Jane Jacobs moved from New York to Toronto in 1968 and is often assumed to have played an important part introducing and advancing new planning ideas to Toronto and shaping the city’s urban form. This study investigates the role she played in four important episodes in the transformation of the city’s planning from 1968 to 1978 and finds that, although the ideas in her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities had considerable impact on Toronto, many other forces of change were at work and that she herself was not as influential an activist as some have claimed.
Recent items that prompted this study were the anthology of writings in Timothy Mennel, Jo Steffens, and Christopher Klemek, eds., Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York (New York: Municipal Art Society of New York, 2007); various articles in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 66, no. 1 (March 2007); Christopher Klemek, ‘‘From Political Outsider to Power Broker in Two ‘Great American Cities:’ Jane Jacobs and the Fall of the Urban Renewal Order,’’ Journal of Urban History 34, no. 2 (January 2008): 309-32; Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch, Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of the Death and Life of Great American Cities (Boston: David R. Godine, 2009); Anthony Flint, Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City (New York: Random House, 2009); older but valuable assessments are Roger Montgomery, ‘‘Is There Still Life in Death and Life,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 64, no. 3 (1998): 269-74; and David Hill, ‘‘Jane Jacobs’ Ideas on Big, Diverse Cities,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 54, no. 3 (1988).
2.
Robert Fishman , ‘‘The Mumford-Jacobs Debate,’’Planning History Studies10, no. 1-2 (1996): 3-11.
3.
Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life (New York: Random House, 1984); Jacobs does offer an insightful resolution to the left/right, interventionist/libertarian conundrum in Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (New York: Random House, 1992); Jim Lemon, Liberal Dreams and Nature’s Limits: Great Cities in North America Since 1600 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996), 20-24, addresses her libertarian side; Pierre Desrochers, ‘‘The Death and Life of a Reluctant Urban Icon,’’ Journal of Libertarian Studies 21, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 115-36, mentions it repeatedly.
4.
Pierre Desrochers and Samuli Leppala, ‘‘Rethinking ‘Jacobs Spillovers,’ or How Diverse Cities Actually Make Individuals More Creative and Economically Successful,’’ in What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs, ed. Stephen A. Goldsmith, and Lynne Elizabeth (Oakland, CA: New Village Press , 2010), 287; the film is ‘‘Jane Jacobs: Urban Wisdom,’’Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2003.
5.
The new book Goldsmith and Elizabeth, ed. What We See, includes some essays by Torontonians (Taylor, Greenberg, Crombie) about Toronto, but they are personal reflections, not research essays.
6.
A short but lucid analysis of Jacobs’s role in this transformation, internationally, is Robert Fishman, ‘‘The Anti-Planners: The Contemporary Revolt Against Planning and its Significance for Planning History,’’ in Shaping an Urban World, ed. Gordon E. Cherry (London: Mansell, 1980), 243-52.
7.
Lisa Rochon, ‘‘New Ideas Require Old Buildings,’’ in Block by Block, ed. Steffens, Mennel, and Klemek, 40.
8.
Ken Greenberg, ‘‘Uncommon Sense: A Focus on the Real and the Particular in Cities,’’ Ideas that Matter: The Quarterly 1, no. 3; see also Greenberg’s comments cited in Adele Freeman, ‘‘Jane Jacobs,’’ The Globe and Mail, 9 June 1984, in Ideas that Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs, ed. Max Allen (Owen Sound, ON: Ginger Press, 1997); he presents a similar sentiment in Kenneth Greenberg, ‘‘The Interconnectedness of Things,’’ in What We See, ed. Goldsmith and Elizabeth, 116-24; one might also consider Robert Fulford, Accidental City: The Transformation of Toronto (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1995), 73-90.
9.
For example, Barry Wellman, ‘‘Jane Jacobs, the Torontonian,’’ University of Toronto Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Research Bulletin 30, July 2006.
10.
http://www.torontopedia.ca/Jane_Jacobs_Day.
11.
Christopher Klemek, ‘‘Urbanism as Reform: Modernist Planning and the Crisis of Urban Liberalism in Europe and North America, 1945-1975’’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2004), 248.
12.
Roberta Brandes Gratz, ‘‘Authentic urbanism and the Jane Jacobs Legacy,’’ in Urban Villages and the Making of Communities, ed. Peter Neal (London and New York: Spon Press, 2003), 19-23; Elizabeth Macdonald and Allan Jacobs, ‘‘Queen Street,’’ in What We See, ed. Stephen A. Goldsmith and Lynne Elizabeth, 108-15, might be considered in this context as well.
13.
This study, drawn from the author’s comprehensive history of Toronto planning currently being written, is based on a wide range of primary material and a set of interviews conducted by the author through the course of the last few years; see Appendix.
14.
The focus here is on her initial influence. Jacobs is seen as having had an impact on ‘‘the Kings’’ neighborhood in the 1990s, but that is another matter, not considered here-ed. Neal, Urban Villages and the Making of Communities, 216-19.
15.
Peter L. Laurence, ‘‘Jane Jacobs Before ‘Death and Life,’’’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 66, no. 1 (March 2007): 5-15; Alice Sparberg Alexiou, Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006) chap. 4; ‘‘‘Urban Design:’ Extracts from the 1956 First Urban Design Conference at the GSD,’’ Harvard Design Magazine 24 (Spring-Summer 2006).
16.
‘‘‘Urban Design:’ Extracts from the 1956 First Urban Design Conference at the GSD,’’ 8; also Allen, ed. Ideas that Matter, 39-40.
17.
Peter L. Laurence, ‘‘The Death and Life of Urban Design: Jane Jacobs, the Rockefeller Foundation and the New Research in Urbanism, 1955-1965,’’ Journal of Urban Design 11, no. 2 (June 2006): 145-72; J. Tyrwhitt, ed. The Heart of the City: Towards the Humanisation of Urban Life (Lund Humphries, 1952).
18.
Jane Jacobs , ‘‘Downtown is for People,’’Fortune (April 1958): 135-39.
19.
A new book on automobiles and automobile culture by a Toronto journalist cites her as ‘‘leading the crusade against Spadina,’’ and this is quite common-Tim Falconer, Drive: A Road Trip Through our Complicated Affair with the Automobile (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008), 6; C. Klemek, ‘‘Urbanism as Reform,’’ emphasizes Spadina, as does the current Wikipedia entry on Jacobs.
20.
Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board (MTPB), Official Plan of the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Area (Toronto, 1959), 152-54; David and Nadine Nowlan, The Bad Trip: The Untold Story of the Spadina Expressway (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1970), chap. 1; Report No. 24 of the Roads and Traffic Committee, Metropolitan Toronto Council Minutes, 1961, 2606-11; important as the Spadina cancellation is in Toronto, there is no comprehensive analytical history of the event.
21.
Crombie interviews.
22.
Nowlan, Bad Trip, 68-69; MTPB, ‘‘Report on the Spadina Expressway Briefs and Ratepayer Presentations,’’ February 1962.
23.
The Globe and Mail, February 20, 1962, 5; Toronto Daily Star, February 20, 1962, 25, cited in Christopher Leo, The Politics of Urban Development: Canadian Urban Expressway Disputes (Toronto: The Institute of Public Administration of Canada, 1977), 34.
24.
MTPB, ‘‘Report on the Metropolitan Toronto Transportation Plan’’ (Toronto, 1964); MTPB, ‘‘Metropolitan Plan for the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Area’’ (Toronto, 1966).
25.
Read Voorhees Associates, ‘‘Central Area Transportation Study: Metropolitan Toronto’’ (Toronto, 1968); Ontario Municipal Board, ‘‘Decision on the Spadina Expressway Prepared by the Spadina Review Corporation’’ (Toronto, 1971).
26.
Speck interview; Toronto Daily Star, April 19, 1969, Section 3; Leo, Expressway Disputes, 36; Nowlan, Bad Trip, 77-80; ‘‘250 Ask Spadina Halt,’’ The Globe and Mail, December 17, 1969, and ‘‘Expressway Committee Plans to SSSOCCC it to Toronto,’’ The Globe and Mail, January 17, 1970.
27.
Alexiou, Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary, chap. 9; Allen, ed. Ideas that Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs, 114-19.
28.
‘‘Author says Spadina Expressway is city’s single greatest menace,’’ The Globe and Mail, February 5, 1969, 9.
29.
The woman who initiated the Committee of Concerned Citizens, Bobbi Speck, was a New Yorker and a recent arrival in the neighborhood, but at the time she knew nothing of Jacobs or Death and Life-Speck interview.
30.
Speck, Nowlan, and Jaffary interviews.
31.
‘‘A City Getting Hooked on the Expressway Drug,’’ The Globe and Mail, November 1, 1969, 7.
32.
The other major local paper, The Star, was not-Nowlans interview.
33.
Ontario Municipal Board, ‘‘Decision on the Spadina Expressway Prepared by the Spadina Review Corporation’’ (1971), report of W. Shub.
34.
Falconer, Drive, 6.
35.
Raymond A. Mohl, ‘‘Stop the Road: Freeway Revolts in American Cities,’’Journal of Urban History30, no. 5 (July 2004), 674-706.
36.
It has proven difficult to determine the direct impact of her book on the organizers; not all were interviewed, and some who were read it while the opposition was underway and are unsure of the precise chronology-Speck and Nowlans interviews.
37.
Greenberg, ‘‘The Interconnectedness of Things,’’ 116.
38.
Fulford, Accidental City, 83; Klemek, ‘‘From Political Outsider to Power Broker.’’
39.
Albert Rose, Regent Park: A Study in Slum Clearance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1958); Rose was involved in creating Regent Park, and his book is an advocate’s account rather than a critical narrative; for figures on size and population, 181; Kevin Brushett, ‘‘Blots on the Face of the City: The Politics of Slum Housing and Urban Renewal in Toronto, 1940-1970,’’ unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University, 2001, presents a more contemporary, critical perspective.
40.
City of Toronto Planning Board (CTPB), ‘‘Report of the Joint Advisory Committee on Regent Park South,’’ January 31, 1955.
41.
Advisory Committee on the Urban Renewal Study, ‘‘Urban Renewal: A Study of the City of Toronto,’’ 1956.
42.
Both projects have substantial documentation; the paper trail begins with CTPB, ‘‘Redevelopment Study Area No. 1’’ (July 1957) and ‘‘Redevelopment Study Area No. 2’’ (July 1957).
43.
CTPB, ‘‘Improvement Program for Residential Areas,’’ January 1965, 7-9; also John Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy (Kingston and Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 1993), 212.
44.
Repo interview; Graham Fraser, Trefann Court: Urban Renewal in Trefann Court (Toronto: Hakkert, 1972), 106.
45.
For community organizers in Trefann Court, Fraser, Fighting Back, 81-84; Sarah Spinks, ‘‘Urban Renewal in Canadian Cities,’’ Our Generation 5, no. 2: 102-05 and Repo and Sewell interviews; in Alexandra Park, Patricia J. O’Connor, ‘‘The Story of St. Christopher House 1912-1986,’’ 32-33; more generally, Margaret Daly, The Revolution Game: The Short, Unhappy Life of the Company of Young Canadians (Toronto: New Press, 1970), 16-17, 33-34; Myrna Kostash, Long Way From Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: Lorimer, 1980); Richard Harris, Democracy in Kingston, A Social Movement in Urban Politics 1965-1970 (Kingston and Montreal McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 6-8, 54-58 observes a similar phenomenon.
46.
John Sewell, Up Against City Hall (Toronto: Lorimer, 1972), chap. 2; Fraser, Fighting Back; Marjaleena Repo, ‘‘Organizing ‘the Poor’-Against the Working Class,’’ in Community or Class Struggle?, ed. John Cowley (London, England: Stage 1, 1977); population from Fraser, 33.
47.
Ctpb, ‘‘Trefann Court Urban Renewal Scheme Redevelopment Plan,’’ October 1966.
48.
The new scheme was completed early in 1972-CTPB, ‘‘The Trefann Court Urban Renewal Scheme,’’ January 1972.
49.
Sewell, Up Against City Hall, chap. 8; M. Quigley, ‘‘Democracy is Us: Citizen Participation in Development in the City of Toronto’’ (Ontario Department of Municipal Affairs, 1971).
50.
‘‘Crombie Wins Stay of Demolition on Sherbourne,’’ The Globe and Mail, April 2, 1973; Jane Jacobs, ‘‘Big Plans and Little Plans’’ in Ideas that Matter, ed. Allen, 124-25; Sewell interview.
51.
Repo, Sewell, Jaffary, and Crombie interviews.
52.
He and his colleagues created the ‘‘Toronto Community Union Project,’’ T-CUP, to raise funds for their work-Fraser, Fighting Back, 82.
53.
Jon Caulfield , The Tiny Perfect Mayor ( Toronto: Lorimer, 1974); Warren Magnusson, ‘‘Toronto’’ in City Politics in Canada, ed. Warren Magnusson and Andrew Sancton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983); Michael Goldrick, ‘‘The Anatomy of Urban Reform in Toronto,’’City Magazine 3, no. 4/5 (May/June 1978).
54.
Time (Canada), July 23, 1975; the concept of reform, applied to these events, is examined in the literature cited above, as well as in Jon Caulfield, ‘‘‘Reform’ as a Chaotic Concept: The Case of Toronto,’’ Urban History Review 17, no. 2 (October 1988): 107-11; and in Richard Harris, ‘‘A Social Movement in Urban Politics: A Reinterpretation of Urban Reform in Canada,’’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 11, no. 3 (1987): 363-81.
55.
One finds no mention of her, or her ideas, in the literature cited above on the Toronto reform movement nor is she mentioned in the comprehensive feature article in Time published at probably the peak of the movement’s influence, in mid-1975.
56.
St. Lawrence has been studied locally, but little has been formally published-Michael Dennis, ‘‘St Lawrence 1974-1979’’ (Commissioner of Housing, 1979) is the most comprehensive overview but few copies are extant; David Gordon, ed. Learning from St Lawrence (1990) is a collection of papers; the Urban Affairs Library of the City of Toronto has bound copies of all the significant internal working reports, catalogued as a series; for the architectural point of view, ‘‘Progress Report: St Lawrence Neighbourhood,’’ Canadian Architect, June 1981.
57.
Dennis, ‘‘St Lawrence,’’ 29.
58.
Sewell interview; one might note that the ‘‘working committee’’ planning concept, pioneered by Sewell and others in the urban renewal projects of the late 1960s, had become a local standard by this time.
59.
Zeidler Partnership Architects, ‘‘Design Guidelines for the Proposed St Lawrence Neighbourhood Site,’’ April 1975.
60.
Steven Fong and David Gordon, ‘‘Designing St Lawrence,’’ in Learning from St Lawrence, ed. David Gordon, 4-10; Sewell, Littlewood, and Lewinberg interviews.
61.
Littlewood, Zeidler, and Schiller interviews.
62.
Littlewood interview.
63.
Littlewood interview.
64.
A report ‘‘Site Planning Studies’’ prepared by a committee of council, July 14, 1975, includes several new key design principles; the full plan is in City of Toronto Housing Department, ‘‘The Block Study,’’ October, 1975; Baird would go on to an illustrious career and later become Dean of the Architecture Faculty.
65.
For an analysis of the neighborhood design, Steven Fong and David Gordon, ‘‘Designing St Lawrence’’ and Frank Lewinberg, ‘‘Comments on St Lawrence,’’ both in Learning from St Lawrence, ed. David Gordon.
66.
One should not overlook the fact that this was, and is, a public housing project, not simply a downtown neighborhood, and it could not easily be replicated in the private sector. Praise can be found in J. David Hulchanski, ‘‘Planning New Neighbourhoods: Lessons from Toronto’s St Lawrence Neighbourhood,’’ in Learning from St Lawrence, ed. David Gordon and in Robert Fulford, Accidental City, 73-90; more ambivalent are ‘‘Site Plan for the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood’’ in Toronto Places: A Context for Urban Design, ed. Marc Baraness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992) and ‘‘Progress Report: St Lawrence Neighbourhood,’’ Canadian Architect, June 1981; also useful is City of Toronto Housing Department, ‘‘A Resident Survey in St Lawrence Neighbourhood Phase A,’’ January 1981.
67.
Klemek, ‘‘From Political Outsider to Power Broker,’’ 310, 325.
68.
Littlewood interviews, and subsequent discussions; his short piece ‘‘Alan Littlewood, Architect,’’ in Allen, ed. Ideas that Matter, 202-04, tells things rather differently, and may have influenced Klemek.
69.
Littlewood and Sewell interviews.
70.
Littlewood, Lewinberg, Zeidler, and Baird interviews.
71.
Littlewood’s connection to Dublin is suggested in Steven Fong and David Gordon, ‘‘Designing St Lawrence,’’ in Learning from St Lawrence, ed. David Gordon, 4-14, not by Littlewood himself.
72.
‘‘Another Chance for Housing: Low Rise Alternatives’’ (New York: Museum of Modern Art , 1973).
73.
This important episode has not yet received much attention from historians and analysts; one valuable analysis is Frances Frisken, City Policy-Making in Theory and Practice: The Case of Toronto’s Downtown Plan (London, ON: University of Western Ontario Department of Political Science, 1988), but it is not widely available.
74.
City of Toronto Archives (CTA), CTPB Minutes, Memorandum, January 30, 1973; Crombie to Members of Council (in meeting of February 13, 1973); Memorandum, February 26, 1973, Crombie to Buildings and Development Committee (in meeting of March 8, 1973).
75.
Caulfield, The Tiny Perfect Mayor, chap. 1; Crombie interview.
76.
Cohen, Lewinberg, and Dean interviews; one of the clearest expressions of this is CTPB, ‘‘Towards a Part II Plan for South-East Spadina’’ (1972).
77.
CTA, CTPB Minutes, Memorandum, February 26, 1973, Crombie to Buildings and Development Committee (in meeting of March 8, 1973).
78.
Crombie interview; Caulfield, The Tiny Perfect Mayor, chap. 6; ‘‘The Ontario Municipal Board Decision on the City of Toronto’s 45 Foot By-Law,’’ in Politics and Government of Urban Canada: Selected Readings, ed. L. D. Feldman and M. D. Goldrick, eds, 3rd edn (Toronto: Methuen, 1976); the city bylaws themselves were #347-73 (to amend the Official Plan to permit it to include a restrictive bylaw) and #348-73 (to impose the restriction) passed December 7, 1973.
79.
Ctpb, ‘‘The Central Area Plan: History of Events from June 1972,’’ January 7, 1977.
80.
CTA, CTPB Minutes, meeting of May 1, 1973, ‘‘Progress Report on Core Area Task Force;’’ CTPB, ‘‘Tentative Program of Studies in the Core Area,’’ December 13, 1973; Core Area Task Force, Report and Recommendations, n.d. (presented to the Planning Board July 16, 1974); Coombes interview.
81.
They had earlier prepared a description of their principles-CTPB, ‘‘Central Area Plan Review: Principles’’ (March 1975); the complete version is CTPB, ‘‘Central Area Plan Review: Proposals’’ (October 1975).
82.
These ideas were expressed a little differently each time they were presented; the passage here is a synthesis drawn from various versions; the most complete presentation can be found in the Summary section of ‘‘Proposals.’’
83.
CTPB, ‘‘Proposals,’’ Summary, 1 and 5.
84.
Among many briefs opposing the proposals, Urban Development Industry, ‘‘Brief to the CTPB on the CAPR,’’ December 1975.
85.
Coombes, Soskolne, Stewart, and Gad interviews; ‘‘ Central Area Plan: Decision of the OMB Re. Pt. 1 Official Plan, City of Toronto, 30 June 1978.’’
86.
Precise figures are hard to determine since censuses are taken at ten-year intervals. From 1971 to 1991, a twenty-year period, the number of dwellings in the area defined as the ‘‘Central Area’’ rose by almost 26,000, a 58 percent increase; from 1971 to 2006, the increase has been 112 percent, although a major decline in household size has meant the residential population has increased by only about 40 percent; this is based on a technical memorandum, calculated from census data by Research Assistant Zack Taylor for this study.
87.
Robert Bruegmann , Sprawl: A Compact History ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 54-58.
88.
Spaxman interviews.
89.
Coombes, Cohen, Soskolne, Dean, de Tolly, and later Weinberg.
90.
Lewinberg and Stewart interviews.
91.
Coombes and Soskolne interviews.
92.
Crombie, Littlewood, Zeidler, and Nowlans interviews.
93.
Klemek, ‘‘From Political Outsider to Power Broker;’’ both Mennel, Steffens, and Klemek, ed., Block by Block, and Flint, Wrestling With Moses focus on her activism, but this may emerge naturally from their focus on New York.
94.
Zeidler interview; Greenberg, ‘‘The Interconnectedness of Things,’’ in What We See, 117.
