This is only a partial transcription from a very interesting article in today's Globe
and Mail by John Barber. I am not a Globe subscriber, thus they only print online the first little part of the article. But I recommend if you can to pick up the Saturday Globe and read it in full. Link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FLAC.20071027.BARBER27%2FTPStory%2F%3Fquery%3Dthe%2Bmoral%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bdowntown%2Bsuccess%2Bstory&ord=6114317&brand=theglobeandmail&redirect_reason=2&denial_reasons=none&force_login=false

The moral of the downtown success story: It's no accident




JOHN BARBER


The success of downtown Toronto is so obvious today as to seem unremarkable. It certainly isn't news: Citizens interested in the latest documentary evidence, the results of the city's "Living Downtown" survey, will have to dig deep into the entrails of the planning committee agenda to find it. But what they will discover there, in a report as solid and modest as the man responsible for it (Toronto chief planner Ted Tyndorf) is in fact a triumphant affirmation of far-sighted urban planning.

Could you paste the entire article, you need to login in order to read it through the link.

No, unfortunately it is a pay only article... :( I am not a subscriber. My
secretarial skills at transcribing it are weak!! :) But it is an excellent article, and
today's Globe was actually worth buying! ;)

Anyone have a Globe account that can cut n paste this?

Ok, I'll transcribe a bit, but please forgive spelling errors, etc... as I am not a very good secretary :

The success of downtown Toronto is so obvious today as to seem unremarkable. It certainly isn't news: Citizens interested in the latest documentary evidence, the results of the city's "Living Downtown" survey, will have to dig deep into the entrails of the planning committee agenda to find it. But what they will discover there, in a report as solid and modest as the man responsible for it (Toronto chief planner Ted Tyndorf) is in fact a triumphant affirmation of far-sighted urban planning.
The numbers alone don't tell the story, although they are impressive. The downtown population has grown by 47 per cent over the past 30 years, outpacing both the city as a whole and booming Greater Toronto, according to "Living Downtown". Growth in the downtown, defined as the area south of Bloor Street between Bathurst and Parliament, including Yorkville and the Annex, surged to a record in the new century, with 17,000 housing units built since 2001.
Other North American downtowns are coming back, but none outside New York is doing so at a similar pace. What distinguishes downtown Toronto's boom is not only its scale, but also the extent to which it was methodically planned for.
How easy it is to say. "In 1976", the new report begins, "the City of Toronto approved the Central Area Plan, which introduced for the first time policies and zoning designed to encourage residential development in the downtown area". How hard it was to accomplish. Although the old city's 1970's reform era is celebrated for stopping expressways and saving neighbourhoods, no issue was more controversial then than the Central Area Plan. At the time, establishment Toronto considered the proposition that people should live downtown to be delusional and old-fashioned. Conventional wisdom considered it futile to resist the implacable forces that were spinning people out to the suburbs and refashioning the inner city as a highway-streaked "central business district".
Only the new long-haired councillors and a few enlightened city planners were bold enough to suggest that real people would some day want to live downtown again rather than escapee from it. Prominent developers scoffed- and as they still do, berated planners for promoting an unmarketable vision. Although it is forgotten today, the ultimate adoption of the por-residential Central Area Plan was once considered the greatest accomplishment of the David Crombie mayorality.
Events since then have more than vindicated the 1970's radicals who turned the capitalist horde with their courageous plan to encourage intensive residential development downtown. The downtown they imagined is the one we live in today: bustling almost around the clock, with crowded sidewalks and increasing complaints about bicycle congestion. As many people living downtown today now walk to work- 40% of the total- as there were people living downtown in my youth.
In most U.S. cities, moving downtown often means rescuing a derelict neighbourhood from the ground up, beginning with the creation of new charter schools. In Toronto its's a matter of joining the rush. The downtown housing market is hyperactive,but still, by almost any comparable standards, remarkably affordable. Unlike old downtowners, the
majority of the newcomers own their apartments.
The moral of the downtown success story: It's no accident. Far-sighted urban planners and progressive politicians saw where the city was going- what it wanted to be- long before the smart money caught on. What once seemed a radical dream is now just the way we live. Urban living is the height of fashion, and the battle to save the city has shifted ground radically from the beleaguered core to the booming fringe.
And the war is no different: The sprawl that our region's best planners and politicians fight today is the continuing "push" of the suburban "pull" that once threatened to empty downtown. Everything is familiar, including the derision of developers incapable of imagining a different future,- but not so blind to ignore it when it does appear, as revealed by the forgotten policy-makers from a different world.

Great article. Thanks for that. :cheers1:

Your transcribing skills, here at least, aren't bad at all. :)

LOL! I type without looking at the keyboard, and at first planned to just dash it off and post it "as is"... but the grammar angel sitting on my shoulder made me go through it and correct the errors! I thought it was a great article, too... :cheers: