Toronto public housing project to be transformed

Toronto’s Regent Park, one of the oldest and largest public housing projects in Canada, is about to be transformed into what urban planning consultant Ken Greenberg calls “a real urban neighborhood, dense and active, and fully integrated into the surrounding city.” Between 1948 and 1959, the Housing Authority of Toronto built Regent Park, at the eastern edge of downtown, as a series of superblocks — housing 2,087 families in three- and six-story walkups and townhouses that largely stood apart from the surrounding neighborhoods. The 69-acre development functioned satisfactorily as a modern precinct for the “working poor” for a number of years, but eventually its population of about 7,500 became increasingly poverty-stricken and troubled. The project became known for impersonal apartment buildings and for crime. Block and street system approved In July 2003 the Toronto City Council approved a plan to convert dead-end streets to through streets, create regular blocks that give everyone a street address, integrate Regent Park into the surrounding neighborhoods, and add shops and services. The project, which in the 1940s was designed without retail, institutional, and employment uses, will emerge as a mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood. The goals of the Toronto project overhaul echo those of the US Department of Housing & Urban Devel-opment’s HOPE VI program, which in the past decade has converted many deteriorated low-income public housing projects to mixed-income developments. But two major differences stand out. First, the $423 million (Canadian) endeavor is a city initiative, not a federal program. Second, it will more than double the number of housing units, whereas HOPE VI developments usually end up with fewer residential units than they started out with. When Regent Park’s reconstruction is completed in 12 to 15 years, there will be approximately 4,500 units, including about 2,400 new market-rate apartments, condominium units, and houses and as many subsidized apartments as currently exist. Much of the cost will be paid for by selling land to the developers of the market-rate housing, which will be a blend of rental and for-sale dwellings. “The building forms will range from stacked townhouses to mid-rise buildings, with a few small-footprint towers,” says Greenberg, who led the redevelopment urban design team. “This area has become a major immigrant reception area, with many cultural and linguistic groups of recent arrivals in the country,” Greenberg points out. Residents hail from places such as Somalia, Bangladesh, the Congo, Vietnam, China, and Latin America. “Many people have entrepreneurial skills and are anxious to use them in the new neighborhood,” according to Greenberg. The Toronto Community Housing Corp., which is in charge of the makeover, says the plan includes “shops, community services, and space for economic development activities.” Mixing market rate and subsidized units Toronto Community Housing CEO Derek Ballantyne says subsidized and unsubsidized units would, as much as possible, be mixed together on the streets and in the buildings. He says the location just six blocks east of Yonge Street makes Regent Park prime real estate capable of attracting higher-income people. The core team that developed the plan included Greenberg guiding the urban design effort; planner John Gladki, whose firm GHK was prime consultant; Ronji Borooah of Markson Borooah Hodgson architects and planners; and David Millar for finances. That team will work on implementing the plan. “We do not have a HOPE VI or any other similar program,” Greenberg notes. “This is a new approach for Canada.”