On the Waterfront

For more than 220 years – since the early days of York, in fact – the city’s leaders and citizens have dreamed, planned and argued about the waterfront. For a long time, the results weren’t pretty: from industrial sprawl and the Gardiner Expressway to the more recent “condo curtain,” each generation seemed to leave the area in worse shape than the one before, divorcing the city from its own shoreline. Can a city notorious for bad planning – and sometimes no planning – rise above its history and finally create a vital and vibrant waterfront for a new century? Award-winning architectural and urban affairs commentator Christopher Hume turns his urbane and thoughtful mind to this question, telling an entertaining and eventful story of politics and possibilities.

Star Dispatches is a weekly series of quality journalism in ebook form from the newsroom of the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper.