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UCC Library and UCC Researchers Have Made This Item Openly Available UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available. Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks! Title Life in the city starts at the centre: a genealogy of the neoliberal city, through four generations of shopping spaces in Toronto Author(s) McElligott, Christopher Publication date 2017 Original citation McElligott, C. 2017. Life in the city starts at the centre: a genealogy of the neoliberal city, through four generations of shopping spaces in Toronto. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Rights © 2017, Christopher McElligott. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Embargo information Restricted to everyone for three years Embargo lift date 2020-10-18T10:43:52Z Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/4914 from Downloaded on 2021-10-10T18:54:49Z Life in the City starts at the Centre A genealogy of the neoliberal city, through four generations of shopping spaces in Toronto Christopher McElligott BA (Hons) MPlan Thesis submitted for PhD programme i n S o c i a l S c i e n c e s , G r a d u a t e Research Education Programme N a t i o n a l U n i v e r s i t y of Ireland, Cork Head of Department: Dr Niamh Hourigan Supervisor: Dr Kieran Keohane Table of Contents List of Images ........................................................................................................... 5 List of Figures .......................................................................................................... 7 Declaration ............................................................................................................... 7 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 9 An archaeology of shopping spaces in the city .................................................. 10 Literature on Neoliberal Urban Planning ........................................................... 13 Methodology ...................................................................................................... 21 Why was Toronto chosen as the focus of the study? ......................................... 24 Outline of thesis ................................................................................................. 27 Chapter Two: The City and the consolidation of consumer culture. .................. 30 Yonge Street: the commercial heart of Toronto. .................................................... 31 Toronto Arcade .................................................................................................. 33 The arcade – a world in miniature...................................................................... 38 The rise of the department store ......................................................................... 42 Eaton’s Department Store .................................................................................. 44 The Industrial Slum ............................................................................................ 48 Reshaping the Industrial City for Consumer Society ............................................. 50 Municipal power in Toronto 1834 -1953 ........................................................... 51 Housing in the Municipal City ........................................................................... 54 Toronto Housing Company ................................................................................ 54 Single Women in the City .................................................................................. 57 Chapter Three: The Suburbs and the Mall ........................................................... 61 The Automobile Suburb ..................................................................................... 62 The emergence of Metropolitan Toronto ........................................................... 64 The Rise of Welfare Capitalism ......................................................................... 68 Post-War Suburbia ............................................................................................. 69 Robert Moses – Re-imagining New York City for the Post-War Society ......... 69 Don Mills – the model for Canadian Suburbia .................................................. 71 The development of Suburban Shopping in Toronto ......................................... 77 Shopping Spaces for the new suburbia .................................................................. 78 The Linda Vista Shopping Centre – welfare capitalism and military housing .. 79 Planning the Shopping Spaces of 194X ............................................................. 83 Victor Gruen – bringing Urban Vienna to Suburban America .......................... 85 Providing a focus for the ‘amorphous conglomeration’ .................................... 87 Tomorrow’s Main Street Today ......................................................................... 90 2 The Materialisation of Mass Consumer Society .................................................... 96 A shopping space for the ‘push button’ generation ........................................... 99 The Malling of North America ........................................................................ 106 Chapter Four: The downtown Shopping Centre ................................................ 109 Focus shifts back to Yonge Street .................................................................... 111 Project Viking ...................................................................................................... 114 Shaping the Shopping Quadrant ...................................................................... 115 Facilitating Private Development ..................................................................... 117 Extracting public benefit from private development ....................................... 118 The Mayor’s Office .............................................................................................. 120 Nathan Phillips – Mayor of all People ............................................................. 120 A more fitting neighbour for New City Hall .................................................... 122 The increasing power of the Metropolitan Council ......................................... 123 Eaton’s proposal ................................................................................................... 124 Jewel in the Crown ........................................................................................... 125 The end of Old City Hall? ................................................................................ 128 Friends of Old City Hall – Reclaiming the city ................................................... 130 Negotiation and the politics of urban development ......................................... 133 Eatons cancels the development....................................................................... 134 The Yonge Street Pedestrian Mall ................................................................... 136 The 1976 Central Area Plan ............................................................................. 140 The Urban Crisis and the emergence of the Neo-liberal City .............................. 142 The Decline of Welfare Capitalism.................................................................. 144 The decline of Yonge Street ............................................................................. 149 The impact of the neoliberal city ..................................................................... 153 Re-casting the city: A response to the ‘Urban Crisis’ ...................................... 155 Chapter Five: ‘Life in the City Starts at the centre’ The Eaton Centre ........... 158 Toronto Eaton Centre: Creating the dreamworld ................................................. 159 The Resurrection of the Toronto Eaton Centre ................................................ 160 Opening up the Eaton Centre to the city .......................................................... 163 Public Access to Private Space ........................................................................ 164 Selling the Centre ............................................................................................. 165 Connecting the centre to the city around it ...................................................... 166 Shifting the focus inwards ................................................................................ 170 A multi-level shopping street ........................................................................... 170 Life in the City starts at the centre ....................................................................... 173 The Hyperreal City Street ................................................................................ 177 3 Applying a veneer of urbanity.......................................................................... 178 Flight Stop – Art in the City ............................................................................. 181 The replacement of the public street ................................................................ 185 Chapter Six: The Suburb exteriorised in the City .............................................. 192 Recession and the influence of Neoliberal policies on Toronto .......................... 192 Urban Planning to Urban Development Services ............................................ 194 Public v Private
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