possibilities in structures and systems that appear fixed (e.g. economic systems like capitalism, or particular industries and markets like residential construction and real estate) is to recognize that these things are not natural and do not follow natural laws like gravity, but instead are “made and remade,” in part through discourse (Rankin, 2013, p. 1650). Analyzing the definition of problems (e.g. sprawl, ugliness, the suburbs in general) and the solutions proposed (e.g. densification, and attractive aesthetics, urbanity) can illustrate what practitioners characterize as successes and challenges, but can also expose the limits to the way problem-solutions are discursively produced. One of the roles of planning theorists and reflective practitioners is to identify these limits and help clear the way for new concerns and possible actions to emerge.

In this dissertation I aim to draw out the ways that suburban myths and discourses are made, remade and naturalized. I also consider what various discourses reveal about planning values, development industry goals, and broader cultural ideology. If scholars such as Bourne (1996) and Dunham-Jones and Williamson (2009) are correct in predicting that efforts to “urbanize,” “densify” and generally “fix” the suburbs are the next major project for planning in the coming decades, then attention to the contours of these discourses is important for planning theory. Planning scholarship has the responsibility to address questions related to the “what are we to do” concern of planners (Rankin, 2009). I follow Forester (2004) in the belief that “[p]lanning theories should ‘encourage hope’ not to make us feel good, but to help us do better with

217 whatever limited resources we have, in whatever limited time we have, facing whatever horrendous inequalities and atrocities we do” (p. 251). This means recognizing the limits and possibilities within our field of practice:

We cannot credit planning alone with either the successes or the failures of our urban landscapes. Instead, we must conclude that our artifacts (such as our cities) reflect our cultural values and commitments as do the instruments (such as planning) that we use to create them” (Grant, 2006b, p. 337).

Planners cannot single-handedly transform the suburbs through force of vision alone, and visions reflect a range of goals that can simultaneously support and undermine each other. Planners can be cognizant of the contradictory goals of actors within visioning processes and work within their capacities to “clear the way” for new visions and ideas to emerge, “propose” and “try out” alternative visions for the social production of space and new possibilities (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 151). As Harvey (2003, 3) puts it: “if our urban world has been imagined and made then it can be re-imagined and re-made.” The discursive production of suburban place image through visioning is a powerful planning tool, and will remain contested as various actors aim to re-imagine and reinvent the suburbs.

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*Page number references for advertisements and advertorials in new home magazines were generally drawn from the pdf file, and I have included the print page number where it was clear. Online material was viewed on developer/homebuilder project websites. Web addresses for the online citations in the footnotes: 52 http://lavivatowns.com/; 54 https://www.treasurehill.com/new-homes/aurora/time-village/; 57 http://www.minto.com/gta/Stouffville-new-townhomes/Orchard-Park/main.html; 60 http://www.geraniumhomes.com/vista/; 66 http://the6ixthtowns.com/; 68 http://www.ballantryhomes.com/communities/upperglenabby/index.php; 71 https://www.treasurehill.com/new-homes/pickering/urban-town-living/; 72 https://www.treasurehill.com/new-homes/aurora/time-village/; 79 http://www.downtownmarkham.ca/residential/past-portfolio; 83 http://www.libertydevelopment.ca/community/world-on-yonge/; 90 http://www.danielsarc.com 98 http://www.downtownmarkham.ca/residential/high-rise/yorkcondos; 102 http://expocity.ca; 116 http://royalpinehomes.ca/community/springvalleyvillage 118 http://edgewaterestates.ca 119 https://www.brookfieldhomes.ca/community/timberlane/new-homes 123 http://saddleridgemilton.ca 127 http://vistaparc.ca 128 http://www.fieldgatehomes.ca/our-homes/past-communities/2015-07-23-18-26-06 129 http://www.treasurehill.com/page/moda 135 http://www.primonthomes.com 141 http://www.valeryhomes.com/mount-pleasant-meadows-community/

Appendices

APPENDIX A: Information Letter and Interview Participant Consent Form

Date

Dear Participant,

This is a letter of invitation to participate in a research project for my dissertation project. I am seeking participants from planners, municipal councillors, and representatives from the development industry for one-on-one, 1-hour interviews to discuss urbanization in the GTA suburbs. If you choose to participate, I will meet you at your work place or another location convenient to you.

The overarching goal of the research is to explore the tensions between urbanism and suburbanism in contemporary planning and development trends and lifestyles. The research addresses four main themes: 1) placemaking, urbanism and suburbanism; 2) lifestyle and belonging 3) lifestyle and debt 4) roles of planners, politicians, and developers in urbanizing the suburbs. In addition to conducting interviews, I am looking at references to urbanism and suburbanism in planning and transit policies and public information materials. I am also examining the marketing of new houses and neighbourhoods and the lifestyles represented therein. In the context of increasing household debt in the GTA suburbs, I am also studying how mortgages are being marketed. This research will be beneficial for understanding the relationships between planning, development and marketing as the GTA undergoes a suburban reinvention.

Your participation in this study is completely voluntary. You may choose to end the interview at any point. With your permission, the interviews will be audio recorded then transcribed. The information you provide will be considered confidential. Your name will be removed from the transcript and file names and replaced with an anonymous code (e.g. Markham Planner 01). Quotations used in my dissertation and subsequent publications will be attributed to that anonymous code. Please indicate if there is a response you give during the interview that you would prefer to be attributed in a more generalized way, for example, by profession (e.g. GTA Planner), or including location, but not profession (e.g. Markham

246 247 participant), or simply as “study participant.”

All data, including audio files and transcripts will be managed securely, using file encryption and locked storage for hard copies. The interview data will only be accessed by a trained transcription assistant and me. The research protocol is designed to ensure a low risk of personal identification. You may withdraw your participation in the study during my data collection period, up until August 31, 2016. Data will be securely stored for up to ten years and then destroyed. You may request to receive a summary of findings after I have completed my dissertation.

If you have any questions regarding this study, or would like additional information to assist you in reaching a decision about participation, please contact me, by email [email address removed] or phone [phone number removed]. You may also contact my PhD supervisor, Dr. Katharine Rankin at [email address removed] or [phone number removed].

As with all research involving human participants, this study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the University of Toronto Research Ethics Board. If you have any questions or concerns about your participation you may contact [email address removed] or [phone number removed].

I look forward to speaking with you. Thank you for your time and participation.

Sincerely,

Katherine Perrott

Student Researcher. PhD candidate, Department of Geography and Planning

University of Toronto

[email and phone numbers removed]

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INTERVIEW CONSENT FORM

I have read the Information Letter about the study being conducted on urbanization in the GTA suburbs by Katherine Perrott, a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. The information gathered will be used in Katherine Perrott’s PhD dissertation. I have had the opportunity to ask any questions related to this study, to receive satisfactory answers to my questions, and any additional details I wanted.

I am aware that I have the option of allowing my interview to be audio recorded to ensure an accurate recording of my responses. I am also aware that excerpts from the interview may be included in the dissertation, academic publications, and conference presentations to come from this research, with the understanding that the quotations will be attributed to an anonymous code by profession and location, or more generally as "GTA [profession]," "[location] participant," or “study participant.” I am aware that the information collected is being managed in a secure and confidential manner.

I understand that my participation is voluntary and was informed that I may withdraw my consent at any time during the interview.

With full knowledge of all foregoing, I agree, of my own free will, to participate in this study.

YES NO

I agree to have my interview audio recorded.

YES NO

I agree to the use of anonymous quotations in any thesis or publication that comes of this research.

YES NO

Participant Name: ______(Please print)

Participant Signature: ______

Date: ______

I request a summary of research findings emailed to me after completion of the dissertation (estimated December 2016).

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YES NO

If yes, please confirm your contact information below: email address: ______phone number: ______

This study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the University of Toronto Research Ethics Board. If you have any questions about your participation you may contact [email address and phone number removed]

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APPENDIX B: Interview Guides INTERVIEW GUIDE - Planner • Please tell me about your roles with Municipality/Province/Transit Agency? • How would you distil the long-range vision for the future of [municipality] in a few keywords or ideas? • How has the planning goal of “complete community” been operationalized here? INTENSIFICATION • Please tell me about the municipality’s intensification strategy. • What ways has intensification been successful thus far? (plan-wise, approaching the density targets, politically, developer buy-in, etc.) • What are the challenges? • What are the political conflicts around intensification? NIMBYism? GREENFIELD DEVELOPMENT • Where are your designated greenfield areas? • Hitting the targets of 50 people + jobs? How are you applying that at the local municipal level? How do you work in the + jobs bit? • What are the remaining planning issues and challenges for greenfield areas? (mix, transit service, redevelopment of plazas? political issues? lifestyle?) PLANNING TOOLS • How effective are the density and intensification targets as tools? How can they improve? • In addition to the planning tools (density and intensification targets, section 37, regional scenario planning), what other incentives, tools or processes are being explored/proposed to achieve planning goals? (e.g. suggestions emerging from the Crombie report) • What tools do you wish you had, but don’t in the current legal framework? TRANSPORTATION & TRANSIT • Which in-progress or proposed investments in transportation and transit infrastructure would have the greatest impact on development forms? • What needs to happen to improve transit throughout the region? (politically, development fees, legally, etc.) HOUSING TYPES: • How have residential development patterns changed over time? • I’ve been hearing about the popularity of townhouses in the region. Are you getting stacked or back to back townhouses in [municipality]? • What are the main factors affecting housing affordability in the region? • Some developers (and BILD) would argue that Provincial growth management is a major reason why housing costs have increased so substantially by reducing the supply of developable land. From your perspective, to what extent is growth management policy responsible for increased housing costs? LIFESTYLES “I am interested in learning about “lifestyles” and “ways of life” in [case study area]. In other words, people’s everyday lives: their mobility patterns, movements, behaviours and activities, as well as the tastes, styles and preferences that relate to their lifestyles.” • How would you characterize the lifestyles in [municipality/905]? • What characterizes suburbanism in the GTA (905)? • In what ways is the GTA (905)/[municipality] becoming more urban?

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• What would it take to shift from a car-oriented to transit-viable region, as envisioned in the Provincial Growth Plan and Big Move policies? • In other words, what needs to happen to get people out of their cars? NEW DEVELOPMENT ADVERTISEMENTS EXERCISE: I will show participants a sample of print advertisements for housing developments and we will discuss the themes and development forms shown in the ads. Follow up with these questions if they haven’t been answered in the above discussion: • What characteristics of suburbanism do you see? • What characteristics of urbanism do you see? • In what ways are these texts and images consistent with the planning and development vision in [case study municipality/GTA]? • How are the texts and images inconsistent with the planning and development vision in [case study municipality/GTA]? • Can you describe the lifestyles and ways of life depicted in these images? • Who do you see included? • Who do you see excluded? • Where would you want to live given the choice presented in these ads? Why? FUTURE VISION/WRAP-UP • Thinking ahead to the future, what are you most excited or hopeful about for the [municipality] (the region at large)? “That is the end of my questions. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about planning, development, or lifestyles trends in the GTA or [case study area] in particular?”

INTERVIEW GUIDE - Councillor • Please tell me a bit about your role as Councillor? VISION FOR [Municipality] • How would you distil the long-range vision for [Municipality’s] future in a few keywords or ideas? • How have development patterns changed over time? • How has the planning goal of “complete community” been operationalized in this municipality? • What are the primary places that characterize [Municipality’s] identity? INTENSIFICATION • What are the highlights of the vision for intensification in the downtown? • What are the political conflicts around transportation and transit in [Municipality]? (e.g. tensions related to budget or land use for parking, transit lines, etc). • Tell me about notable examples of intensification in the built up areas are there in [Municipality]? • What have been the challenges in implementing intensification in [Municipality]? • What are the political conflicts around intensification? • Is downzoning an issue? GREENFIELD DEVELOPMENT • Where are new developments going? • How would you characterize the densities of new developments (meeting density targets of 50 r+j/ha?) • New housing types (increase in townhouses and stacked towns)?

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• To what extent are greenfield areas mixed in terms of use and housing type? • To what extent are new greenfield developments transit-supportive? • Are you seeing an increase in private roads/condo towns, etc? LIFESTYLE “I am interested in learning about “lifestyles” and “ways of life” in [case study area]. In other words, people’s everyday lives: their mobility patterns, movements, behaviours and activities, as well as the tastes, styles and preferences that relate to their lifestyles.” • How would you characterize lifestyles in the [Municipality]/905? • What characterizes suburbanism in the GTA/[Municipality]/905? • In what ways is the GTA (905)/[Municipality] becoming more urban? • What is the impact of higher density, compact development patterns on lifestyle? • What are the lifestyle amenities do residents want in your ward (or the Municipality as a whole)? • What would it take to shift from a car-oriented to transit-viable region, as envisioned in the Growth Plan and Big Move policies? • What are the main factors affecting housing affordability in the region? CONCLUSION • What issue(s) do you hear most about during campaign time or that you get the most calls/emails about? • Looking ahead to [Municipality’s] future, what are you most excited about? NEW DEVELOPMENT ADVERTISEMENTS: Discussion of the themes and development forms shown in a sample of new house/community ads. “That is the end of my questions. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about planning, development, or lifestyles trends in the GTA or [case study area] in particular?”

INTERVIEW GUIDE - Developer • Please tell me about your role with [Developer]. ~units/year for [Developer]? • How would you characterize the change in development patterns in the GTA in the past decade? • Where do you see development trends going in the future? DENSITY What is the current mix of high-rise, mid-rise and low-rise [Developer] is currently working on? • How has this mix this shifted over time? • Why are townhouses so popular? • What has been your experience with stacked townhouses? back-to-backs? • Where and approx. how many units? • Are the townhouses condo (private roads) or freehold? advantages, issues, extra amenities? • Are the townhouses front or rear/laneway loaded or accessed? • What type of units can you sell most quickly? What are the most challenging types of units to sell? • What are the benefits/challenges of building higher density developments? • Are you experiencing (market or municipal) pressure to offer a lower or higher density product? • Tell me about your experience with infill developments in the 905?

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SPECIFIC PROJECTS • Can you tell me about the history and vision for recent/current [Developer] communities? o the plan for the look and feel of each community, block planning process? o target market(s), e.g. seniors, families, single households? o proximity to transportation and transit, AFFORDABILITY/FEES • What are the main factors affecting affordability in the region? • What are the impacts of development and parkland charges on your developments and your company? • How do regional municipal servicing issues impact your development model/applications? • Has density bonusing, enabled under Ontario Planning Act section 37 been a factor in any of your developments (in municipalities outside of Toronto, e.g. the 905)? • What kind of special offers can builder-promoted mortgage brokers provide to buyers? LIFESTYLE “I am interested in learning about “lifestyles” and “ways of life” in [case study area]. In other words, people’s everyday lives: their mobility patterns, movements, behaviours and activities, as well as the tastes, styles and preferences that relate to their lifestyles.” • How would you characterize the lifestyles in the GTA? • What characterizes suburbanism in the GTA (905)? • In what ways is the GTA (905) becoming more urban? • What are the lifestyle amenities in demand either within or close to your developments? • What would it take to shift from a car-oriented to transit-viable region, as envisioned in the Growth Plan? • Policies talk about “complete communities.” What does that mean to you? PLACE IMAGE EXERCISE I will show participants a sample of print advertisements for housing developments and we will discuss the themes and development forms shown in the ads. E.g. urban/suburban, what or who is included/excluded, lifestyles represented/absent, in/consistent with plan vision? “That is the end of my questions. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about planning, development, or lifestyles trends in the GTA or [case study area] in particular?”

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APPENDIX C: Interview Codebook

Primary Codes Secondary Codes Definition or Rule

Vision Complete community How people define it, or use that phrase to describe a plan or built out area.

Growth management Descriptions of how to accommodate 100,000+ people every year.

Immigration As factor of growth management; increased diversity of demographics.

Urban design Urban design, form, aesthetics.

Environmental protection Environmental policy, sustainable dev’t, future generations, climate change.

Municipal Vision Vision for the Plan period/future, (desired) change from past.

Regional Vision Vision for the Plan period/future, (desired) change from past.

Maturity/Grown Up Age/maturity applied to cities themselves, City/Evolution suburbs are growing up/need to grow up. Evolution of city metaphors and references, issues are just “growing pains.”

Global Aspirational References to other cities that the region is/could aspire to be. References to European or other NA cities. Model projects and places. BPs. Examples. Common in planning. Interesting to note which areas get referenced though as the ideal.

Communication of planning Education, communication, sales pitch; need for goals and vision/education role better; examples of how planners have been successful. Planners educate public and council.

Balance Need for balance; role of planner.

Sprawl or not sprawl Greenbelt + Ref to greenbelt, oak ridges moraine, etc.

White belt Land beyond designated built up areas and greenfields, but not included in the greenbelt that developers may want to develop, and/or the government may want to include in the greenbelt in the future.

Urban sprawl Gen ref to urban sprawl as a problem, or question of whether it is really sprawl.

“green/environmental sprawl" Environmental protections and parks, etc; industry phrase.

Growth Plan Gen ref to the growth plan – coded more specifically where appropriate.

Leap frog development Leap-frog over greenbelt; hopscotch over.

Commute limit Ref to the idea that there’s a limit people will commute for work, commuter-shed.

Land and housing scarcity Debate on the plenty of land piece, but also question of “enough” ground related.

Intensification and Intensification, general Intensification in built up area, targets, re- Density urbbanization, brownfield, redevelopment, industrial to urban/residential office.

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Infill Infill in existing neighbourhoods – and infill broadly– not greenfield dev’t.. *split into intensification and greenfield Intensification targets Growth Plan targets – success, challenge, issues with targets, and how to measure.

Greenfield Density targets Growth Plan targets – success, challenge, issues with targets, and how to measure.

Planning by numbers Idea that planning vision is reduced implementing the targets.

High density Density beyond ground related housing – generally high rise apartments.

NIMBY Not in my back yard, local resident resistance.

Greenfield areas have no Ref to the idea that greenfield areas are “easier” t residents to oppose o dev. because no “existing” residents to oppose it.

Section 37 Density bonusing-enabling law in Ontario.

Urban Growth Centres Ref to UGCs, Markham Centre, VMC, Mississauga downtown, etc.

Downzoning/ downproposing Condo or high density zoned areas, being downzoned, or at least down-proposed if not explicitly zoned for townhouses, stacks, midrise because they are more easily saleable than condos. Still higher density than singles, but lower than condo towers.

Dev’t industry itself intensifying Traditionally 905/single detached builders are getting into stacked, b2bs, midrish, and highrise (e.g. Fieldgate, Mattamy’s acquisition of Monarch, Tribute, Pemberton, etc).

Lifestyle Urban lifestyle Ref to idea of a particular urban/e lifestyle.

Suburban lifestyle Ref to idea of a particular suburban lifestyle.

American/Canadian Dream Dream of homeownership, lawns, cars, whatever they refer to as falling into the dream.

“not your parents –[suburbs]—“ Idea in ads and discussed in interviews about new architectural style, or new branding of a place/location – young, modern, cool.

Changing mindsets Related to lifestyle and car-use shifts implicated in the planning vision.

Ameities Amenities What amenities get incl with new development, how they contribute to complete community idea.

Recreation Family life: impact of recreation facilities, and how that shapes mobility and time.

Schools Family life: Local or regional schools, how that shapes mobility and time

“just natural” Nature/just natural As explanations for lifestyle behaviours or development of city (link to evolutionary idea of city building, maturity code and grown up city coding); “just makes sense.”

Mobility Love of cars Given as a reason for why people don’t take transit.

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Car shift Answer to ‘what will it take to get people out of their cars’ transit, ease, convenience.

Parking Standards, reductions as part of urbanization and density, TOD.

Traffic Traffic as a problem. political issue, planning/technical issue, lifestyle inhibitor.

Transit – new extensions and BRT, LRT, Subway extensions, Go, RER, modes regional relief line, 407 Transitway.

Transit – 1st and last mile Transit challenge of 1st and last mile.

Walkability Pedestrian friendliness, walking distance to amenities.

Cycling Cycling friendliness, cycling distance to amenities.

400 series highways As drivers for development, investment.

Personal commuting/mobility Interview participant tells personal/local anecdote story about commuting, traffic (and parking) issues.

Spatial mismatch Jobs and housing in different places, refs to whether or not transit routes match origin and destination.

Housing prices Rising price of housing General reference to growing housing price unaffordability.

Price descriptor E.g. High, increasing, crazy, ridiculous, insane.

Unaffordability - causes Reasons given for why housing prices rise.

Investor impact Impact on prices from purchase-for-investment, “foreign” “offshore” investment.

Housing demand - immigration High demand for housing from immigration.

Housing demand- rapid sales Stories about selling out overnight/on the weekend & camping out at sales centres.

Personal impacts “I don’t know how my kids will afford to live here” type of statements.

Homebuyer costs Trickle down of costs - ref to homebuyers bearing additional costs.

House price setting Developer considerations on setting housing prices; housing “extras.”

Locational factor The “it” neighbourhoods and roads where developers can charge a premium.

Drive until you qualify Need for people to live further away, esp for single detached.

true “Affordable” housing Policy tools, section 37, subsidies.

Debt Low interest rates Access to homeownership - good, bad, necessary evil; risk of increased rates.

Household mortgage debt Ref to increasing debt “how can they afford it” answer: debt.

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Housing stories Personal story about buying and selling their houses.

Lifecycle Narrative of lifecycle and the housing ladder; families, empty-nesters, young people, Role of home ownership.

Short supply/ Line ups Stories of people camping out at sales offices.

Consumer/ Housing choice Need for choice and options, freedom to choose.

Consumer Preferences Prefer more space, bigger house, but can’t afford it.

Development costs Development Industry Insights Narrative about how they price houses, construction costs, general, interesting insight; role of relationships.

Change in the industry Devrs adding urban, or high and medium density (suburban to urban rebrand) divisions; shift from boys club, more complicated legislation and regulations.

Land speculation Speculation and long term investment on land.

Wood frame midrise New 6 storey wood frame in building code.

Development charges How they are implemented, incentive/disincentive role, ref to specific dev’ts.

Infrastructure YUSS, other infra extensions, references.

Parkland fees Recent change, viewed as an inhibitor to higher density dev’t..

Housing & tenure types Townhouses Townhouses general.

Stacked Townhouses Stacked townhouse – reactions, descriptions, specific projects, market.

Back to back townhouses Back-to-Back townhouse – reactions, descriptions, specific projects, market.

Towns are the new single Ref to towns as new single, no longer the entry level, enter midrise and condos.

Towns and stigma NIMBY about towns specifically, shift from stigma to a norm.

Condos Reference to condo market, saturation of market, people don’t like condos; condos unsuitable for families.

Single detached, low rise “typical-ness” of, sprawl, desirability, cost.

Rental Resurgence of purpose-built rental as a viable development/tenure.

Live- work Live-work, mixed/multiple use in one building.

Lot size Don’t make large lots anymore, trad detached lots as “estates.”

Retail and mixed use Mixed use Mixed land uses, live, work, play.

Retail trends strip malls, big box, power centres, smart centres, walmart,

Commercial land Old plazas as source land for new high rise

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residential.

Big boxes Pros, cons, long term viability, holding for future residential.

Main Street/historic downtowns Retail issues, parking, desirability, marketability, heritage, constraints.

Employment lands and Industrial lands Conversion to residential, compatibility with industrial residential in UGCs.

Industrial land conversion Selling industrial land as land values increase; highest and best use.

Employment lands conversion Importance for live, work in same municipality, pressure to convert.

Employment lands Protecting eploy lands through policy, yet also calling for mixed use contradictions

Prestige commercial UGCs, class A office.

Actor roles Planner, Developer, Councillor Descriptions of own and other’s roles in planning (subjectivities) roles and development processes.

Concerns about Silos in government Silos, disconnected government departments, Government & Planning negative impacts on implanting policies, a Process challenge or a barrier to achieving goals.

Government funding Gov’t role in provision of particular types of amenities and places.

Planning/govt discontent Concerns about planning or government being top-down; local government non-decisions.

Policy contradictions Policy contradictions, or policy zoning bylaw contradictions, around for example, encouraging transit, yet still requiring a high number of parking spaces.

Implementation Issues with how planning polices, esp. the Growth Plan, are put into place.

Unintended consequences Often links to affordability issues above, but framing is about the indirect or unintended consequences or effects of policies.

Politics Role of politics in shaping the planning and development process.

Adapting to policy Growing pains Issues implementing new policies, that will come in time.

Education/learning curve It’s a learning curve or a learning process for planners/ politicians/ residents.

Concerns about OMB and appeals Issues with the omb in the system, necessary, Development Industry slows the process, negatives; both an issue with the gov’t and the developers.

Developer/industry discontent Concerns with industry making too much money, not abiding by the policies.

Time/evolution Time for vision to manifest Planning visions take time to achieve ; market takes time to buy, patience to sit on land (link with grown up city/maturity discourse).

Lifestyle change takes time time needed to change lifestyles, habits.

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Time is precious Impacts people’s lifestyles, e.g. traffic and commutes impact time.

Advertisement Initial groupings/reactions First impressions. conversations Design of the House Interior and exterior.

Neighbourhood Design Neighbourhood character, urban design, lot layout, etc.

Urban aesthetic Descriptors: e.g. clean lines, flat roofs, modern, contemporary look.

Traditional suburban aesthetic Faux victorian, singles, welcome to the 80s, garages, cookie cutter.

Price Low, high, jump out or in the fine print

Lifestyle Urban or suburban? transit mentioned? cars?

“Who” Who is rep’d or if no people, then what is the target market.

Emotion Commenting on the emotion evoked.

Aesthetics “look and feel” Descriptions of “aesthetics” or more generally about the look and feel of a place.

Form/design over function/use NU, form based code over and above land use, function

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APPENDIX D: House Advertisement Codebooks

Devt Info Location code Location codes 1-19 representing a municipality Location Municipality (and in some places further detail e.g. Vaughan-Kleinburg, Brampton-Mount Pleasant) Development Name Development Name Developer(s) Developer(s) Unit types single-detached, townhouses, semis, MIX, etc. starting at $ e.g. 371,000 (I used the most recent price for the smallest unit for sale) starting at $ range e.g. $3000,000-399,000 Location words Nature emphasis, text ref & images Coded for emphasis on nature in text and images, phrases (and more than a passing ref to a park, but including images for some images and phrases emphasizing nature, natural categories) (can surroundings, and/or a Development Name that be multiple: included Woods, Lake, Meadow, etc. present or Urban design, streetscapes text ref & Text and image reference to attractive streetscapes, absent) images urban design, or images not just of a singuar house but renderings of the house/building in the context of street or block. "urban" "city" "downtown" explicit text ref keywords present: urban, city, downtown "suburban" explcit text ref keywords present: suburban, suburbanite, suburb "small town" explicity text ref keywords present: e.g. small town feel "country" "village" explicit ref keywords present: country-feel, village-feel, countryside (also in Development name) On the waterfront /the Lake text ref & waterfront, lake ontario access, views, location text images and images "Safe", "secure" explicit text ref keywords present: safe, secure buildings, community, condo paring lots Centrality - connection - access Central to all amenities, easy access to emphasis in text and images transportation and transit routes, centrality, connection best of both worlds: urban, sub/country Best of both urban and country, urban and suburban, best of all worlds, best of convenience and quiet, best of urban convenience and nature, a country ilfestyle minutes from the city, etc. Coded for "best of both worlds" exact phrase and other texts that were making a claim to having the best of two otherwise opposing ideals associated with urbanism or suburbanism/rurality. best of both worlds: past and present Best of both worlds, past and present. Small town Ontario feel but with modern amenities. Old world charm and modern prestige. Coded for "best of both past and present" exact phrase and other texts that were making that same point. elite: prestigious, exclusive address keywords & other text emphasis on: Prestigious address, prestige, exclusive address, elite homes.

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popular: hottest, desired, best, sought- Popular, hot, desired, soght-after, sales success in after earlier phases. References to "most successful community" I coded here where they were generally about quick sales, while recognizing a double meaning potentially intended with success as high income and elitism. House/Building Exterior exterior of house pictured present Images Interior interior of house pictured present No image of the houses shown checked if no images of the house were shown. House/Building Exterior style (image, text) (choose 1) Chose one from drop down menu: 1) & Devt texts and Contemporary/Modern; 2) Traditional; 3) Both descriptions available/Mixed Appeal; 4) No image of the house exterior. This was a rough way for me to subjectively assign each development ad bundle into one of the above categories based on exterior house style. "Luxury" "luxurious" features/finishes keywords present: luxury, luxurious elegant, refined, distinguished, sophis keywords present: elegant, elegance, refined, distinguished, sophisticated, sophistication. "Executive" keyword present: executive "Estate" keyword present: estate (in Devt name or other text) "Enclave" keyword present: enclave "Exclusive" keyword present: exclusive, exclusivity will turn heads/ impress/envy factor Coded phrases like impress your guests, your address/house to become envy of the area, will turn heads. comfortable, laid back, casual Coded phrases and words like comfortable, comfort, laid back, casual modern, clean lines, contemporary, keywords present: modern, clean lines, urban contemporary, urban. Generally these descriptors applied to the house/building exterior, but also coded if appeared in descriptions of kitchens, etc. traditional, classic, heritage-inspired keywords present: traditional, classic, heritage- inspired. Generally these descriptors applied to the exterior, but also coded if appeared in descriptions of kitchens, etc. Included words like Tudor, French Country, Old-world, etc. best of both styles-trad & modern Coded phrases referencing a best of both, or combination of contemporary and traditional styles, or a more modern look but that blends well with surroundings. Often was vague reference to modern interiors but traditional exteriors, or a slightly more modern or stucco façade, but still quite a conventional single detached. Who (images) Family groupings Checked present for any combination of adults and (can be multiple) children in affectionate and familial poses, read as immediate or extended families. Children or child only Checked present for a child or a group of children in a single image. Child with bubbles Checked present for a child or children blowing bubbles Couple Checked present for two adults (hetero) in an affectionate pose either in a single image or as part

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of a streetscape or interior rendering

Seniors Checked present for images singling out older adults Single woman (women only) Checked present for images of a woman or women only in a single image or by themselves as part of a larger rendering woman in formal attire Checked present for a woman (or women) in a ballgown, fancy floppy hat, formal jewelery highlighted woman shopping/with shopping bags Checked present for woman or women with shopping bags, occasionally coded a pic that showed a woman and a man shopping. Single man (men only) Checked present for images of a man or men only in a single image or by themselves as part of a larger rendering Man, men golfing Checked present for man or men golfing, occasionally coded a pic that showed a man plus a woman golfing. Adult groups (not obv couple) Checked present for groups of adults pictured together in non-affectionate or non-familial poses. ads or advertorials with no people Checked if some or all of the ads in a bundle had no people pictured Target market First time buyers keywords present: first time homebuyers text - explicit Move – up or upgrade buyers keywords present: move up to…, upgrade your text ref (can be life/house multiple) singles, young professionAL keywords present: singles, the young professional, students couples keywords present: couples "Young" and "young/grow family" keywords present: young families, growing buyers families, place for your family to grow Family buyers keywords present: family-friendly, family community, family, your family. Seniors/retired/downsize buyers keywords present: downsizers, empty-nesters, retirees, seniors Investors "resale" "invest" ref keywords present: investors, protect your investment, any general reference to the purchase as an investment Unclear, not explicit no target markets mentioned in the text Lifestyle text Family lifestyle/living Coded for text references to family life, lifestyle, and primary living. Images of family as primary to the ad images (can be bundle. multiple) "Urban/City" lifestyle/living Coded for urban, city or downtown lifestyle, living, as well as where there was emphasis on access to "urban," or downtown amenities contemporary/modern lifestyle/living Coded for references to contemporary, modern living, modern famlies, today's family, access to "modern" amenities "Suburban" lifestyle/living Coded for references to suburban lifestyle or living Quiet, peaceful, tranquil, oasis living Coded for references to the development being an oasis or retreat, and/or lending itself to a quiet, peaceful, tranquil lifestyle. Country/rural lifestyle/living Coded for references to country living.

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"Exclusive" - for a limited few Coded for explicit references to exclusive lifestyle, as well "for the limited few" and if exclusivity was mentioned in the house or location description, it was coded here. Luxury, lavish lifestyle/living Coded for explicit references to luxury living, lavish lifestyle, and if luxury was mentioned in the house features or location description, it was coded here. Resort, hotel, club lifestyle/living/house Coded for references to a hotel or resort style lifestyle, this was generally in the condominium ads where there were in-building amenities and fitness centres. Condo lifestyle care-free, amenities Coded for references to condominium lifestyle, or carefree living, "lock and leave," not having to worry about lawn maintenance or snow clearing. Live/Work/Play, Live, shop play Coded for live, work, and play or variations on that theme like "live, play and learn" "live, shop, and play" etc. Active, healthy lifestyles emphasized Coded for references to active and healthy lifestyles. Emphasis on hiking, biking, etc in the images, but had to be more than one picture of people in a park (more of a subjective code). Didn't code here for general references to busy families. variety of lifestyles, families, everyone Coded for references to there being something for everyone, all families, or "we're sure we will have a floorplan to fit your family's lifestyle and needs." Unclear, Unspecified Checked if there were no specific texts or phrases pertaining to lifestyle or living. I didn't code for lifestyle when there was only images, there had to be some text indicating one of the above categories of living or lifestyle. Incentives incentives offered checked present if incentives offered (choose 1) no incentives offered checked if no incentives were offered Affordable / Low Price, value emphasized Coded for low price, affordability, great value Expensive emphasis (choose 1) High Price, exclusivity Emphasized Coded for high price, exclusivity emphasis e.g. "million dollar homes" starting from $ stated, not emphasized Coded when the "starts from" price was stated neutrally starting price absent/ unclear Checked when there was no starting price in the ad bundle. I checked BuzzBuzz homes to find the starting price, and if I found it there it was entered in the earlier section on dev't information. Mobility (can be Highways proximity to 400 series Hwy 7 or other major multiple, images highways and roads in text, and if highlighted in the & text) location maps on the print ads and websites. Transit - GO rail proxmity to GO train commuter rail service in text and shown as stations or tracks on the print ad/web maps Transit - LRT, BRT, local bus, subway proximity to transit general text ref, or specific mention of the local LRT, BRT, local bus or subway services (e.g. YRT, ZUM, TTC, etc), and in the map illustrations showing stops. Bike - daily needs, commute, bike lanes text references to bike lanes, or biking distance to school, or showing images of people biking in bike

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lanes.

Bike - leisure text references and pictures showing biking for leisure, biking trails, biking as a family activity. Walk - daily needs, pedestrian friendly text references to "being steps from…", "walk to…[schools, shops, etc]", pedestrian friendly, "within walking distance to…" Text references to sidewalks. Walk trails - leisure, hiking trails text references to walking or hiking trails and paths, going for walks as a family or lesiure activity. No mention Checked when no mention of any forms of mobility. Parking or Garage explicit text ref Checked when there was specific reference to a parking garage or number of parking spaces e.g. "2 car garage!" "Parking space included" Amenities (can Parks/greenspace/fields/outdoor Coded for text and images references to parks, be multiple, playgrounds, greenspaces, fields, lakes, ponds. images & text, Lake ON, waterfront, yachts Coded for text and images references to Lake ON incl. highlights proximity as an amenity for waterfront paths, and in amenity maps yachting, etc. (Different from the earlier code for on web) waterfront location, also did not include ponds or other lakes). Community Centre, arena, pool, "rec" Coded for text and image references to community gen centres, arenas, libraries, pools, and general refernces to "recreation amenities." Golf Coded for text and image references to golf, golf courses, people golfing. Schools and higher ed Coded for text and image references to schools, and higher education like university and college campuses. Big Box stores & Malls Coded for text and image references to big box stores, malls, plazas. Main St style retail, boutiques Coded for text and image references to heritage Main Streets, sections of Yonge St., at-grade retail in condo buildings, and boutique shopping. shopping general Coded for general references to proximity to shopping. Grocery, markets Coded for text and image references to grocery, food stores, farmers markets. Cafes, pubs, restaurant, dining Coded for text and image references to cafes, pubs, restaurants, dining. Entertainment, arts, culture Coded for text and image references to movie theatres, live theatres, museums, gallerys, general references to arts, entertainment and culture. places of worship Coded for text and image references to places of worship. banks Coded for text and image references to banks. Toronto access/proximity Coded for text and images references to Toronto or Union Station proximity e.g. "only 30 minutes to downtown Toronto" (Did not code for general references to "everywhere in the GTA, this was Toronto specific)

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General/other/condo blg amens Checked if general references to amenities, other types of amenities (like hospitals or other services). Also checked this when there was lists of condo building amenities. Ref to "everything" or close to "all" Coded for the keywords/phrases like "close to everything" "Everything at your fingertips" "all amenties your family could want or need is within a 5 minute drive." No amenity refs Checked if there were no references to amenities in texts, images and if there were no amenity maps on the website. Other (can be Boutique keyword present: boutique (As a description of the multiple) building or house style, not if mentioning boutiques as shopping amenities.) Dream keyword present: dream e.g. your dream home, it's everything you've dreamed of, etc. deservedness Coded for reference to deservedness e.g. you deserve this, get the home that your family deserves, you've worked hard your whole life, you deserve this. Friendly, welcoming, neighbours Coded for reference to friendly, welcoming community, get to know your neighbours, intimate small or close-knit community, neighbours know each other by name. "real" family living or "real" townhouses Coded for emphasis on "real" as push back to small house sizes (e.g. a home meant for real family living), or "real town" not a stacked town. master planned, well-planned Coded for keywords and references to master- planned, well-planned, community design, planning-positive references like BILD awards for planning, smart growth, etc. maturity, evolved design, future Coded for references to evolved or mature community and building design. e.g. This is the future of MunicipalityX, bringing a new way of living/building to MunicipalityX. heritage, the past, old-timey Coded for emphasis on heritage, the past, old-timey fonts, colours and tones, like sepia and black and white photographs. green/sustainable/efficient construction Coded for references to the development or companies' commitment to green and sustainable building and construction, ENERGY STAR or LEED ratings, energy saving, "sustainable living," geothermal or other green features. Don't miss out! FOMO appeal, limited, Coded for keywords and references linked to the rare "fear of missing out" (FOMO) like Don't miss out! Act now! Reserve your spot. Limited time offers on prices and incentives, Limited availability. Rare opportunity, so act now. Opportunity won't last long. Hurry. Last chance. buyers program offered Coded if there was a buyers program offered like a builders mortgage, a special low or reduced deposit schedule, reduced downpayment like 5%.

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Global, 416, Elsewhere aspirational Coded if there was reference to the style of the building or development being like places in Europe or upscale neighbourhoods in Toronto Paris, the Bridle Trail. Also coded for references to European-style cabinets, etc. Also coded any references to "world-class."

Commute & Amenity access words, Copied out direct quotes related to the commute, phrases street patterns, or amenity access. Location Descriptions Copied out direct quotes related to location and dev't description. Best of both worlds quotes Copied out direct quotes related to the "best of both worlds." Aspirational, Dream, Ownership & Copied out direct quotes related to aspiration, FOMO words and phrases ownership, FOMO. NOTES & OTHER INTERESTING POINTS Copied out other direct quotes IMAGE: instructive/seen before/revisit Made notes about interesting images to revisit, or for deeper analysis that I had seen repeated in the sample. other (ref to mortgage broker, etc) Copied out other direct quotes or made other notes.

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Appendix E: Summary of findings for interview participants

The image of the suburbs: Planning urbanity in the Toronto Region

by: Katherine Perrott Doctor of Philosophy, Planning Department of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto July 5, 2018

Thank you for participating in the interviews for my doctoral research. This summary highlights the key findings from my study examining the visions, or “place images” produced, for the municipalities around Toronto.i The dissertation considers how ideas related to urbanism and suburbanism are being mobilized in narratives or “discourses” in planning policies, new-build housing advertisements, and interviews with community “producers” (planners, developers, and municipal councillors).

The suburbs face an image challenge. Arising from a combination of abstract “myth” and material realities an image developed that “suburbia” was homogenous, mostly residential, low- density, close to nature, good for families, and suited to community cohesion or control. These characteristics have been portrayed positively, as the “suburban dream.” The suburbs have also generated a pejorative, caricatured place image in popular culture and the literature, with critics describing car-dependent “sprawl” as offering “little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like noplace in particular” (Kunstler 1993, p. 131). Negative portrayals of the suburbs have generated broad normative calls within urban planning theory and practice for the “urbanization,” “retrofit,” and “repair” of suburban “sprawl” (Dunham-Jones & Williamson, 2009; Tachieva, 2010). As Bourne (1996) suggested, “the need to redesign the suburbs, both old and new, may well be the next frontier in urban research and planning” (p. 164). Efforts to urbanize the suburbs were characterized by Phelps (2015) as the “zeitgeist,” of contemporary planning, with potential to reshape the ideology and built form of suburban areas.

Harris and Larkham (1999) argued that the “suburban myth” was perpetuated in the literature because it told the story that “everyone ‘knew’” about the suburbs (p.7, my emphasis). Harris recently argued that in Toronto, the “suburban dream” is vying with the powerful alternative of urban living associated with the condominium boom in the core and “everyone knows it” (2015, p. 44, my emphasis). As Masotti and Hadden (1973) put it, suburban “myths die hard” (p. 16). What new narratives need to be told to reinvent the image of the suburbs? This dissertation examines the discourses producing the shift in ideology to ask: what are the contours of discourse shaping common sense about what “everyone” in the region “knows” as desirable living?

The objectives of this research project are to explore the dialectical tensions between urbanism and suburbanism in 1) the discursive production of suburban areas as desirable places in which to live and buy a home, 2) how contemporary discourses continue or depart from historical narratives and images of the suburbs, and 3) the practices of planning and development according to the perspectives of suburban housing and place producers.

The dissertation objectives are explored through the following research questions: 268

• How are properties related to the “urban” and “suburban” mobilized in suburban planning and development industry discourses to promote planning objectives, and to sell new- build houses and neighbourhoods? • What similarities and differences are exhibited between: o the visions and place images discursively produced by planners, councillors, and housing developers? (e.g. What types of housing are envisioned and what types of subject positions are made possible?) o the representations of “urbanism” and “suburbanism” in advertisements for housing developments of different types/densities? o contemporary suburban place images, and the image captured by the “suburban myth?” • How do housing and place producers (planners, municipal councillors, and developers) characterize the successes and challenges facing suburban planning and development now and in the future?

The data analyzed in this study are the interviews with planners, municipal councillors, and housing developers, housing policies (produced by planners and councillors) and new-build housing advertisements (produced by developers). I conducted interviews with thirty planners, fifteen municipal councillors, and fifteen housing developers (total interviews n=60).ii Participants were initially drawn from lists of staff and councillors on websites and the online directory of planners accredited through the provincial planning institute, with later participants recruited through recommendations from earlier interviews, in a “snowball” sampling technique. Interviews were semi-structured, approximately one-hour, were mostly conducted in-person, and recorded for transcription.iii Housing producers responded to questions about the successes and challenges of implementing intensification and densification policies, housing trends in general, and about stacked and back-to-back townhouse developments in particular. To conclude most interviews, I conducted an image elicitation exercise, asking participants to comment on a selection of new-build housing advertisements.iv The methods for analyzing the interviews involved thematic coding of the transcripts. Interview participants are quoted using an alphanumeric code to preserve anonymity, where P#, C# and D# represent the planner, councillor, and developer categories respectively. Policy documents analyzed included the provincial Growth Plan (2006)v for the region surrounding Toronto, and the Official Plans for municipalities in the study area arcing around the city (total planning documents n=25).

I also analyzed advertisements, advertorials, and websites for 304 new-build housing developments employing both content and discourse analysis methodologies. The data sample of advertisements for new-build housing developments was taken from the 2012-2016 online archives of four housing industry magazines (New Home Guide, Homes, New Condo Guide and Condo Life), which are freely distributed throughout the region at locations including transit stops, developer sales centres, and model homes. These primary data sources were supplemented by descriptive statistics on housing trends gathered from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and local industry associations, and demographics and housing data collected by Statistics Canada.

This empirical study of discourse and practice contributes to urban and planning theory aiming to understand the diversity of processes impacting (sub)urbanization beyond the “myths,” and tracing the ways that contemporary realities fall “in-between” conventionally held ideas about what constitutes the “urban” and “suburban” (Keil & Young, 2011). The Toronto region’s 269 history reflects the broader experience of post-war suburban expansion in North America that Filion (2015) has characterized as auto-dependent “dispersed suburbanism;” however, there have been moments of suburban development at higher densities than the North American norm, and a history of policy influenced by smart growth and new urbanism (Hess & Sorensen, 2015; Grant, 2009). Similarities with North American suburban planning and development patterns, but also its distinctions, make the region an informative planning case study of both successes and challenges in planning practice efforts to urbanize the suburbs, and the role of discourse in producing a changed image of suburban place.

Overarching the dissertation is the argument that contemporary planning and development discourses reveal several key divergences from, but also continuities with, the historical script of the suburban myth. Suburban planning and marketing in the past has discursively produced the suburbs as distinct from urban areas promising greater access to the countryside while remaining close to town: a healthy, safe retreat from the pollution and problems of the city, and an ideal place for families (Perkins et al., 2008). The discourses emerging in contemporary planning policies and advertisements, especially for higher density developments, downplay urban- suburban distinctions and present a vision that is more akin to desirable urban core neighbourhoods, while retaining certain narratives associated with the suburbs and small towns. Discursive divergences from the historical suburban script include that: 1) the suburbs are evolving and desirable (again) and not “sprawl;” 2) suburban locations can enable urbane lifestyles and mobility options; 3) compact neighbourhoods are desirable for raising children; 4) good design is not traditional and suburban, but modern and urbane; and 5) suburban nodes can compete globally for residents and employers. Discursive continuities include that the suburbs offer 1) opportunities for affordable homeownership (though through smaller units); 2) the “best of” convenient access to nature, recreation and leisure activities, shopping and other amenities; and 3) commuting distance to downtown. Producers plan and advertise new compact suburban housing developments as urbane to reinvent the image of what makes the suburbs desirable places in which to live, and safe places in which to invest through homeownership. I view these discursive continuities and discontinuities as dialectically related in and through processes that simultaneously support and undermine the vision of urbanized suburbs. Drawing on the governmentality literature inspired by the theorist Michel Foucault, I also argue that particular subject positions are discursively produced in the process of reinventing the suburban place image. These arguments are expanded in three core chapters in the dissertation, summarized below.

Paper 1: Not your parents’ suburban home: Planning and marketing discourses on homeownership of stacked and back-to-back townhouses in the ‘grown up’ suburbs around Toronto, Canada.

Stacked and back-to-back townhouses, often marketed as “urban towns,” represent an emerging housing form in the Toronto suburbs. This paper examines how planners, developers, and municipal councillors discursively produce townhouses as desirable options for suburban living and homeownership in the contexts of growth management planning, and house price increases. Higher density townhouse types (referred to here by the shorthand “stacked”) contribute to what has been called the housing market’s “missing middle” (Tuckey, 2017) between highly priced detached houses and smaller condominium apartment units. Some interview participants also described townhouse forms as the housing market “sweet spot” (Figure 1) by providing 270 affordability or homeownership “accessibility” for buyers, density towards the planning policy goals, and profitability for developers.

Figure 1: Many interview participants describe townhouse products as the emerging suburban housing market “sweet spot,” representing an “in-between” or “missing middle” housing density. (Source: Katherine Perrott’s illustration).

The growing popularity of stacked and back-to-back townhouses in the Toronto area suburbs reflects a national trend in Canada’s largest metropolitan areas, where multifamily housing construction has grown at a faster pace than single-detached dwellings since the 2008 recession (Statistics Canada, 2017). Sales of high-rise units in the Toronto region hit a record high in 2016, 10% of which were stacked townhouses (TREB, 2017). In addition to housing type changes, in the Toronto region, the size of units and lots have both decreased for new-build detached and townhouses, impacting residential densities (Hess & Sorensen, 2015). Figure 2 illustrates the proportional mix of housing types constructed in the suburban municipalities (without the City of Toronto) over the past two decades, showing a gradual shift away from detached houses and towards higher density forms. New housing construction completed in 2016 and 2017 provides a recent snapshot of housing unit mix and demonstrates the continued pattern towards multifamily. Stacked townhouses are counted as apartments by CMHC, and account for part of the gains in the apartment category.vi

Figure 2: Proportional comparison of new housing unit completions in the GTA suburban municipalities. Does not include City of Toronto (source: calculated by Katherine Perrott from CMHC Housing Market Information Portal, accessed 2016-2018).

Three intertwining discourses co-produce the naturalized progression and maturity of young adults, suburban housing types, and the suburbs in general. First, stacked townhouses are 271 discursively produced as new “routes to maturity” for young adult homebuyers who find detached homeownership beyond their budgets. This discourse follows a thread in the housing literature on the cultural naturalization of homeownership, housing as an investment, and the relationships between housing type and residents’ “lifecycle” (Perin 1977; Ronald 2008). Stacked townhouse advertisements are primarily targeted at young professionals and young families; no seniors appeared in the advertisement images. Nearly half of the advertisements had text references including “young,” “family” and “first-time buyers,” for example: “designed with the urban family in mind,”vii and “These homes are ideal for first-time buyers and young professionals who are looking to buy a home that is contemporary and stylishly appointed but at a price that is ultimately affordable and in a community that is convenient and close to the city.”viii Stacked townhouses are marketed as a way for young adults to “grow up” and leave their parents house: “[you have] sacrificed, compromised, put up with the ‘my house, my rules’ attitude of your folks, and now it’s time to make your own rules in a home of your own!”ix One Development industry representative said that: “Today’s young adults don't need to have a big house like their parents lived in” (D01).

Second, stacked townhouses are promoted as a “graduated” suburban housing type that offers the benefits of high-end modern design and condominium tenure, but is also “ground-related” to appeal to suburban family buyers instead of high-rise apartments. Stacked and back-to-back townhouses are marketed as unique and innovative, offering: “a whole new style of living”x, and “new energy, new opportunities”xi Interviews confirmed that stacked townhouses are a new product in most of the suburban municipalities, and a first-time product for developers who have been primarily detached house builders in the past. Stacked townhouses are in some ways a reconfigured and rebranded successor to the “sixplexes” or “double duplexes” of the past in Toronto’s inner suburbs and Mississauga: “[Townhouses and multiplexes have] graduated to things such as back-to-back townhouses, stacked townhouses, stacked-back-to-back townhouses. Part of it is the necessity of needing to intensify and in order to meet those targets, a lot of those 905 [suburban] areas are more comfortable at attracting density, or improving density in that low-rise format” (D10). Three-quarters of the ads for stacked and back-to-back townhouses presented a contemporary and modern design and emphasized clean lines and minimalist style for an “urban” feel in direct contrast to suburban exterior styles of the past, for example: “These aren’t your grandparent’s townhomes - narrow, dark, or old fashioned. Step into your urban townhome at Upper Glen Abbey West and you’ll be amazed at how the spacious, light-filled interiors give it the look and feel of a detached home.”xii Planners were generally positive about the modern design aesthetic, which just “makes the most sense” for multifamily developments,” (P07) and: “Myself, being younger […] obviously I would much rather have a contemporary style townhouse than I would have a historic suburban, cookie-cutter approach” (P12). Another commented that a sample project rendering “looks like it could be on any avenue in Toronto. […] architecturally and kind of from an urban design perspective, they’re doing all the right things” (P29).

Third, stacked townhouses are branded as “urban towns,” which plays a broader role in the discursive transformation of the suburban image from “sprawling” to “urbanizing.” This carries the tradition of using ecological metaphor in suburban planning yet shifts the attention from “organic” built forms (e.g curvilinear streets and radial patterns) to “evolved” forms (e.g. “growing up” symbolically and literally in terms of building heights). In planning documents, for example, the subtitle to the Official Plan for Richmond Hill (2010) is “Building a new kind of urban” and the Plan commits “redefining what it means to be urban in Richmond Hill” (p. 1-1, 272 emphasis added). The Plan aligns the maturity and evolution of the town with its residents: “cities and towns mature and evolve with us” (p. 1-1). In Vaughan, the Visioning document (n.d.) prepared as part of the Official Plan (2010) review process describes a bold, transformative vision that will take the municipality from a “20th century suburb” into a “vibrant and sustainable 21st century city” (p. 17, emphasis added). In interviews, some housing producers discursively linked the “maturity” of the municipality with the “maturity” of children raised in the suburbs who are now young adults and looking for a desirable, vibrant place to live, but may not be able to afford Toronto: “as a community evolves and matures that demand for different housing types also changes with them. It’s a stage of life thing” (P19). In advertisements, buyers are encouraged re-think the suburbs as capable of offering homeownership of contemporary, stylish houses and new youthful, urbane lifestyle: “If you think Pickering is just a traditional community with traditional homes, it’s time to shift your way of thinking. Treasure Hill is proud to bring its distinctively modern style of design east of the GTA,”xiii and “One of the many reasons Oak Park Neighbourhoods is so appealing is its location in the heart of the “New Oakville.” Here you will discover a youthful, vibrant city chock full of the conveniences that make living easy.”xiv

Collectively, these discourses position stacked townhouses as innovative homeownership opportunities for young adults in suburban locations that are distinctive, “evolved,” and desirable compared with housing built for past generations. The discourse naturalizing the progression of housing into higher density forms works to make new housing products less imposing in municipalities where detached or conventional semis and townhouses have historically been expected in new developments. I argue that the discourses about stacked townhouses produce young adults, not only as suburban homeowner “investor subjects” (a concept developed by Langley 2006a; 2006b) who will form the target market for this new housing product, but also as suburban re-inventor subjects whose preferences and ways of life are regarded as critical for ushering in the urbanization of the suburbs. In the face of increased house prices, these smaller, yet still ground-related units provide for the continuation of mortgaged homeownership in the suburbs. Promoting the ownership of smaller spaces via stacked townhouses represents a type of “fix” to young adults’ constrained opportunities for homeownership of detached houses in suburban locations. As these unit types grow in popularity, it would be useful for municipal building and development departments, industry associations, and housing data collection agencies to report the number of units of stacked and other townhouse variants to gain a fuller picture of housing types built in the region. Future research could examine concerns raised in the interviews about private roads and reduced connectivity with the surrounding street grid, balancing costs of undergrounding parking with density goals and affordability, and the everyday experience of residents in these new housing forms and neighbourhoods.

Paper 2: The Aesthetics of Post-Suburbanization in the Toronto Region

This paper examines the aesthetics of suburban densification in the municipalities around Toronto. “Post-suburbanization” refers to “a historical change in direction” where “classical suburbanization” is “partly converted, inverted or subverted into a process that involves densification, complexification and diversification of the suburbanization process” (Charmes & Keil, 2015, p. 581). The densification of Urban Growth Centres (UGCs) and identified corridors throughout the region represent an example of post-suburbanization processes. Toronto is an informative region for examining post-suburbanization aspirations and processes because there is 273 not only a renewed interest in urban living in the city core, but government-led plans to create suburban nodes have been in place since the 1980s, and smart growth and new urbanism have influenced planning ideology in the region since the 1990s. The region illustrates continuity in planning for suburban intensification, but also change in its planning and packaging over time, and points to key facets of post-suburban ideology in the contemporary moment.

Recent urban studies literature has begun to explore the “ideological-political” aspects of post- suburbanization as particular coalitions of public and private actors converge to produce “distinctly more urban” spaces and ways of life, through, for example, transit-oriented development (Phelps 2015, p. 31). Other literature has pointed to the growing importance of physical design in planning practice (Knox & Schweitzer, 2010) and “aesthetic governmentality” (Ghertner, 2015), whereby the image production of a world-class city has superseded modernist planning techniques. In this paper, I bring the literature on post-suburbanization together with literatures on the role of aesthetics and design in planning. I ask what can be learned about post- suburbanization by examining aspirational visions and aesthetics (i.e. the discursively produced “look and feel” of a place)?

In addition to the concepts of “compact” and “complete” communities, the Growth Plan calls for the creation of “attractive” and “vibrant” places, and echoes the creative class discourse (e.g. Florida, 2003) in naming a strength of the regional economy: “[c]ultural amenities that offer the kinds of creative and recreational activities that attract knowledge workers” (2006. p. 7). Interview participants and development advertisements for higher density housing products similarly referred to attracting residents with a vision for high “style,” “world-class,” “sophisticated” urbanity. For example, one councillor said: “you know, the Richard Florida stuff, and that you have to build the place where the knowledge workers want to be, and the millennials, and the creative class, and the companies will follow that” (C05). Half of all advertisements for apartments made aspirational references to the urban design and architecture of Toronto and other global cities or regions (e.g. Chelsea, Trafalgar Green, Manhattan, Upper West Side, and Greenwich Village). One development, for example, is named Union after Toronto’s grand central transit station, and another named Uptownes was said to draw “inspiration from Toronto’s loft conversions” and its “architecture is quite evocative of an urban textile building.”xv Modern architectural design acts as a diffuse signifier of an “international style” and world-class urbanism to which densifying suburban areas aspire. Developers identified architectural clean lines, large windows, and flat roofs as the new urban-signifying trend across North America. Contemporary, modern architectural style was advertised as adding urban style and value to suburban developments: “Urban living with an Oakville address […] breaking with tradition for all the right reasons […] an entirely new urban architectural language […] a beacon of style in the suburbs,”xvi Urbanity is designed: “Urban isn’t a postal code here, but a lifestyle, designed to meet your standards,”xvii and “ultra urban by design.”xviii

The importance placed on attractive, world-class design is further illustrated in the planning and development of two new-build UGCs: Markham Centre and Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC). Markham Centre represents the municipality’s transformation from a “typical suburban community” to “trying to become a real place, a real city” with a “real downtown” (P04). Since 1987, Markham has planned for a suburban downtown, but Relph (1991) critiqued it as a car- oriented and “disaggregated” vision linking a new City Hall with a cluster of apartment buildings and a regional shopping mall “strung out along several kilometres of a provincial highway.” (p. 423). In the following decade, leading new urbanist consultants DPZ created a mid-rise plan that 274 has been updated to allow for higher densities. Creating an attractive, amenity-rich, urbane environment was articulated by interview participants as important for competing with other UGCs, and especially downtown Toronto: “We want a complete community that offers the amenities that will attract talent,” (P04) including public art, fitness clubs, and high-end restaurants (D02).

Vaughan similarly had an older plan in place for an office-park “corporate” centre; however, the extension of the Toronto subway system beyond the City’s northwestern border into the municipality of Vaughan prompted a new planning process in 2009 and a re-branding to “metropolitan” centre. The municipality hired consultants and young planners with expertise and “fresher ideas” to establish the vision, design and plans for the VMC (C01). “Attraction” of major employers is written into the planning documents. The Secondary Plan sets out the objective of a distinctly urban character and architectural aesthetic: “Ensure all development exhibits a high quality of urbanity, materials and design. […] First and foremost, development in the VMC should be urban” (p. 22). The contemporary design aesthetic envisioned for the VMC was described by one planner as an exciting new aesthetic driven by the demands of a younger generation (P12). Distinctly non-suburban and more akin to the highest rent offices downtown Toronto was how one of the developers described the materials and architectural style of a new office tower being constructed: “it doesn’t read as suburbia.” (D07). Advertisements marketed the new transit options, the aesthetics of urbanity, and the transformation the VMC: “this exceptional master-planned development will change the city forever.”xix Advertisements also referred to “the new breed”xx of developers who are leaders and visionaries defining the future of urban living in Vaughan.

I argue that the aesthetic of world-class urbanity is mobilized to signal the arrival of suburban downtowns on the competitive global playing field for knowledge-economy workers and employers as distinct from suburban office parks and low-density residential developments built elsewhere in the region, and stereotypical conceptions of suburbia held more broadly. A key part of the past efforts to plan and package suburban downtowns in the Toronto region was to construct city halls and malls (Relph, 1991; Filion, 2001); the contemporary place-distinction strategy however, more closely resembles the mode of development observed in Toronto’s downtown core that Rosen and Walks (2014) describe as “condo-ism,” rooted in private sector development interests and “new urbane yet privatized residential preferences, lifestyles, and consumption interests among consumers” (p. 290). With post-suburbanization, the planning and development marketing trends documented in the core move to the densifying periphery. Alongside this movement to condo-ism within the broader context of global competition and governance, is the heightened importance of managing aesthetics by place producers. Roles overlap as planners and politicians engage in branding and promotion, while developers assert their roles as visionaries and leaders. These alignments in “subject positions” also bring tensions, where planners and politicians sometimes find conflict between economic competition strategies and inclusivity “complete” community policies, and where developers become involved in broader community visioning and amenity provisions, yet operate within their constrained corporate mandate to generate profit. Embedded in the normative calls to urbanize the suburbs are critiques of the suburbs as placeless, ugly, and monotonous. Producers discursively reinventing the suburbs respond by emphasizing placemaking, attraction, and mixed-use. Applying Ghertner’s (2015) lens of “aesthetic governmentality” brings to light the priority given to aesthetics and design in the “ideological-political” contours of defining what comes after suburbia. 275

Paper 3: Building the ‘Best of Both’ Urbanism and Suburbanism? Practitioner Perspectives on the Promises and Challenges of Planning Compact and Complete Communities

Compact urban form and densification have become central tenets of planning practice in Canada and in metropolitan regions around the world as part of efforts to urbanize the suburbs. The promises of higher density include greater efficiencies in infrastructure servicing, agricultural land and green space protection, housing choice, better urban design, and transit provision (Boyko & Cooper, 2011; Duany et al., 2000). Newman and Kenworthy (1999), among others, have argued that compact city form is strongly correlated with higher transit-use, and lower energy consumption for travel, and reduced auto-mobile dependency. Extending from the compact city literature are various recommendations on minimum or desired densities of population and/or housing units required to support varying levels of public transit service that have influenced planning polices throughout the world through the setting of density and related “intensification” targets (Boyko & Cooper, 2011; Touati-Morel, 2015).

The promises of densification and the related impacts on policies have also met public and academic debates. For example, residents and local politicians in the UK fearing traffic congestion, lost green spaces, and deteriorated quality of life responded to intensification strategies with concern over “town cramming” (Breheny, 2001). In Australia, responding directly to Newman and Kenworthy, (1999) Mees (2010) questioned the “density is destiny” promise for altering mobility patterns (p. 5). While Mees shared the goal of reducing automobile dependency and improving public transit, he argued that if improvements in mobility depend on increased density, then regions will have to wait a long time before any large-scale shifts can be expected. He suggested that urban structure (e.g. strong employment clusters and centres) and a publicly governed “multi-modal network [e.g. strong feeder buses combined with higher order transit] planning is the key to public transport success in dispersed urban regions” (2010, p. 81).

Canadian suburbs are generally denser than their American counterparts (Hess & Sorensen, 2015; Nelson, 2013). Nevertheless, concern about sprawl across Canada’s largest regions has led to the wide adoption of smart growth and new urbanism-influenced policies, and targets set with the aim to increase building densities, intensify built up areas through infill, mix land uses, and improve transit-access (Charmes & Keil 2015; Grant, 2009; Moore, 2013; Quastel, Moos & Lynch, 2013). Charmes and Keil (2015) have argued that the successful acceptance of density as an urbanization strategy in Canada relates to converging interests among key actors: planners seek growth management, local politicians embrace the bonus growth and tax revenues from increased density, and developers seek new opportunities for profit-making. “Compact” and “complete communities” are the policy keywords representing new urbanism and smart growth in contemporary Canadian planning (Grant & Scott, 2012). This paper examines the gap between the theoretical promises of high-density, transit-oriented suburban development and the persistent realities of car-dependence and separated land uses.

That suburban developments offer the “best of both worlds” is a long-standing theme employed by Ebenezer Howard (1902) to promote his concept of Garden Cities that offered the best of “town and country.” In the advertisements analyzed as part of this study, 134 (44%) of the 304 developments mobilized an updated variation on this theme, where contemporary developments 276 are said to represent the best of urbanity on the one hand, and suburban small towns near the countryside on the other. For example: “What makes it truly distinct is that it promises the best of two worlds — the verve and style of big city living and the relaxed and easy life of suburbia,”xxi and “Saddle Ridge - Urban living in a serene environment. […] Fusing urban living and a traditional environment, Saddle Ridge in Milton has the best of all worlds.”xxii While many advertisements characterize new developments as offering the best of both urban and suburban worlds, practitioners describe the outcomes of policy implementation thus far as in between suburbanism and urbanism, but not quite the best of both. Practitioners characterize efforts to urbanize the suburbs as producing mixed results, for example: “It’s not yet urban, but not suburban too. It’s like a compromise between the two” (P14). Density gains are observed in residential neighbourhoods, but which are built within the broader landscape of auto-dependence and functional separation of land uses; these findings contribute to the literature describing a range of “in-between” suburbanisms that are “not quite city, not quite suburb” (Grant, 2011, p. 102, see also Young, Burke Wood & Keil, 2011).

Increased residential densities were framed as “the good news” in terms of transit supportive, compact, complete communities (P18). While planners acknowledged density gains from smaller lot sizes and a shift in the balance of housing types away from detached and towards townhouses and apartments, it is a more modest shift than some envisioned. One planner described the trend of putting traditional detached houses on smaller lots, without changing the broader development patterns as “squished-in suburban” (P04). Planners working on compact new master-planned areas with smaller lots were wrestling with the need to accommodate cars: “how are we going to make sure that there’s enough parking for the cars? And so there's a whole function of not only looking at the smaller lot but the urban form that comes with it” (P06). Transit service at the neighbourhood level is seen as a problem for new compact but still ground-related communities: “Without the transit service to meet the needs of the new communities, all you’re doing then is increasing congestion into your urban areas” (P18).

The “complete” communities concept in the Growth Plan includes convenient access to a range of jobs, other daily needs and amenities, and options for transportation. New-build housing community advertisements promote the ease of access to employment destinations; however, planners mentioned the challenges of densifying and thus transit-servicing employment areas including light industrial, warehousing office parks, and retail areas. “Basically business as usual” was how a planner described continued suburban plaza development because “you have to drive everywhere to get a bag of milk” (P05). Another lamented the continuing applications for big-box-retail developments: “we always get the suburban prototype” and planners struggle to convince commercial developers “that we are no longer that suburban community like we were ten years or fifteen years back” (P14). Practitioners from all three categories of participants expressed concern about a lack of planning tools to achieve the broader goals of completeness, not just density: “You can’t be a complete community unless you can provide the services to the residents that they need” (C14); “If we’re creating these more dense forms of development, it can’t just all be about housing. It’s got to be about the other soft-sides” (D10); “If you don’t have the parks and recreation type services in these areas, you’re just putting people in there – that’s a problem” (P18).

Practitioners characterize the case study neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant, Brampton, as a success by many measures of a compact, complete community. Advertisements promote proximity to transit and walkability, demonstrating that those planning principles are considered 277 marketable and desirable. The impacts of designing the neighbourhood with pedestrian shortcuts and establishing transit routes early on are worth examining through follow-up study as the community continues to be built out. To date, however, interview participants describe an area that is primarily a residential commuter suburb where residents can experience challenges finding enough space to park their cars.

The planning and policy emphasis on prescribing transit (or pedestrian) “oriented” and “supportive” densities discursively defers the improvement of transit and other mobility alternatives to an uncertain, densified future, and limits the improvement of transit in the present across variable densities. Traffic congestion and “car-cramming” are the unintended consequences of intensification and densification. While density may be an important factor in the transformation of the suburbs, practitioners’ perspectives lend support to Filion’s (2013) assertion that residential density is not the necessary precursor to suburban change despite the popularity of compact city theory. These findings carry policy implications for reinforcing political commitments to transit service and other mobility alternatives, and strengthening the tools and metrics for implementing the “completeness” of community development alongside compaction and densification. To be clear, my purpose in this paper is not to prematurely criticize the efforts of planning and development practitioners, nor to champion unchecked low density development; rather, practitioner perspectives illustrate how particular types of solutions, such as emphasizing residential intensification and densification, generate new challenges. Since planning in the Toronto region has a history of applying smart growth and new urbanism principles, the findings presented here can act as lessons learned for other regions considering implementing residential intensification and density targets. While a glossy representation of the best of both worlds employs a tried-and-true suburban sales pitch applied to higher density housing in an increasingly expensive region, the dispersed built fabric and suburban ways of life prove difficult to urbanize when density is destiny, and the logics and broader patterns of automobility remain in place.

In conclusion, if scholars such as Bourne (1996) and Dunham-Jones and Williamson (2009) are correct in predicting that efforts to “urbanize,” “densify” and generally “fix” the suburbs are the next major project for planning in the coming decades, then attention to the contours of these discourses is important for planning theory. Overarching the dissertation is the argument that contemporary policies, advertisements and interview narratives are discursively reinventing the image of the suburbs from “sprawling, dull and mono-functional non-places” to “urbane, youthful, attractive, competitive, and mixed-use” places. The emerging discourse in the region invokes temporality and spatiality to signal the suburban as passé and the urban as the evolved future. In this way, even if realities on the ground may prove resistant to transformation, emerging place images represent post-suburban aspirations, and can be considered part of the political-ideological trajectory towards post-suburbanization. In studies on Markham, Skaburskis (2006) found that consumer preferences for detached houses remained strong and Grant (2009) identified market constraints on what developers were willing to build and weak political commitment among factors frustrating planning efforts to implement new urbanism. My research has demonstrated that in the contemporary moment of rising housing prices and growing household indebtedness in the Toronto region, practitioner visions increasingly align with what is regarded as marketable according to consumer needs in the production of urbanized, higher- density suburban housing. 278

The ways that planners, politicians and developers define problems can open or constrain the range of solutions or possible visions for the future. A key role of planning theorists and reflective practitioners is to identify the limits and unintended consequences of current approaches, and clear the way for new concerns and possibilities to emerge. In the efforts to urbanize the Toronto suburbs, I find a strong discursive emphasis on aesthetics and design to attract young, knowledge economy workers towards the production of a competitive regional economy. Studies examining creative city strategies in Toronto, and elsewhere, have pointed to the multiple factors relating to the attraction and retention of particular residents and workers (Vinodrai, 2014), and to the resultant exclusion of lower income and other marginalized people (Catugal, Leslie & Hii, 2009). Moving into the future, suburban municipalities will face the challenges of producing inclusion in the face of eroding housing affordability, and providing viable alternatives to driving where cars crowd densified neighbourhoods when not stuck in traffic. Practitioner perspectives highlight the need to continue bringing multiple actors into communication, and especially bringing land use and transit planning into closer coordination.

This summary has been circulated to share my key findings with research participants. I will be submitting these papers for publication in academic planning, housing, and urban studies journals, and I ask that you please refrain from directly quoting this document or forwarding it to the media. Please contact me for further details: [email address and phone number removed]. Thank you again for your time and insights.

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Endnotes i Municipalities in the study area include: Ajax, Aurora, Barrie, Bradford-West Gwillimbury, Brampton, Burlington, East Gwillimbury, Innisfil, Markham, Milton, Mississauga, Newmarket, Oakville, Pickering, Richmond Hill, Stouffville, Vaughan, Whitby. The study area for policy and housing advertisement analysis included the broad arc of municipalities around Toronto and northward up the transportation corridors to Barrie, with interviews focused on the municipalities adjacent to Toronto and those that experienced notable population growth in the past few census periods. ii The “planner” category includes representation from the provincial government, regional and local municipalities, and two regional transit agencies: Metrolinx and York Region Transit. Municipal department managers and transit agency representatives doing planning-related work are included in this category. The category “municipal councillor” refers to elected politicians at the local and regional municipality scale and includes a Deputy Mayor, who for the sake of anonymity will be called “councillor.” The category “developer” refers to representatives from land development and homebuilding companies, which in this region are often integrated within the same company or group of companies. Many of the “developers” interviewed are accredited planners who work for the development and homebuilding industry. iii I conducted six interviews by phone, which were generally shorter, but were also recorded and transcribed. Two in-person interview participants declined to be recorded, and notes were taken instead. iv Drawn from the December 2015 issues of New Home Guide and New Condo Guide. 281

v The Growth Plan is subject to comprehensive review every ten years, and was updated in 2017; I focus here on the 2006 policies since they influenced the built form over the past decade and were in effect during this project’s interviews. I discuss where changes to the policy document have bearing on the study findings. vi Of the complete sample of developments whose advertisements I analyzed, 51% had a traditional or higher density townhouse component, either as part of a unit mix or as the sole unit type. There were 32 developments in the advertising sample for stacked and back-to-back units. Stacked townhouse projects ranged in scale from 12 to 272 units per project. Combined stacked-back-to-backs were the most prevalent form of higher density townhouse advertised. vii Newtowns at Mount Pleasant, stacked back-to-backs, Primont, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2015, v.23(3) p.43 (all caps in original). viii Urban Towndominiums, stacked townhouses, Rosehaven, Brampton, Homes, 2015, v.2, p.44. ix Fairground Lofts, satcked back-to-backs, Wycilffe, Condo Life, 2012, v.7, p.54. x Orchard Park, mix of townhouse types including staMinto, Stouffville, online. xi Newtowns at Mount Pleasant, Primont, Brampton, New Home Guide, 2015 v.23:3 p. 32. xii Upper Glen Abbey, Ballantry, Oakville, online. xiii SHIFT, stacked townhouses, Treasure Hill, Pickering, online. xiv Oak Park, Ballantry, Oakville, Condo Life, 2016, v2(February), p. 48 pdf p. 56. xv Uptownes, stacked townhouses, Stouffville, Homes 2013, v. 9, p.78, PDF p. 86. xvi Trafalgar landing townhouses and apartments, Great Gulf, Oakville, New Condo Guide, 2016, v20(01), p.20. xvii Urban Towns at Bayview, townhouses, Treasure Hill, Richmond Hill, New Home Guide, v.22 i.18 p. 32. xviii Nautique, apartments, Burlington, Adi, New Condo Guide, 2015, v.(19-18), p. 125. xix EXPO City, apartments, CortelGroup, VMC, online. xx EXPO City, apartments, CortelGroup, VMC, Condo Life, 2012, v.7, p.76. xxi Crystal Condominium, apartments, Pinnacle Uptown, Pinnacle, Mississauga, Condo Life, 2012 v.7, p.56. xxii Saddle Ridge, detached, semis, townhouses, Greenpark, Starlane, Milton, online. * page numbers from the housing industry magazines generally refer to the page number of the PDF file. Copyright Acknowledgments

Figure 1.2 Copyright Metrolinx, used with permission, retrieved from: The Big Move (2008, p. 4).

Figure 1.3 Copyright Statistics Canada, reproduced and distributed on an “as is” basis with the permission of Statistics Canada. Retrieved from Statistics Canada, The Daily, Study: The changing landscape of Canadian metropolitan areas, 1971 to 2011 (2016): https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/160322/mc-a001-eng.htm

Figure 1.4 and 1.5 historic advertisements from the Toronto Daily Star and Toronto Star retrieved from: the Toronto Public Library Pages of the Past archival project. None of the builders who produced the advertisements operate anymore, thus I was unable to seek their direct permission.

Figure 1.11 Copyright Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), used with permission, retrieved from: TREB (2018, p. 6). Market year in review & outlook report 2018: http://www.trebhome.com/files/2018-Market-Year-in-Review/

Figures 3.1 and 3.2 Copyright Treasure Hill Homes, accessed online, www.treasurehill.com, used with permission.

Figure 3.3 Copyright Averton Homes, accessed online, www.mainstreetseaton.com, used with permission.

Figure 3.7 Copyright Top Left: Heathwood Homes, used with permission, retrieved from: Homes 2013, v.6(June), pdf p. 8.

Figure 3.7 Copyright Top right: Adi Developments, used with permission, retrieved from: New Condo Guide 2015, 19(Nov.), p. 104 pdf p. 112.

Figure 4.1 Copyright York Region Transit (YRT), VIVA bus rapid transit educational and promotional materials, used with permission.

Figure 4.3: Copyright Vaughan Economic Development Department, used with permission, retrieved from: https://www.vaughan.ca/business/vaughan_metropolitan_centre/Pages/default.aspx

Outdoor advertisement billboards in the public domain were photographed by the author.

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