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Are you interested in creating mixed-housing communities?

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Our debate today works with the article titled Directions for new urban neighbourhoods: Learning from St. Lawrence, by Joseph DeLeo and David L.A. Gordon, published Canadian Institute of Planners and Association of Canadian University Planning Programs Case Study Series.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Carolyn Whitzman in episode 382 talking about the opportunities in mixed housing and communities in St Lawrence.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see an example of mixed-housing communities and its context. This article presents the key elements of the neighbourhood, establishing its future success, such as finances, political context, and design principles.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today we will introduce a research by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original investigation, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole documentation. This conversation was produced and generated with Notebook LM as two hosts dissecting the whole research.

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Speaker 1: Today we’re examining one of the most studied and really universally praised examples of inner city regeneration in North America. The St. Lawrence neighbourhood in downtown Toronto developed on 56 acres of former industrial land. Starting back in the early seventies. It delivered over 4,000 new homes for about 10,000 residents. It quickly became a blueprint for high density socially mixed urban communities. A really stark contrast to the failed public housing models of the past

Speaker 2: and its status as a success story is completely deserved. It represented just a crucial pivot in urban policy. Moving away from those destructive single-use, high-rise projects towards integrated human scale development. And this was strongly supported by new federal and provincial policies at the time,

Speaker 1: right? But while everyone agrees it succeeded. Experts fundamentally disagree on the primary source of that enduring success. Was it secured by the radical political vision and foundational urban planning philosophy from the civic reformers of 1972? That commitment to integrated design and a mandate for social mixing. Or was its resilience anchored by more pragmatic structural mechanisms, specifically the self-financing economic model and the engineered land tenure structure. I maintained that the driving force, the very engine of its quality was that foundational planning and political philosophy.

Speaker 2: See, and I committed from a different angle. I believe that political momentum, while totally necessary, is inherently fleeting. The initial context, the election of reformers like Mayor David Crombie and adopting the living room report. That was certainly the catalyst, no question. It allowed the city to get back into the housing business, but to ensure stability over decades, to shield the project from, say, later administrations who might not care as much, you needed a bulletproof structure. The genius for me lies in the self-financing and that legally enforced diversity of ownership. That was the long-term anchor that immunized St. Lawrence from the decay that plagued earlier projects.

Speaker 1: I think focusing too much on the fiscal structure risks, minimizing just the sheer force of that initial ideological break. The core objective and the source material is very clear on This was social. It wasn’t just about building units. It was about providing housing for all income groups all at once to explicitly prevent the creation of a ghetto like you saw with other large single income public housing projects. And to achieve that, you needed a complete overall of physical design. The planners, they rejected the kind of isolationist principles of modernism and insisted on integrating St. Lawrence seamlessly into the city fabric. They extended the old 19th century Toronto Street grid. They mandated pedestrian activity at grade level, and they set out to recreate the character of the old town of York. This commitment to traditional, walkable civic character was the non-negotiable factor.

Speaker 2: That’s a compelling argument for the quality of the initial design. I grant you that, but how is that quality sustained visions are wonderful. They need constant maintenance, constant political defense. The structural choices they made ensured that defense was, well, it was built right in. Let’s just look at the hard math that made it possible. The total cost for land and infrastructure was about $43 million. Yet the city leverage projected revenues of 60 million, recovered entirely through selling and leasing land to private developers. This wasn’t just recouping costs. This positioned the city as a strategic master developer. It was using the private market’s capital to underwrite its own public goals, making the project almost totally fiscally independent from the municipal budget in the long run. But that political vision provided the ethical mandate to even start, and the financing guaranteed the long-term economic independence. Think about what a difference is made in risk management. Structurally, the intentional diversity of ownership types was the real insurance policy, 39% condo apartments, 30% nonprofit co-ops and rentals, and 27% municipal nonprofit units. The city made sure the very first phase included a big condominium tower that sent an immediate signal. This is not a project, this is an economically integrated neighbourhood. This approach involving 16 different developers and 25 different architects. It wasn’t just about avoiding a uniform look. It was about ensuring economic diversity was physically embedded and legally protected.

Speaker 1: That blend of tenure is certainly crucial, but I want to go back to the planning principles versus market diversity. I still contend that the physical planning was the primary mechanism for dissolving the stigma that plagued all those segregated renewal schemes. By insisting on extending the existing Toronto Street Grid and ensuring the building heights and scale match the historic Old town context, the planners achieved a level of integration. You just rarely see. I mean, residents today often say St. Lawrence feels like it’s always been there. That continuity and physical form is what normalized the high density and dissolved any sense of a project boundary.

Speaker 2: The physical planning is the skin, I’ll give you that, but the economic diversity is the skeleton, holding it all up. We have direct evidence in the source material of what happens when that diversity fails. It explicitly mentions the possibility that St. Lawrence could face the same fate as Regent Park, which saw its proportion of rent geared to income units just gradually creep up over time. And for listeners who don’t know, Regent Park became socially and economically isolated because of that concentration of low income units. The key difference here, the firewall for St. Lawrence was economic. The source material says St. Lawrence will probably not follow that pact because the condominium buildings and cooperatives will likely always be home to many middle income families. That continuous injection of market rate incomes secured by the tenure structure, that is the critical factor that helps it adopt. That’s a structural defense, not just a design choice.

Speaker 1: Okay. I absolutely agree. The market component is a crucial firewall. That firewall was only built where and how. It was because you had strong public sector leadership there to enforce the design parameters. I mean, figures like Michael Dennis and Howard Cohen, they acted as the quality control. They made sure that private market investment was channelled toward public goals, mandating mixed use at grade level. The shops, restaurants, community facilities to guarantee that high density translated into functional, integrated public space, not degradation. Without that political will to enforce quality, the financial structure alone could have just given you cookie cutter development.

Speaker 2: Let’s talk about that enforcement and the financial side, because this is where the policy really succeeded. Structurally, the city’s decision to retain title to the land, the famous land banking strategy was brilliant. The Federal housing agency, CMHC was key here. Of course, they provided a $25 million mortgage and access to the Federal Land banking program. By retaining title and leasing our selling off portions, the city not only recouped its acquisition costs, but secured long-term revenue streams. This model meant St. Lawrence was not perpetually reliant on vulnerable annual public subsidies for its operation. It was designed to pay for itself,

Speaker 1: But that’s where I see the political vision as the absolute precursor. The financial success was only possible because of those fundamental policy shifts and frankly, initial political bravery. The city had to deliberately choose to get back into the housing business and take on the risk securing that $25 million CMHC mortgage accessing those grants. That wasn’t a given. It required the political will of the Crombie administration to take that massive initial risk. The financial mechanics were sophisticated, yes, but they were just tools unlocked by a policy decision that

Speaker 2: came first. I see the initial political risk I do, but I’m not convinced that the high level vision translated perfectly on the ground. This speaks to the priority given to financial execution over say social delivery. If the political commitment to housing for all was the real driver, how do we explain the pretty significant weaknesses in social infrastructure implementation? The neighbourhood had to wait over a decade until 1992 for its community centre and a second public school. That shows that the immediate priority and the mechanism that functioned most effectively was land development and construction, getting phases A and B built to get that revenue, not necessarily the holistic social service provision implied by the original vision.

Speaker 1: I agree the delays in social facilities were a major lag. The material is clear about that. However, those delays don’t negate the success of the social goals being translated into the development plan itself. The foundation was already there, the open planning process, the working committees, they ensured that design principles like the central green space of Crombie Park and the pedestrian walkways were established from day one. That foundational character and the physical integration allowed the community to thrive socially, even while waiting for specific facilities. The design was in a way its own form of social infrastructure,

Speaker 2: but the economic framework provided the resilience for that character to last. The fact that the city could delay those expensive social investments and the neighbourhoods still remained a success. That speaks to the fact that the economic structure, that 10 year mix and the continuous flow of middle income residents was the real factor mitigating failure. An older purely public housing project would’ve collapsed under those service deficits. St. Lawrence did not. Precisely because it wasn’t reliant on perpetual government attention for its survival.

Speaker 1: In the end, I think the enduring success of St. Lawrence is a testament to the ideological clarity of those 1970s reformers. They set non-negotiable social and physical planning standards. The mixed income mandate, the requirement to extend the traditional street grid. This forced the private market to adhere to a public vision. The vision defined the terms and the structure simply executed the details.

Speaker 2: And I would say conversely, that the durability of St. Lawrence stems from a pragmatic hybrid structure that secured private investment and retained massive land value for the city. This provided a critical financial and tenure diversity, that 39% condo ownership acting as an economic buffer. That protected the community from the inevitable political and budgetary fluctuations that destroy purely public housing initiatives. It was the hard math of property ownership that immunized the neighbourhood from failure. It is clear that St. Lawrence required both forces to succeed. The political commitment to define a radically integrated social goal and the structural innovation to ensure that goal was financially and economically protected for the long term.

Speaker 1: Both vision and structure had to align, which remains an essential lesson. Idealism provides the direction and the courage, but a diversified, resilient economic structure is what ultimately provides the duration.

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