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In an era of frantic vertical urbanization known as “condoism,” Condoland explores the planning and design of Toronto's CityPlace, one of North America's largest residential development projects – and reveals what can happen when the real estate industry comes to dominate city planning.

WINNER OF THE 2022 WRITERS'TRUST BALSILLIE PRIZE FOR PUBLIC POLICYWINNER OF FOR THE PATTIS FAMILY FOUNDATION GLOBAL CITIES BOOK AWARDIs the ‘smart city'the utopia we've been waiting for? The promise of the so-called smart city has been at the forefront of urban planning and development since the early 2010s, and the tech industry that supplies smart city software and hardware is now worth hundreds of billions a year. But the ideas and approaches underpinning smart city tech raise tough and important questions about the future of urban communities, surveillance, automation, and public participation. The smart city era, moreover, belongs firmly in a longer historical narrative about cities — one defined by utopian ideologies, architectural visions, and technological fantasies. Smart streetlights, water and air quality tracking, autonomous vehicles: with examples from all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Portland, and Chicago, Dream States unpacks the world of smart city tech, but also situates this important shift in city-building into a broader story about why we still dream about perfect places.'John Lorinc's incisive analysis in Dream States reminds us that the search for urban utopia is not new. Throughout the book, Lorinc underscores the fact that a gamut of urban innovations – from smart city megaprojects to e-government to pandemic preparedness tools – only provide promise when scrutinized together with the political, economic, social, and physical complexities of urban life.'– Shauna Brail, University of Toronto'Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias takes us on a fascinating journey across world cities to show how technology has shaped them in the past and how smart city technology will reshape them in the future. This book is essential reading for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners interested in understanding the opportunities and challenges of smart city technology and what it means for city building.'– Enid Slack, University of Toronto School of Cities'“Utopia may be the oldest grift in the city-building business, but Dream States shows that technology is a timeless tool for turning the most ordinary of urban dreams – clean air and water, safe streets, and decent homes – into reality. As digital dilettantes try to sell us on a software overhaul, John Lorinc provides us an indispensable and flawless guide to the must-haves and never-agains of the smart city.” – Anthony Townsend, Urbanist in Residence, Cornell Tech, author of Smart Cities

NATIONAL BESTSELLERFINALIST FOR THE WRITERS'TRUST SHAUGHNESSY COHEN PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITINGFrom the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, an uncompromising investigation into the bigger story and what the Google sister company's failure there reveals about Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything.When former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff landed in Toronto, promising a revolution in better living through technology, the locals were starstruck. In 2017 a small parcel of land on the city's woefully underdeveloped lakeshore was available for development, and with Google co-founder Larry Page and his trusted chairman Eric Schmidt leaning into Sidewalk Labs'pitch for the long-forsaken property—with Doctoroff as the urban-planning company's CEO—Sidewalk's bid crushed the competition. But as soon as the bid was won, cracks appeared in the partnership between Doctoroff's team and Waterfront Toronto, the government-sponsored organization behind the contest. There were hundreds more acres of undeveloped former port lands nearby that kept creeping into conversation with Sidewalk, and more questions were emerging than answers about how much the public would actually benefit from the Alphabet-owned company's vision for the high-tech neighbourhood—and the data it could harvest from the people living there. Alarm bells began ringing in the city's corridors of power and activism. To Torontonians accustomed to big promises with little follow-through, the fiasco that unfolded seemed at first like just another city-building sideshow. But the pained battle to reel in the power of Sidewalk Labs became a crucible moment in the worldwide battle for privacy rights and against the extension of Big Tech's digital might into the physical world around us. With extensive contacts on all sides of the debacle, O'Kane tells a story of global consequence fought over a small, forgotten parcel of mud and pavement, taking readers from California to New York to Toronto to Berlin and back again. In the tradition of extraordinary boardroom dramas like Bad Blood and Super Pumped, Sideways vividly recreates the corporate drama and epic personalities in this David-and-Goliath battle that signalled to the world that all may not be lost in the effort to contain the rapidly growing power of Big Tech.

Cities have been sites of some of the most visible manifestations of the evolution of processes of globalization and population expansion, and global cities are at the cutting edge of such changes. Critical Dialogues of Urban Governance, Development and Activism examines changes in governance, property development, urban politics and community activism, in two key global cities: London and Toronto.The analysis is inherently comparative, but not in the traditional sense – the volume does not seek to deliver a like-for-like comparison. Instead, taking these two cities as empirical cases, the chapters engage in constructive dialogues about the contested and variegated built forms, formal and informal governmental mechanisms and practices, and policy and community-based responses to contemporary urban concerns.The authors position a critical dialogue on three central issues in contemporary urban studies: governance, real estate and housing, and community activism and engagement. Their less traditional approach to comparative framing seeks to understand London and Toronto from a nuanced perspective, promoting critical reflection on the experiences and evaluative critiques of each urban context, providing insight into each city's urban trajectory and engaging critically with wider phenomena and influences on the urban governance challenges beyond these two cities.

Housing is increasingly unattainable in successful global cities, and Toronto is no exception -- in part because of zoning that protects “stable” residential neighborhoods with high property values. House Divided is a citizen's guide for changing the way housing can work in big cities. Using Toronto as a case study, this anthology unpacks the affordability crisis and offers innovative ideas for creating housing for all ages and demographic groups. With charts, maps, data, and policy prescriptions, House Divided poses tough questions about the issue that will make or break the global city of the future.

An archaeological dig uncovers the secret history of Toronto's long-forgotten first immigrant neighbourhood. In early 2015, a team of archaeologists began digging test trenches on a non-descript parking lot next to Toronto City Hall -- a site designated to become a major new court house. What they discovered was the rich buried history of an enclave that was part of The Ward -- that dense, poor, but vibrant'arrival city'that took shape between the 1840s and the 1950s. Home to waves of immigrants and refugees -- Irish, African-Americans, Italians, eastern European Jews, and Chinese -- The Ward was stigmatized for decades by Toronto's politicians and residents, and eventually razed to make way for New City Hall. The archaeologists who excavated the lot, led by co-editor Holly Martelle, discovered almost half a million artifacts -- a spectacular collection of household items, tools, toys, shoes, musical instruments, bottles, industrial objects, food scraps, luxury items, and even a pre-contact Indigenous projectile point. Martelle's team also unearthed the foundations of a nineteenth-century Black church, a Russian synagogue, early-twentieth-century factories, cisterns, privies, wooden drains, and even row houses built by formerly enslaved African Americans. Following on the heels of the immensely popular The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood, which told the stories of some of the people who lived there, The Ward Uncovered digs up the tales of things, using these well-preserved artifacts to tell a different set of stories about life in this long-forgotten and much-maligned neighbourhood.

How do we build cities where we aren't just living within the same urban space, but living together? Greater Toronto is now home to a larger proportion of foreign-born residents than any other major global metropolis. Not surprisingly, city officials rarely miss an opportunity to tout the region's ethno-cultural neighbourhoods. Yet there's strong evidence that the GTA is experiencing widening socio-economic disparities that have produced worrisome divisions. We say that ‘diversity is our strength,'but has a feel-good catchphrase prevented us from confronting the forces that seem to be separating and isolating urban communities? Through compelling storytelling and analysis, Subdivided's contributors – a wide range of place-makers, academics, activists and journalists – ask how we can expand city-building processes to tackle issues ranging from transit equity and trust-based policingto holistic mental health, dignified affordable housing and inclusive municipal governance. Ultimately, Subdivided aims to provoke the tough but pressing conversations required to build a truly connected and just city. Contents Introduction - Jay Pitter Identity and the City: Thinking Through Diversity – Beyhan Farhadi Doing Immigrant Resettlement Right – Doug Saunders Wasauksing–Vancouver–Toronto: My Path Home – Rebeka Tabobondung How We Welcome: Why Canada's Refugee Resettlement Program Undermines Place-making – Sarah Beamish and Sofia Ijaz Finding Space for Spirituality – Fatima Syed Navigating the City with an Invisible Illness: The Story of Dorothy – Denise DaCosta Culture and Mental Illness – Karen Pitter Neighbourhood Watch: Racial Profiling and Virtual Gated Communities – Asmaa Malik Accessing Education: An Immigrant's Story – Nicholas Davis Policing and Trust in the Hyper-Diverse City – Nana Yanful Three Questions about Carding – Idil Burale An Overburdened Promise: Arts Funding for Social Development – Ian Kamau, Paul Nguyen and Ryan Paterson, with John Lorinc Designing Dignified Social Housing – Jay Pitter Walking Through Loss: A Critical Visit to an Old Neighbourhood – Photography by Taha Muharuma Reconsidering Revitalization: The Case of Regent Park – Jay Pitter in conversation with Sandra Costain Model Citizens – Andrea Gunraj A Tale of Two – or Three – Cities: Gentrification and Community Consultations – Mariana Valverde Mobility in the Divided City – Eric Mann Toward MoreComplete Communities: Business Out of the Box – Alina Chatterjee Going Beyond Representation: The Diversity Deficit in Local Government – John Lorinc Brampton, a.k.a. Browntown – Noreen Ahmed-Ullah Life in the City In-Between – Shawn Micallef Conclusion – J. David Hulchanski

From the 1870s to the 1950s, waves of immigrants to Toronto – Irish, Jewish, Chinese and Italian, among others – landed in ‘The Ward'in the centre of downtown. Deemed a slum, the area was crammed with derelict housing and ‘ethnic'businesses; it was razed in the 1950s to make way for a grand civic plaza and modern city hall. Archival photos and contributions from a wide variety of voices finally tell the story of this complex neighbourhood and the lessons it offers about immigration and poverty in big cities. Contributors include historians, politicians, architects and descendents of Ward res­idents on subjects such as playgrounds, tuberculosis, bootlegging and Chinese laundries.With essays by Howard Akler, Denise Balkissoon, Steve Bulger, Jim Burant, Arlene Chan, Alina Chatterjee, Cathy Crowe, Richard Dennis, Ruth Frager, Richard Harris, Gaetan Heroux, Edward Keenan, Bruce Kidd, Mark Kingwell, Jack Lipinsky, John Lorinc, Shawn Micallef, Howard Moscoe, Laurie Monsebraaten, Terry Murray, Ratna Omidvar, Stephen Otto, Vincenzo Pietropaolo, Michael Posner, Michael Redhill, Victor Russell, Ellen Scheinberg, Sandra Shaul, Myer Siemiatycki, Mariana Valverde, Thelma Wheatley, Kristyn Wong­-Tam and Paul Yee, among others.

The Ontario Municipal Board is an independent provincial planning appeals body that has wielded major influence on Toronto's urban development. In this book, Aaron A. Moore examines the effect that the OMB has had on the behavior and relationships of Toronto's main political actors, including city planners, developers, neighbourhood associations, and local politicians.Moore's findings draw on a quantitative analysis of all OMB decisions and settlements from 2000 through 2006, as well as eight in-depth case studies. The cases, which examine a variety of development proposals that resulted in OMB appeals, compare the decisions of Toronto's political actors to those typified in American local political economy analyses.A much-needed contribution to the literature on the politics of urban development in Toronto since the 1970s, Planning Politics in Toronto challenges popular preconceptions of the OMB's role in Toronto's patterns of growth and change.

Policies forged by all levels of government affect the lives of urban residents. Contributors to this volume explore how intergovernmental relations shape urban policies and how various social forces are involved in - or excluded from - the policy process. Focusing on diverse policy fields including emergency planning, image-building, immigrant settlement, infrastructure, federal property, and urban Aboriginal policy, Sites of Governance presents detailed studies of the largest city in each of Canada's provinces. Drawing on extensive documentary research and hundreds of interviews, contributors offer rich, nuanced analyses and a wealth of policy cases, ranging from preparation for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics to the development of innovative immigrant settlement programming in Winnipeg. Dominant themes include the importance of resources and formal jurisdiction in multilevel policy making, and the struggle for influence between business interests and other social forces. Essential reading for anyone concerned with the quality of urban life in Canada, Sites of Governance offers important insights about how multilevel governance works in Canadian cities. Contributors include Laurence Bherer (Université de Montréal), David Bulger (University of Prince Edward Island), Christopher Dunn (Memorial University), Robert Finbow (Dalhousie University), Joseph Garcea (University of Saskatchewan), Pierre Hamel (Université de Montréal), Martin Horak (University of Western Ontario), Thomas Hutton (University of British Columbia), Christopher Leo (University of Winnipeg), Greg Marquis (University of New Brunswick, Saint John), Byron Miller (University of Calgary), Cecily Pantin (Memorial University), Alan Smart (University of Calgary), Donald Story (University of Saskatchewan), and Robert Young (University of Western Ontario).

By exploring the formative years of the New City of Toronto (between 1995 and 2005, the period just before, during, and after metropolitan amalgamation), Changing Toronto analyzes the political, social, and environmental challenges of living in, and governing, a major metropolitan city region that bills itself as a multicultural, world-class city.