INTRODUCTION Toronto as Crucible I arrived in Toronto in 1968, immigrating from the United States inthe period of great turmoil caused by the war in Vietnam.Although I relocated under duress, I immediately felt welcomed. The cityfelt remarkably malleable, not fully formed. It seemed to be still evolving, opento new ideas and desires, receptive to reshaping by me and other new arrivals. Ihad the sense that this was a place where I could contribute and most fully bemyself. Toronto was on the cusp of a great change, and I was quickly caughtup in the unfolding story of my adopted city. After completing my studies, Iworked as a young architect, and then founded the Division of Architectureand Urban Design at the City of Toronto, running it for ten years under thedirection of three mayors: David Crombie, John Sewell, and Art Eggleton. Through this stint at city hall and later work as a professional (andengagement as a citizen), I have had a front-row seat as a participant andobserver during decades of remarkable, often inspiring -- and at times frustrating-- change in this extraordinary city.

I shared some of this experiencein my earlier book, Walking Home, published in 2011, in which Torontohad a role among many cities. This book gives me a chance to come back towhat is happening in Toronto almost a decade later in a more focused way. Each of us has some stressful formative experiences that motivate (andsometimes obsess or even traumatize) us. One of my own subterraneandrivers comes from my childhood peregrinations. Moving from place toplace, often abruptly, changing cities, countries, neighbourhoods, schools(sometimes in mid-year), and friends was disruptive to say the least, even ifsometimes it felt exciting. In hindsight, I realize that this constant dislocationhas led to an intense compensating homing instinct, and, though coupledwith a taste for travel, a need to be rooted in a place. This, in part, iswhat steered me to my career in urban design and to my intense love affairwith Toronto. Like an attentive lover, I have been sensitive to its changesand moods ever since.

I am convinced that something out of the ordinary, if not truly unique,is occurring in Toronto. It feels like the city is emerging from a chrysalis.The processes of continual redefinition and renewal have ever been in playin our city, and there have been other periods of enormous upheaval andgrowth spurts; but in the last fifteen years or so, the direction has alteredwhile the pace of change has intensified and accelerated. Fuelled by a powerfulvortex of market forces and demographic pressures, Toronto has becomea locus for immigration, investment, and development, and our currentspectacular growth shows no sign of abating. Toronto is being transformed by the simultaneous pressures of enormousand sustained growth; an unparalleled increase in the city''s diversity,bringing an expansion of the talent pool and new ideas; an imperative toachieve greater environmental sustainability; and relentless, often disruptivetechnological innovation. The city is very rapidly becoming more vertical,denser, and more mixed. All of these factors are present to some degree in other places, but inToronto the first and second -- radical growth and an increase in the ethnicdiversity in the population -- are at unusually high levels. These forcesare converging to form a crucible in which radical change and innovationare being galvanized.

It is rocking the status quo of previous assumptions,familiar ways, rules, and practices, and pushing us out of our comfort zone.The city is at the tipping point, in the throes of a rebirth. I have come to believe that Toronto has moved to a new level and isat a decisive moment of transformation into a new type of city: changingas much in kind as in scale. The contours of this new city are becomingvisible, emerging from the old established roots -- literally arising on theframe, the traces, the memories, and the structures (physical, social, economic,cultural) of an older Toronto. The city is being pushed into this newterritory by an infusion of new, boundary-stretching ideas and forces. I believe that much of what has led to the remarkable transformationalshift underway in Toronto can be traced back to a critical turning point inthe late 1960s and 1970s, which I described briefly in Walking Home. Atthat time, my introduction to the city and the launch of my career coincidedwith a dramatic series of events that set the stage for what was to come.Toronto was a city on the verge of massive change in line with the anticitypolemic of that era.

But then, a dramatic series of events occurred, settingthe stage for a major course correction. Toronto''s guide to its future in 1969, its Official Plan (like that foundin many other cities at that time), called for a kind of progress inspired bythe principles of what was then the modern movement in city planning.Among other things, it was based on a full embrace of the private automobile,including massive highway construction (with a complete interwovennetwork including the Spadina, Scarborough, and Crosstown Expressways);ripping up streetcar tracks; separating places of living from places of workas much as possible; replacing traditional main streets with shopping malls-- the Dufferin, Pape and Gerrard Malls were, in fact, built as prototypes;demolition of major civic buildings -- Union Station, Old City Hall, andthe St. Lawrence Market were all considered for demolition -- to make wayfor the new; and a call for widespread "urban renewal." A vast boomerangshape indicating proposed demolition appeared on a city document, hoveringominously over the whole downtown and adjacent inner city neighbourhoods.In other words, a gutting of the city was in the offing, preparingit to be remade in the name of a then widely held view of "modernity." To many, these were frightening prospects. A citizen resistance grewout of a unique amalgam of the city''s traditional small c conservatismand a new, left-of-centre coalition, motivated by a sense of civic empowermentand led by an engaged civic leadership.

The resistance grew like asnowball, gaining momentum as new champions emerged. In a series ofhotly contested municipal elections, an increasing number of progressivecity councillors were elected, supported by grassroots activism and communitybacklash. Once they had a majority, the new "reform council," led by belovedmayor David Crombie, used their mandate to reverse course, rejecting thedominant postwar modernist template. With the unlikely intervention ofthen premier William Davis, they famously put a highly symbolic nail inthe coffin of the Spadina Expressway, which would have eviscerated a seriesof downtown neighbourhoods, and cancelled a whole network of othercity-damaging highways in its wake. It is hard to overstate the importance of the change. This was a completeabout-face for the city, one that would have far-reaching consequences,setting Toronto on a very different trajectory. The car wassignificantly dethroned as the primary mode of transportation; plans torip up streetcar lines were thwarted, making Toronto one of the few citieson the continent to retain this form of transit. Urban renewal and "blockbusting"of long-established neighbourhoods to make way for tower-inthe-park style redevelopment was halted.

Heritage preservation wasembraced, saving a number of cherished structures from demolition --including the St. Lawrence Market, now the throbbing heart of a revitalizedneighbourhood; the glorious 1898 Richardsonian Old City Hall;and the magnificent beaux arts Union Station. The middle class stayed or returned to inner-city neighbourhoods.Population attrition was reversed. The city''s traditional neighbourhood mainstreets, which had also been scheduled for transformation into car-centricarterial roads, were seen with fresh eyes and received new support fromstrengthened and decentralized neighbourhood planning site offices andthe widely imitated Toronto invention of BIAs (Business ImprovementAreas co-funded by the city and local businesses), of which Toronto nowhas more than any other city. The separation of land uses (dividing where people lived from wherethey worked, with an onerous commute by car to bridge the gap) had beenexposed as a failed model for urban living; it was not delivering what itpromised. The vision of contented citizens able to live in quiet, pastoral suburbanneighbourhoods and then make their way quickly to work via widehighways was belied by the reality of the growing inconvenience of congestion,negative impacts on health caused by a sedentary, car-dependent lifestyle,unanticipated social isolation, and mounting environmental impacts. The reform council pushed back against the "suburbanization" of thedowntown core, fighting to prevent the spread of widened roads, a profusionof surface parking lots, and segregated land use.

A new CentralArea Plan was formulated that introduced mixed-use zoning to the city''sdowntown core, and that would eventually bring hundreds of thousandsof new residents into the heart of the city to enliven the previously sterilenine-to-five central business (only) district. The big planning and design challenge: how to actually implementthe course correction. This was the challenge that drew me to city hall as ayoung architect with a growing interest in urban design. David Crombie recruited me in 1977, along with a whole corps ofyoung, motivated change agents. Working with the newly elected politicians,we formed a think tank, a kind of collegial brain trust. We came frommany backgrounds, and not all were formally educated as "planners," butwe shared a mission.We played different roles on a team dedicated to stopping the speedingfreight train of "modernization" and shifting to another paradigm forthe city''s future. I headed the newly minted Urban Design Group, whichbecame the city''s Division of Architecture and Design, and my team andI were called.