Ravenous Urbanism

Home , Humber River (Ontario), Leslie Street Spit

282 SEEKING THE CITY

Ravenous Urbanism

GEOFFREY THÜN University of Waterloo

RAVENOUS URBANISM and leftover from these network processes drop into the urban unconscious. Although these spaces Ravenous Urbanism proposes an alternative ap- occupy the physical space in the interior of the city, proach to urban densifi cation in the City that capi- they remain for the most part outside of the expe- talizes on existing natural systems as an untapped rience of everyday use and life. These terrains per- infrastructure that might propel ecologies, econo- sist and evolve then, not by the rules of the city, mies and experiences. It begins by confronting but by the codes of the wild – the uncivilized, the the traditional understanding of the ecumene, disorderly, the dangerous and the unrestrained. situating the spaces that lie beyond the habitable and civilized, in a contradictory manner within the Author Richard Louv identifi es the Third Frontier City – and then asking: How might a reconsid- as the cultural condition that defi nes the current eration of this internal wilderness as a terrifying, generation of North Americans’ relation to their fecund, and elusive space become an agent that environment. The First Frontier, which ostensibly restructures the form of the city as well as our came to a close near the end of the 19th cen- expectations of civic life? The Toronto Ravine sys- tury, was characterized by the idea of the civiliz- tem becomes both the site and the organizational ing transformation of the savage landscape and strategy for this proposal, via an unexpected ac- by the pioneer activities of land acquisition and complice: the agglomeration of built form and the the conquest of the wilderness through farming manufacture of new public space types that at- and industrialization. The Second Frontier, which tend densifi cation, and an open ended proposal has been identifi ed with the majority of the 20th for a series of sequential adjustments to the fabric century, was largely marked by the parallel condi- that attends the ravine edge. Ravenous Urbanism tions of the instrumental use of the land by the levers the current policies of the various levels family farm contrasted with the romantic attach- of government currently dictating treatment of ment to the idea of the pristine landscape made this edge, and opens questions for the manner manifest in the large scale national and urban in which similar strategies might be deployed in park systems, with this contradiction being sub- other urban centers to capitalize on the potentials sequently captured in the conception and prolif- of the natural seams that exist within the urban eration of the postwar subdivision and develop- fabric as a catalyst for urban, social and environment. Louv defi nes the Third Frontier, which has mental change. emerged in the last decade, as an embodiment of at least fi ve not necessarily logical trends: “a LOCATING THE THIRD FRONTIER severance of the public and private mind from our food’s origins”; “a disappearing line between ma- As the modern metropolis expands, it loses track chines, humans and other animals... and an end of its territories. Infrastructures shorten urban of biological absolutes”; “an increased intellectual connections and the appreciable time required to understanding of our relationship with other ani- transit between them. Simultaneously, their foot- mals” and natural systems, in the context of a print binds, confi nes and demarcates the ground. decreasing degree of lived experience in nature; The areas of land that are over passed, bypassed, “the invasion of our cities by wild animals (even RAVENOUS URBANISM 283

as urban/suburban designers replace wilderness SECRET WORLD with synthetic nature)”; and “the rise of a new kind of suburban form” defi ned by shrinking open In 1992, Architect Larry Richards whispered “To- space and severe land use restrictions.1 Louv cites ronto has a Secret” is his essay on the spaces research from the fi elds of psychology, sociology constitutive of the city, alluding to Kahn’s notion and early childhood education to make the case of a treasury of places, Richards cites the observa- that an encounter with the nature is central to the tions of Michael Hough to describe the geological / development of a young person – central to one’s psychographic anomaly that defi nes Toronto: capacity to “be in the world”, learn, and sympa- thize with the other. “the deep densely wooded ravines of Toronto that were cut from tableland by streams following the last ice age are part of a major system of river Fifteenth-century European world maps portrayed draining south to Lake Ontario. Twenty-one me- a single landmass divided into three continents tres below the fl at, urbanizing plateau of the grow- in the northern hemisphere of a spherical planet. ing city, they formed a unique system of remnant southern hardwood forest and streams, a habitat Those three continents constituted the ecumene, for animals and birds within an urban area, a place or habitable earth. Beyond the ecumene, lay the where the original forest and natural history of the wilderness, an unknown region characterized by land could still be experienced. It was where the either savage nonhuman creatures or an idyllic sounds of traffi c could no longer be heard, where smells and tactile feelings were enhanced by the paradise beyond the reach of human culture. Wil- utter contrast of the enclosing woods, suddenly derness, has always been associated with both or- experienced as one reached the valley fl oor from igins and infancy, and with the Armageddon that the level of the street...Today they [the ravines] lies in wait at the end of culture.2 In his essay, are recognized for their signifi cance to the environmental and social well being of the city. Within “Habitable Earth: Wilderness, Empire, and Race the urbanized environment, they have become in America.” Denis Cosgrove tells us that Thoreau one of the key elements that make Toronto differ- used “wild” synonymously with “wilderness” 3, as ent from other places.”4 the classifi ed and bounded zone beyond civiliza- tion – however, “wilderness” is rather the offi cially The ravines of Toronto constitute a specifi c type sanctioned wild; the culturally constructed realm of urban space, as whilst they might physically of the wild as classifi ed and permitted to exist. and psychologically occupy a condition of ter- What if the wild did not ask permission, and had rain vague,5 they are also latent with geological, entered the space of the City? physiological and mythological presences and rich

FIG. 1 (centre) Plan of Toronto illustrating the presence of the ravine system and its interconnectivity with other informal ecologies -the Don River on the East, and the Humber river to the West (right) images of the ofﬁ cial: Don ravines and its crossings, (left) the Humber ravines as residue - surﬁ cial and internal conditions. 284 SEEKING THE CITY

with the memory of the city. Here, ecologies and particularly tragic events with extensive destruc- processes from millennia past continue to oper- tion occurring along its full length. In the wake ate, and relics from past occupations continue to of this event, intensive stormwater infrastructure persist. Like the imperial sewers buried yet still including an extensive series of dams, reservoirs, functioning beneath the streets of Rome, the ra- and fl oodplains were engineered and erected to vines also have a central function within the city’s prevent similar situations from occurring in the fu- ecological and hydrological processes, as well as ture. Ownership and management of the ravines offering tremendous civic and recreational ame- was organized under the Toronto and Region Con- nity for the citizens that dare to transgress their servation Authority, and a boundary around the boundary. (fi g 1) high water mark of the fl ood was inscribed, defi n- ing the footprint of the ravine as a volatile force FLOOD AND FEAR to be managed. No construction was allowed to occur within this boundary, around which succes- For many, the Humber River Ravine constitutes sive waves of private residential development co- an abandoned or forgotten space in the city of To- alesced, for the most part enshrining the ravine ronto stretching northward from the mouth of the system within a cloak of private ownership, and river west of the downtown core, through to the under an intensively managed set of developmen- city’s north-western outer suburbs. This system tal constraints. The ravines were designated as occupies 2370 ha of area, and was at one time, a open space, and while they would remain publicly signifi cant natural feature around which the city accessible, only few selected areas were designat- developed. (fi g 2) ed as parkland and sanctioned for public use.

On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel descended During the 1950’s and 60’s, market-based high- upon the region with 110 km/hr winds and more rise housing was constructed on numerous sites than 200 millimetres of rain in less than 24 hours. adjacent to the ravines as part of a great boom of In Toronto, bridges and streets were washed out residential growth within Toronto. Although these and scores of homes and trailers were washed into structures were given a remarkable proximity to Lake Ontario. Thousands were left homeless, and the ravine system, their location was actually con- 81 were killed.6 The Humber River was the site of sidered to be on the periphery relative to central-

FIG. 2 (left) Erasure mapping indicating Humber Watershed ﬁ gure relative to adjacent networked ecologies associated with rail, highway and hydro infrastructures. (middle) catalytic systems: stormwater and centre-centric platting patterns locate dense housing at the ravines margins and fuel the ﬂ ow of contaminants into the ravine system (right) Mapping of carcinogenic contaminant release sites into adjacent soils. RAVENOUS URBANISM 285

ly located parks and schools surrounded by low us. On these walks I could temporarily shrug off density single family residential fabric arranged in my strangeness because…every human was a the familiar platting plans of suburban planning. newcomer.”10 High-rise residential types were in most cases effectively separated from the ravine system by In her 1993 novel Minus Time, Catherine Bush multi-storey walls of parking at their base, with no describes the protagonist Foster, who fl ees his direct access to the ravines. Although visible from home to disappear into the Don River Valley. The individual apartments, these spaces have failed to forgotten wilderness of the ravine becomes a kind become an actual amenity for most residents. of sanctuary and escape from the realm of civic life, and the wilderness of nature confl ates with Today, the Humber Valley is one of a system of the wilderness of the undersides of the city’s in- watersheds that thread through the cultural mo- frastructure that bound it. saic that comprises the city of Toronto. It remains “Beside them the river shone, quiet and viscous for many constituents surrounding the river an ... between its cement banks, seeping toward the unknown, and inaccessible place. The ravines lake, toward the thick, tall pillars that held up the maintain a sense of mystery and the uncivilized, Gardiner Expressway as it ran beside the lake. being not only the abode of countless of the city’s They dashed across the road beneath the highway, under the leached stains and the rusted pipes homeless residents, but also serving as riparian protruding from the pillars, this crumbling stretch linkages that bring birds, deer, beaver, foxes and of concrete sky.” 11 coyotes from the forests to the north into the heart of the city. They remain a territory that few In the cultural and poetic imagination of the city, are able to engage on a regular basis, but one the ravines thus maintain a position of being out- that offers the possibility for unexpected encoun- side and beyond the city, a para-natural form of ters with the ‘wild’ within immediate proximity of infrastructure, not playing by the same rules as the urban populous. In fact, one may count more the spaces of the city’s offi cially recognized parks locations of unmediated stormwater outfl ows into and recreation areas. As with the space beyond the system, than formal points of public entry. the ecumene in ancient maps, and the terrain vague of Solà Morales Rubió, these spaces of oth- MYTHOS: A LITERARY HISTORY erness have served to provide a fundamental cul- OF THE RAVINE tural identity for their constituents.

For Toronto’s authors, the ravines have emerged URBANIZATION & COMMUNITY INFRA- as a landscape of memory, myth and self-discov- STRUCTURE ery.7 Margaret Atwood’s characters enter the wilderness of the ravines as a space of transgres- In a country whose only form of population growth sion where their violent tendencies emerge.8 In is immigration, the Greater Toronto Area receives Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, the hero some 80% of new Canadians on an annual basis. Temelkov must hurl himself into the void to res- In the past decade, the social support network cue innocence from entering the ravine.9 In these for which Canada was well known in the 1970’s works, the ravine is an uncivilized place, a place has been eroded. The Toronto Community Hous- to be feared, a place where the wild carries its ing Commission has ceased to produce new social traditional sense of being beyond the ecumene. housing, and educational and training programs For a more recent generation of authors, howev- are in a state of decline. Demographic data re- er, the ravines have taken on a new role. In Anne veals a pattern of settlement in which successive Michael’s Fugitive Pieces, the ravine becomes a waves of immigrant communities have formed place of healing and transformation for the im- around residual spaces such as the Humber, due migrant outsider, a place of the other where the to their proximity to industrial uses and resultant outsider may ﬁ nd recognition and thus a form of low real estate values. A large percentage of this solace: population has been accommodated in the high- rise housing built along the Humber Ravine in the “ These explorations of the ravines were escapes middle of the last century. It is likely that the par- to ideal landscapes; lakes and primitive forests so long gone they could never be taken away from cels at the edge of the ravines may continue to 286 SEEKING THE CITY

densify as the city receives new immigrants, and nants the surround the river range from identifi ed Neo-liberal think tanks such as Neptis have iden- synthetic carcinogens to less volatile but equally tifi ed the ravine edge as having “excess capacity” problematic biological compounds. for growth. The adjacency of the Humber River Watershed to Despite the emphasis within Canada on its policies the CN / CP Western Rail corridor has also allowed of multiculturalism and the promise of a network for the proliferation of a range of formal and in- of community services to support cultural differ- formal industrial grounds that had for years been ence and sustenance, an ever increasing load on using the river as a kind of sewer drain. While existing programs and spaces to facilitate com- many of these obvious sources of pollution have munity support and foster civic life has stressed been curbed, toxicity from industrial lands con- existing social infrastructures to the breaking tinues to permeate the ground and infi ltrates the point. 12 In the past decade, after school pro- watershed. Federal and Provincial agencies have grams ranging from athletics to cultural activities been slow to act on these conditions within Cana- have been eliminated from the provincial public dian cities when compared to American and Euro- school system - simultaneously, funding for local pean counterparts, however action is imminent. community centre programs has been drastically The resultant injection of funding and large scale reduced. The free market has been left to medi- mobilization of remediation technologies provide ate this condition. a signifi cant opportunity for design to intervene in the future of these edges relative to the character Current Provincial policy statements require the and condition of the ravine. provision of an expanded network of ‘community infrastructures’ attendant to the provision of Recently, tremendous attention has been lavished physical infrastructures and increasing residential upon the offi cial spaces of Toronto’s interface with density within the GTA. The character and form its waters. Master planning and remedial landscape of this new network of service provision remains initiatives have spawned a series of high- profi le undefi ned and unexplored. Many believe that in- design competitions that will radically transform creased access to outdoor recreation opportuni- the spaces of the Lower Don, The Portlands, The ties and natural environments will help to medi- Leslie Street Spit, and the city’s waterfront along ate the social impacts of high density immigrant Lake Ontario. These initiatives now anticipate a living conditions. 13 Interestingly, in a recent set range of internationally recognized design prac- of informal interviews with a group of high school titioners each proposing a new vision for these aged young offenders, it was revealed that of the civic landscapes.15 These projects, however, are 18 young men in the group, none had ever visited concentrated in two primary territories, the Of- the ravines, or could even think of a reason why fi cial Spaces of urban waterfront parks, and the one might go. All of the interviewees had grown management of existing landscapes at the mouth up within 300 meters of the ravine’s edge. of the Don River.

ENVIRONMENT & TOXICITY PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE: INSTRUMENT OF INFLECTION 20% of the world’s fresh water lies within the national boundaries of Canada. 30% of the nation’s Across the province the ageing physical infra- population resides within the great lakes water- structural systems are in a state of crisis due to shed, and 80% of these, estimated to be some deferred maintenance and necessary repair work. 11,000,000 people by 2025, reside in the Greater The crisis is of such a magnitude, that an entirely Toronto Area, and draw their freshwater supply new Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal was from Lake Ontario.14 The ravine watershed sys- created in 2003 to strategically plan, implement, tem feeds this source. A combination of passive and manage these projects. 16 In proximity to the rural and urban runoff and the active dumping of Humber Ravine, a range of transportation, storm- waste and landﬁ ll has elevated toxicity within the water, water processing, sanitary, hydro electric, ravine watersheds to an alarming rate. Samples recreational and ecological infrastructures are in of water from the Humber River contain toxins a state of decay. Current plans call for signiﬁ cant from around the globe and the toxic contami- RAVENOUS URBANISM 287

reinvestment and injection of funds and action ism approaches. Recognizing the ravines as a into the area to support these infrastructures. unique natural system in need of infrastructural and ecological remediation, as well as a site of This circumstance could offer a profound oppor- tremendous social and physical amenity potential, tunity, especially when considered in conjunction Ravenous Urbanism is a proposal to expand and with the (secondary) agenda of community infra- amplify the ravine systems within the city. The structures outlined within the plans to re-imagine proposal begins by developing new ravine-like a synthetic vision of civic works that might not landscapes within the 300m perimeter of the ex- only draw into confl uence a range of economies isting Humber River that are connected to and feed and capital fl ows, but also attend to related social into it with remedial ecologies that extend into the issues that aggregate around the Humber River city as horizontal fi ngers processing waste, storm- Valley. The kind of speculative projects that might water, and soil in situ. Maximization of the edge emerge from such consideration may well be be- condition will also afford increased opportunities yond the capacity of existing authorities and agen- for physical proximity and experiential contact cies - specialized in the management of highly with the ravines. This proliferation of ravine edge particularized territories, but rather call upon the condition is to be accompanied by a densifi cation capacity of a transdisciplinary approach to such of built form at the edge, and conceiving of new issues that will without question be central to for- tower and urban space types. (fi g 3) ward looking synthetic urban design thinking and strategic design practice in the years to come. In so doing, an economic and development model is introduced that would locate community infra- MINING THE SEAMS: structure, transportation networks and popula- RAVENOUS URBANISM tion growth adjacent to the ravine edge and will provide a cultural infrastructure to the intensifi ed It is this confl ation of civic, economic, ecological, periphery. A distributed network of social and civ- social and cultural systems that Ravenous Urban- ic spaces as sites for interpretation and cultural

FIG. 3 (left) Axonometric drawing of various components of Ravenous Urbanism at work: Circulation and built form concentrates public amenity at the highly densiﬁ ed ravine edge and biases its occupation. (middle) topographic operations that borrow from the typological language of ravine edge formation to construct new social topographies and ecologies (right) Thematic sequences and programmes for the ampliﬁ cation of the ravine edge. 288 SEEKING THE CITY

emergence attend the legible manifestation of re- The social space of the urban thus enters into medial technologies. dialogue with the self-organizing, autocatalytic biological network of the ravine and will evolve ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL AUTOCATALYSIS by drift. Within a fi eld of ongoing remedial operations and infrastructural adjustments, signifi cant It is clear that a single masterplan would not be sectional displacement will occur to the profi le adequate to anticipate or forecast the time based of the land. The resultant terrain, will be medi- choreography required to orchestrate such chang- ated through its seams. In-situ soil composting es. Rather, a series of tactical interventions that through the fi gure of windrows initiates an orien- anticipate systemic totality would need to be ini- tation of planemetric morphology perpendicular tiated that might introduce, episodically at fi rst, to the ravine edge. New systemic infrastructures Ravenous Urbanism. associated with storm water and sewage processing 17 would be positioned below grade in proxim- Once the engine of development is initiated, re- ity to parking structures associated with new high mediation legislation with respect to toxic soils density parcels. Successive Phytoremediation will and existing stormwater outfl ow systems deter- parallel the deep surface’s capacity to process mines the sites of initial activity . Radical urban runoff and sewage, and generate a landscape of remediation that impacts the ecologies of the new natural systems and connection linked to the ravine system would be necessarily required as ecologies of the ravines. These systems will mani- part of federal and provincial mandates, and in fest themselves along the space of the edge as a light of the increased residential population, the new form of public infrastructure. The opportuni- provision of community infrastructures such a s ties afforded by a banded arrangement of suc- school, community centres and cultural facilities, cession landscapes, perpendicular to the ravines, all currently driven by population density would form systems of public pathways and ecological be provided under existing policies all to be con- linkage. (fi g 4) ceptualized as part of the thickened edge.

FIG. 4 Images of the Socle Mat: The constructed landscape of the socle replete with water ﬁ ltration and public space systems, multistorey landscape infrastructures that support community infrastructure programmes, and speciﬁ c program nodes as points of formal entry into the ravine system. RAVENOUS URBANISM 289

TORONTO URBAN FORM: SOCLE, with the capacity to internally generate energy AND TOWER either through photovoltaic systems, or turbine based wind harvesters. (fi g 5) Ravenous Urban- The form of the built development of Ravenous ism takes what was once considered outside of Urbanism reinterprets the existing Toronto tow- the offi cial city and internalizes it to be central to er and socle typology and re-imagines the socle the city’s future. The new proliferated ravine sys- as an active thick urban landscape mat capable tem will, on one hand serve as a landscape ame- of supporting social, cultural, and environmen- nity in the traditional sense of recreation and en- tal programs and mediations. In 2005, Toronto’s counter for the residents of the city. On the other planning department adopted legislation requir- hand, it is likely that the ravines, functioning as a ing that 4-6 storey commercial bases to be de- part of the city’s hybridized and emergent infra- signed as part of every new tower constructed structural network, their operational systems and in the city. This base must perform a whole host landscapes transforming as their ecology evolves, of performative functions related to conserva- will maintain their sense of ‘otherness ’and will tive visions of street and related programs and continually resist the forces of taming and beau- “good planning”. Indeed. Within the framework of tifi cation, becoming part of a protean landscape Ravenous Urbanism, the narrowly defi ned socle that interrelates human, ecological and urbaniz- as base, is re-imagined as a thick landscape mat ing processes. that not only liberates the tower from the ground plane, but becomes that site of a new and emer- Whatever one thinks of this vision, it is clear, that gent public realm, facilitating access to the rain attempting to address the complexities of nat- vine landscape and also providing a site for the ural systems within urban contexts, much more community infrastructure that will attend densi- is at stake than the provision of quantities of fi cation. Existing transportation systems will be “green”. For most industrialized North American intensifi ed, adding skybound alternatives to lin- cities, such ecological systems have been sup- ear surface based systems locating hubs at key pressed within the fi eld of urban morphology that interface points along the ravine. surround their fi gure. What is of great interest in the Toronto example, is that highly particularized In the version of this future that we have illus- cultural and demographic conditions attend these trated, extended ecological imperatives include territories - conditions that, if not already con- agricultural production, assuring access to a stituting urgent territories of action, will become healthy and affordable food supply for members increasingly potent site for intervention as urban of the community. The towers of Ravenous Ur- densifi cation continues. Within the Canadian ex- banism will be equipped with productive green- ample, an astonishing array of policies attend the houses that form a verdant amenity attendant to introduction of development mechanisms that, domestic life. Some towers may also equipped if implemented, may in fact provide the political

FIG. 5 (left to right) Three tower typologies proposed within the Ravenous Urbanism framework. Within tower mass, a variety of unit sizes and tenure types are accommodated including vertical greenhouse spaces and terrarium types with photovoltaic skins, and turbine types that generate energy to drive public amenities in vertical conﬁ gurations, or at the space of the socle landscape below. 290 SEEKING THE CITY

and economic lever for introducing a radical re- 11. see Catherine Bush, Minus Time. (Toronto: Harper formulation of these existing edges, having the Perennial Canada. 2000) : 276 dual capacity to further agendas of both ecologi- 12. see A DECADE OF DECLINE: POVERTY AND IN- cal, environmental, civic and cultural potentials COME INEQUALITY IN THE CITY OF TORONTO IN THE within our cities. 1990S a report prepared jointly by The United Way of Greater Toronto, and the Canadian Council on Social Development. Toronto: 2002 Note: The detailed design work of Ravenous Ur- 13. see Louv : 280-322 banism will be presented during the ACSA confer- ence in Houston permitting extensive graphic il- 14. see Ontario Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renew- lustration not allowed for in this paper format that al “ Vision for 2031” Places to Grow. (Ottawa: Govern- ment of Ontario. 2005) :12 instead, provides a background for the project. 15. For a summary of recent landscape initiatives in Toronto see www.waterfrontoronto.ca. A range of ex- ENDNOTES emplary design practices that have proposed new visions include Michael van Valkenberg and Associates, 1. see Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving West 8, and Field Operations. Our Children from Nature-Defi cit Disorder, (Chapel Hill: Algonquin. 2005) The third frontier is spatialzed as de- 16. OMPIR op. cit.: 5 fi ning the territory where the ‘natural’ resides in the ur- 17. Primary sites for the Ravenous Urbanism project ban, suburban and ex-urban contexts examined by the are situated immediately adjacent to, or comprised cultural studies undertaken by Louv et al. This territory of existing sites of industrial decampment, or at one has affi nity with the Terrain Vague of de Solà-Morales, of the 2250 locations of existing storm water outfalls the Dross of Larup and Berger, but ultimately more so, that deposit their contents directly into the Humber. with the Zone of Tarkovsky, insofar as the overwhelm- Although the performative measures associated with ing presence of the natural realm within ambiguous, this approach are most profound from the standpoint unresolved, marginalized, and residual conditions is of total and systemic deployment, incremental adjust- essential for its inclusion within Louv’s defi nition. ments associated with new development at priority lo- 2. see Dennis Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic cations generate the initial nodes of change from which Genealogy of the Earth in Western Imagination. (Balti- the network confi guration of the ravine system might more MD: The John’s Hopkins University Press. 2001) generate broader systemic effects. : ix-78 3. see Dennis Cosgrove, “Habitable earth: wilderness, empire, and race in America’’, in Wild Ideas ed.D Rothenberg (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapo- lis, MN. 1995) : 35 4. see Larry Richards citation of Michael Hough in “Toronto’s Treasury”. Toronto Places, ed. Larry Richards & Marc Baraness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1992) : 11-17 5. see Ignasi de Solà-Morales Rubío,. “Terrain Vague,” Anyplace. Ed. Davidson, Cynthia E. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.1995) : 122-123 6. see John Bentley Mays, “Binding and Loosing the Waters”, Emerald City: Toronto Visited, (Toronto: Vi- king Press.1994) : 38-53. 7. see Robert Fulford, 1996. “The Invention of Toronto: A City defi ned by its artists”. William Kilbourn Lecture, Toronto Historical Board, 12 June 1996. (http://www. robertfulford.com/kilbourn.html), Geoffrey Thün, “ Reading Toronto: Collective Consciousness, Imagina- tion and the Emergent City” (2006: forthcoming), 8. see Margaret Atwood, “Journey to the Interior” The Circle Game. (Toronto: Contact Press.1966) : 64-68 9. see Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion, (Markham: Penguin International. 1988) : 31-32 10. see Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces. (Toronto: Mc- Clelland and Stewart. 1996) : 102