George took me on as a mentee and agreed with my premise — that Toronto’s “edge cities” and modern apartment neighbourhoods were foundational to the contemporary city’s identity and conspicuously missing from current understandings of Toronto’s past (and its future potential). from Graeme Stewart’s feature “George Baird and the Toronto School” After the passing of George Baird in October, ERA principal Graeme Stewart reflected in Azure Magazine on his relationship with the architectural theorist and educator and the great value of engaging with…

Between Summer 2022 and Spring 2023, the Tower Renewal Partnership, CMHC, United Way and Woodgreen convened a Legacy Housing Retrofit Advisory Group to advance policy and action toward Tower Renewal. Building on national housing and climate policy, the group’s primary focus: how to optimize financial tools to further enable deep retrofit generally, and specifically, how to encourage private sector owners of affordable apartment housing to retrofit these homes without raising rents. The results of this work have been published as…

Architects Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto are helping to save Canada’s aging apartment towers Their most ambitious retrofit to date is the 18-storey Ken Soble Tower in Hamilton, Ontario They also contributed to the development of a Field Guide to Tower Retrofits in Occupied Buildings to help apartment owners, the construction industry and residents navigate retrofit construction projects https://www.placetocallhome.ca/en/stories/084-architects-dedicated-apartment-tower-rehabilitations

Vertical Legacy: The case for revitalizing the GTA’s aging rental tower communities As a follow up to Vertical Poverty, United Way has released Vertical Legacy, in collaboration with the Tower Renewal Partnership and University of Toronto, outlining the actions needed now to ensure our legacy towers remain not only standing and affordable, but are also modernized to meet the health, community resilience and climate challenges of our collective future. Legacy towers are home to hundreds of thousands throughout the GTA, and represent the bulk of our purpose-built rental housing.…

Borne from the idea that best practices from deep energy retrofits including EnerPHit projects, should be showcased and shared. “The Tower Retrofit Symposium is an opportunity to showcase the tremendous strides already made within the housing sector in retrofitting aging buildings. The Symposium will highlight innovations, point to the next challenges to be tackled, and set an important benchmark for the progress made to date.” Ya’el Santopinto Tower Renewal Partnership/ERA Architects Learn more here.

Join Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto as they discuss the Ken Soble Tower retrofit and Tower Renewal Partnership. In the March, Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto, ERA Architects, sat down with Passive House Canada to discuss the Ken Soble Tower retrofit and Tower Renewal Project. Watch here. “Ultra-low energy retrofits that maintain affordability are not only possible, but critical to preserving and enhancing housing across the country. ” –Graeme Stewart, ERA Architects. Built in 1967, the Ken Soble Tower is…

Ya’el Santopinto, CUG+R Director of Research and Partnerships, talks urban policy, tower renewal, and the preservation of vital rental housing. In April, Santopinto sat down with Mary James and Ilka Cassidy on the “Passive House Podcast” to discuss everything Tower Renewal: ranging from urban policy around the world, Canadian challenges and opportunities and the Field Guide to Retrofits in Occupied Buildings, recently published by the Tower Renewal Partnership. Listen here. The Passive House Podcast hosted Matthew Cutler-Welsh and Zack Semke…

The Tower Renewal Partnership was recently covered by the Urban Land Institute. The article covers the history of Tower Renewal in Toronto, the landmark Ken Soble Tower passive house retrofit project and ULI’s 2020 report: Affordability and Resilience: The Challenge of Tower Renewal in Private Rental Apartment Buildings. Read the full article.

The Ken Soble Tower Transformation will modernize 146 units of affordable seniors’ housing, while reinvigorating community spaces and outdoor gathering areas, planning for aging-in-place and barrier-free living, and a changing climate. One of the first Passive House retrofits in North America, at 18 storeys and more than 80,000 sqft, the Ken Soble Tower will be one of the largest EnerPHit-certified projects in the world. Slated for completion in 2021, the project will provide residents with improved comfort and control of…

The Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal has released a new “Field Guide” designed to assist apartment owners, the construction industry and apartment residents navigate retrofit construction projects in Canada. Over the past year, the CUG+R has been working to develop a resource to assist property owners, residents and the construction industry with conducting a retrofit efficiently and effectively while tenants are in the building. It provides an overview of a typical residential high-rise retrofit construction project with residents remaining…

Tower Renewal Partnership’s Graeme Stewart speaks at ULI Panel event and report release On December 3, the Tower Renewal Partnership’s Graeme Stewart joined a virtual expert panel to discuss a new Urban Land Institute (ULI) report on Tower Renewal called “Affordability and Resilience: The Challenge of Tower Renewal in Private Rental Apartment Buildings“. The report and panel sought to provide fresh recommendation around increasing Tower Renewal retrofit activity, particularly to private tower owners. The expert panel’s top recommendations include: Reorganize…

Yesterday, Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto published an article detailing how to boost the Canadian retrofit economy, renew aging towers and secure healthy and affordable housing. As outlined in last week’s Speech from the Throne, retrofits can “create thousands of jobs . . . cutting energy costs for Canadian families and businesses,” further demonstrating the role retrofits can play in our national economic recovery. The article provides details on current barriers to retrofitting, describes how to support and build the…

In partnership with the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association of Canada (NAIMA Canada), the Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal has developed an online training resource to help workers in the construction industry become more familiar with retrofitting in occupied buildings. The retrofit industry is still developing in Canada and lacks knowledge, skills, strategies and specialized products to effectively carry out retrofits in occupied buildings. This can lead to inflated costs and risk – or buildings owners avoiding retrofits altogether.…

The Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal has released a new “Field Guide” designed to assist apartment owners, the construction industry and apartment residents navigate retrofit construction projects in Canada. Over the past year, the CUG+R has been working to develop a resource to assist property owners, residents and the construction industry with conducting a retrofit efficiently and effectively while tenants are in the building. It provides an overview of a typical residential high-rise retrofit construction project with residents remaining…

The Tower Renewal Partnership has put together a quick and easy-to-read reference guide or “primer” to Tower Renewal including an introduction to high rise retrofits in Canada, a map showing the distribution of aging apartment units across Canada and the identification of opportunities and recommendations for moving forward with government action.

The Tower Renewal Partnership has put together a quick and easy-to-read reference guide or “primer” to Tower Renewal including an introduction to high rise retrofits in Canada, a map showing the distribution of aging apartment units across Canada and the identification of opportunities and recommendations for moving forward with government action. Recently, Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto were featured in a helpful article called “How to Renew Our Old Apartment Buildings“. The article showcases the Ken Soble Tower Transformation and…

In the spring of 2020, the Tower Renewal Partnership completed CMHC-funded research examining the opportunity and challenges of utilizing existing Tower in the Park sites for the creation of new affordable housing to contribute to addressing Canada’s current housing supply challenge.  The research identified many opportunities in Tower neighbourhoods including Not for Profit developers as well as private for-profit developers. Overall, Not for Profit developers, both public and private, are best positioned to deliver affordable housing through mixed-income developments, as well…

In the spring of 2020, the Tower Renewal Partnership completed CMHC-funded research examining the opportunity and challenges of utilizing existing Tower in the Park sites for the creation of new affordable housing to contribute to addressing Canada’s current housing supply challenge.  The research identified many opportunities in Tower neighbourhoods including Not for Profit developers as well as private for-profit developers. Download and read the full report below.    

In January 2020, the Tower Renewal Partnership completed CMHC-funded research identifying product, skill and technological gaps in the Canadian retrofit market and industry. The report outlines key opportunities in expanding the retrofit industry for Canada to meet the challenge of a healthier, lower carbon and more resilient building stock. Through Canadian and international best-in-class case studies and pan-Canadian industry engagement, the report outlines critical next steps and recommendations for advancing the retrofit industry within the country, making retrofits “faster, better…

In January 2020, the Tower Renewal Partnership completed CMHC-funded research identifying product, skill and technological gaps in the Canadian retrofit market and industry. The report outlines key opportunities in expanding the retrofit industry for Canada to meet the challenge of a healthier, lower carbon and more resilient building stock. Through Canadian and international best-in-class case studies and pan-Canadian industry engagement, the report outlines critical next steps and recommendations for advancing the retrofit industry within the country, making retrofits “faster, better…

Illustration by Daniel Rotsztain As of October 2016, five hundred apartment tower neighbourhoods in the City of Toronto acquired the ability to reconceive the social and economic character of their communities.  A multisectoral group of partners, including United Way Toronto, Toronto Public Health, the City of Toronto, and the Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal, have worked for several years to replace an outdated strict zoning category with a new, more flexible framework. The result, known as the Residential Apartment…

The Tower Renewal Partnership and the City of Toronto recently partnered with the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to bring experts to Toronto for a weeklong visit to explore one of the biggest resilience challenges facing Toronto: retrofitting our aging apartment towers. Experts from across North America formed an Advisory Panel and visited Toronto during the week of February 24 to learn about Toronto’s challenges, meet with leaders on this topic, and make recommendations.  Watch the Advisory Panel’s presentation See the…

The Ken Soble Tower Transformation Project was recently featured in SAB Magazine’s Fall 2019 edition. At 18 storeys and more than 80,000 sqft, the Ken Soble Tower will be one of the largest EnerPHit certified projects in the world. The rehabilitation project will modernize 146 units of affordable seniors’ housing, while reinvigorating community spaces and outdoor gathering areas, allowing for aging-in-place and barrier-free living, and a changing climate. It is slated for completion in 2020. As North America’s first high…

In August 2019, the Tower Renewal Partnership (TRP) conducted new analysis on incenting nation-wide comprehensive tower retrofits.In particular, tax incentives were modelled and evaluated to understand how they could be used to achieve public policy goals around affordability and renewal. As the federal election approached, this analysis, coupled with existing TRP research formed a suite of federal policy recommendations to further advance and implement wide-scale tower renewal.

In August, the Tower Renewal Partnership (TRP) conducted new analysis on incenting nation-wide comprehensive tower retrofits. In particular, tax incentives were modelled and evaluated to understand how they could be used to achieve public policy goals around affordability and renewal. As the federal election approached, this analysis, coupled with existing TRP research formed a suite of federal policy recommendations to further advance and implement wide-scale tower renewal. The advantage of working with tax incentives to address policy priorities like GHG…

In July, the Tower Renewal Partnership (“TRP”)  released Tower Renewal and Retrofit Finance in support of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s interest in encouraging the retrofit and renewal of Canadian post-war towers. With much of Canada’s affordable purpose-built rental housing in need of renewal, the time to act is now. However, costs – along with the need to maintain affordability – continue to be a primary barrier.  As a result, the TRP has undertaken research uncovering the financial challenges…

In July, the Tower Renewal Partnership (“TRP”)  released Tower Renewal and Retrofit Finance in support of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s interest in encouraging the retrofit and renewal of Canadian post-war towers. With much of Canada’s affordable purpose-built rental housing in need of renewal, the time to act is now. However, costs – along with the need to maintain affordability – continue to be a primary barrier.  As a result, the TRP has undertaken research uncovering the financial challenges…

The Tower Renewal Partnership (TRP) has received CMHC support to kick-start a research program with two new research projects: ‘Advancing Building Retrofits’ and ‘Enabling Complete Communities’. In April, the Federal Government of Canada and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced funding for a TRP research program that includes two research projects. The TRP’s research program will be funded by the Federal Government’s National Housing Strategy, which includes $241 million over 10 years to support research and data on housing…

The Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal has received CMHC support to explore the challenges of conducting deep energy retrofits in occupied apartment housing and develop tools to help residents, constructors, and owners make retrofit projects a success by minimizing disruption to tenants. Last Thursday, the Federal Government of Canada and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced $2.2 million in funding for eleven project recipients through the National Housing Strategy (NHS) Solutions Labs Initiative. The NHS Solutions Labs initiative…

As aging apartment buildings begin to contribute to the housing crisis, (exposed this week in the infrastructure failure at 260 Wellesley, Toronto) the clear response is system-scale reinvestment — and it’s underway right now across Canada. Of particular note, the Ken Soble Tower Project is one of the most significant and precedent-setting tower retrofit projects in North America, and it’s happening in Hamilton, Ontario: Listen to ERA’s Graeme Stewart talk about Tower Renewal solutions on CBC’s Metro Morning, January 24, 2019 (the conversation begins…

Today, the federal government released the first round of National Housing Strategy programs, kicking off a new era for housing in Canada. The National Housing Co-Investment Fund’s ‘Repair and Renewal’ stream targets the repair of 240,000 units, with $2.26 billion in capital contributions and $3.46 billion in low-cost, long-term loans. This stream will help to catalyze Tower Renewal across the country, benefiting Canadians living in both public and privately-owned housing. These programs represent significant investments toward the preservation of existing…

Growth and Resiliency in Tower in the Park Sites Across the GGH describes the challenges of Tower Renewal and energy retrofitting from a policy and built form perspective and introduces a values-based framework to evaluate redevelopment opportunities on Tower Sites, with a focus on using infill development to fund retrofits and side-wide renewal. This research also include findings related to mapping tower sites across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Download the summary below or read the full report here.

Growth and Resiliency in Tower in the Park Sites Across the GGH describes the challenges of Tower Renewal and energy retrofitting from a policy and built form perspective and introduces a values-based framework to evaluate redevelopment opportunities on Tower Sites, with a focus on using infill development to fund retrofits and side-wide renewal. This research also include findings related to mapping tower sites across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Read the full report and summary here.

Calling All Architects: New Approaches to Old Housing For the past decade, Tower Renewal has been defined by research, policy design and action. Through multi-sectoral partnerships, best-practice and primary research, our work has evolved into program design, capacity building, and on-the-ground project implementation with a wide range of stakeholders.      This ongoing program of ‘research to action’ was featured in Architectural Design Magazine special issue: Calling All Architects: New Approaches to Old Housing. The issue showcases international leaders in rethinking…

The Tower Renewal strategy has had significant impact over the past year. Across all levels of government, there is a growing consensus: Tower Renewal can have a scalable impact nation-wide as a means to meet climate change, affordable housing, poverty reduction, smart growth, and economic development objectives. Some highlights include:   1. Announcement of $15.9B Co-Investment Fund, committing to the rehabilitation of 240,000 units of existing affordable housing as part of Canada’s landmark National Housing Strategy.   2. $350M allocated towards apartment…

  In 2016, the first Intermunicipal Tower Roundtable was held in Hamilton, bringing together Ontario’s  four largest municipalities–Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and Mississauga–to share best practices and innovative approaches to the unique challenges facing tower neighbourhoods. One of the outcomes of this roundtable was agreement that coordination between the Province and Municipalities is crucial to realizing Tower renewal goals in Ontario.     On January 17th, 2018 the Tower Renewal Partnership hosted the first Provincial-Municipal Tower Renewal Workshop at Evergreen Brickworks,…

Graeme Stewart’s article on the RAC Zone tells the context of the new zone and its possibilities for changing the tower landscape, removing barriers and steps towards more complete, resilient communities across Toronto.

  The  RAC Zone, a partnership between ERA Architects, the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal, United Way Toronto & York Region, Toronto Public Health and the City of Toronto, has this week been honoured with an OPPI Award of Excellence. Through research, advocacy, and collaboration, this new zoning framework has been developed and is poised for implementation in hundreds of Toronto’s vertical neighbourhoods, that will remove barriers for a range of exciting small-scale businesses and community services. A City-wide zoning…

Postwar towers – apartment buildings built before 1985 – make up most of the purpose-built rental stock across the country with almost 800,000 households calling these apartments home. As these buildings age, our cities grow, and the global climate changes, deep retrofits are needed to preserve these affordable homes. Retrofit Finance Towards a Resilient Canadian Housing Stock proposes creating government-backed financial tools to kick-start the retrofit economy, bring costs down and accelerate the number of postwar towers undergoing deep energy…

Postwar towers – apartment buildings built before 1985 – make up most of the purpose-built rental stock across the country with almost 800,000 households calling these apartments home. As these buildings age, our cities grow, and the global climate changes, deep retrofits are needed to preserve these affordable homes. Retrofit Finance Towards a Resilient Canadian Housing Stock proposes creating government-backed financial tools to kick-start the retrofit economy, bring costs down and accelerate the number of postwar towers undergoing deep energy retrofits.…

  Dec 1, 2017 –   The National Housing Strategy (NHS) is a once-in-a-generation commitment to building and renewing affordable housing in Canada. Released in November 2017, the strategy supports and enables many of the key goals of Tower Renewal, with a focus on housing rehabilitation toward healthy, high-quality, low-carbon outcomes across both publicly- and privately-owned buildings.     Specifically, the NHS aims to rehabilitate 240,000 existing affordable rental units, which in turn will meet energy and performance targets set by…

The Tower Renewal Action Forum took place on October 5, 2017 at the Evergreen Brick Works. The event assembled international experts and local city-builders to explore innovative strategies for transitioning aging tower neighbourhoods to meet the demands of our 21st century cities. With over 150 stakeholders in attendance, there was representation from government, nonprofit, private, public and community associations. Workshops and panel discussions showcased best practices at home and abroad, to focus on housing resilience and rehabilitation, neighbourhood transformation, and the maintenance of affordability in…

  Designed with 1960s ambitions of smart growth, the inherited legacy of tower neighbourhoods provides a unique suburban form of higher density neighbourhoods. This built form of clusters of towers in open space provides a framework for strategic growth, urban diversification and transformation, from which goals of complete, healthy and resilient communities can be achieved.  With emerging investments in mass transit and growth pressures throughout our cities, new models of infill and district design which enhance existing tower neighbourhoods are…

Between the 1950s and the 1970s, Canada supported the construction of high-rise rental housing across the country – creating affordable homes for millions. As this crucial housing supply ages, a set of quality standards must now be set in place to ensure the health, comfort, and safety of the millions who call these apartments home. As a renewed federal focus is placed on housing through the National Housing Strategy, there is now a window of opportunity to revisit housing quality…

  Postwar apartment towers are the backbone of Canada’s purpose-built rental stock, and provide affordable housing to millions of Canadians. Our recent map, accessed here, showcases the extent of towers across the nation. As Canada faces a growing housing affordability crisis, now is the time for coordinated action to build a future around more complete, resilient, and affordable cities. Tower Renewal is a strategy for realizing this change. The Tower Renewal Action Forum took place on October 5, 2017 at the…

Findings have been published in various formats including the research brief ‘Tower Neighbourhood Renewal International Best Practice’

Canada faces a growing housing affordability crisis. Now is the time for coordinated action to build a future around more complete, resilient, and affordable cities – and Tower Renewal is a strategy for realizing this change. Postwar apartment towers are the backbone of Canada’s purpose-built rental stock, and provide affordable housing to millions of Canadians. On October 5th, 2017, international experts and local city-builders came together to explore innovative strategies for transitioning these aging apartment tower neighbourhoods to meet the demands of our…

UPDATE Check out “A New Era of Public Housing” with Paul Karakusevic available below or on the Daniels Faculty’s Youtube Channel.     ERA Architects, the Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal and the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design are pleased to present architect Paul Karakusevic of Karakusevic Carson Architects at the University of Toronto. Please join us Monday October 2nd for Paul’s lecture A New Era of Public Housing, focusing on more than a decade redefining social housing in the UK. Paul’s…

The Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal, United Way Toronto and York Region, Toronto Public Health, and the City of Toronto have worked together to replace an outdated zoning category with a new, more flexible framework — paving the way to more complete communities in tower neighbourhoods.

The Intermunicipal Tower Platform brings together Ontario’s four largest cities, including Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, and Hamilton, to secure the future resilience of Ontario’s tower neighbourhoods.

This prototype demonstration unit will build a strong evidence base prior to scaling up innovative retrofit solutions, while testing new technologies and catalyzing the retrofit industry.

On Wednesday, July 19th, leaders in the development of Toronto’s Residential Apartment Commercial (RAC) Zoning by-law gathered at York University to celebrate and explore challenges and next steps in empowering communities to utilize Toronto’s newest zone. The esteemed panel had representation from property owners, entrepreneurs, community members, academics and city builders with Graeme Stewart, Principal at ERA Architect and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal as the Panel Moderator. Panelists included:      Michael Mizzi Director, Zoning and Secretary-Treasurer Committee of…

A key research stream of the Tower Renewal Partnership has been understanding the tower landscape in shaping our cities. How many towers are there? Where are they located? What is the resulting urban form? How do key relate to investments in transit and growth planning? How can they be better connected to the City at large? Our study, with the Ontario Growth Secretariat, creates a comprehensive inventory for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, which for the first time quantified this region as…

  Property owners, entrepreneurs, community members, academics and city builders will gather at York University in celebration of Toronto’s newest zone: the Residential Apartment Commercial (RAC) (www.raczone.ca). Moderated by Graeme Stewart, Principal of ERA and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal, this event hosted by the City of Toronto will centre discussions on the zone’s implementation as well as its economic and social opportunities. Topics will touch on: Where does the zone apply? What new things can be done…

  Recently, ERA Architects was presented with the Community Partnership Award by the City of Mississauga for their involvement with the Ridgeway Court: a once dire parking lot and sidewalk boulevard which through the determination and creativity of the neighbourhood’s youth, transformed into a drop-in recreational space and public space that identifies and serves the community. The multisport court was conceived nearly three years ago by youth from the Erin Mills Youth Centre as a solution to the lack of diversity with…

Cities internationally are exploring the challenges and opportunities of modern tower blocks and 21st century urban regeneration. Next week Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto of ERA Architects and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal will take part in a series of conversations focused on urban regeneration at Urban Design London (UDL) and Oxford University.  UDL is a non profit organization that connects design practitioners and provides up to date information about policy, research, and best practice. They will have…

How can postwar tower neighbourhoods, built 50 years ago, transition into more ecologically- and socially-sustainable places? As we look ahead to the next 50 years, how can we plan for more resilient relationships in the between our city and its remarkable ravine network? In May 2017, the Ontario Climate Consortium (including Toronto and Region Conservation and York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies), the University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Parallel 52, and the Centre…

How can investing in natural heritage enhance the livability of our cities? On April 26th this question became the framework for a dialogue between Canadian and Dutch design professionals at the Ravines and Wedges Workshop on Metropolitan Landscapes for Talent and Welfare. Hosted by Deltametropolis, TRCA, U of T, City of Toronto, and Evergreen, the workshop was organized to continue conversations that began at the Urban Land Institutes Electric Cities Symposium a few days earlier.  As cities expand and grow, society’s relationship with…

An overview of some of the factors, solutions and challenges in achieving winter and summer comfort through tower retrofit, and considerations for the development of comprehensive retrofit standards.

Ontario’s post-war apartment towers provide affordable rental housing to more than one million people. These buildings are aging and urgently require rehabilitation, as well as stronger connections to goods, services and transit networks. The renewal of Ontario’s sizable stock of post-war apartment towers represents an opportunity to advance both provincial and municipal goals related to housing quality, affordability, complete communities and greenhouse gas emission reduction. Improving the resilience of apartment tower housing will provide tremendous social and environmental gains across Ontario’s…

There are global efforts underway to quantifiably reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 2050. The Paris Agreement, and subsequent national strategies, have catalyzed policies such as the Ontario Climate Change Action Plan, which provides targets for reducing GHG emissions over the next five years in pursuit of a low carbon economy. Post-war apartment towers have been found to be among Ontario’s most energy intensive buildings, with data suggesting they require as much as 25% more energy per square metre than…

As of October 2016, five hundred tower neighbourhoods acquired the ability to re-conceive the social and economic character of their communities. Ontario’s apartment tower neighbourhoods help give the region an urban form unique to North America, reflecting progressive ideas that were considered “smart growth” in post-war Canada. While built with progressive ideas about density and suburban growth, they lack key features that many neighbourhoods take for granted: convenient and walkable access to local shops, services, amenities and the broader opportunities…

Home to more than half a million Torontonians, the post-war apartment tower typology contributes a significant number of units to the affordable housing market. Tower Renewal Partnership research has demonstrated that significant investment toward social and physical improvements to Toronto’s apartment towers may be in part leveraged by well-designed infill housing development. Targeted infill development on tower sites is able to support and energize core renewal goals, harnessing cross-investment of development revenues to make significant changes to tower neighbourhoods. The…

2022 06 23 – MIT Technology Review: The future of urban housing 2022 06 01 – Architectural Record: Housing and Climate 2022 05 17 – Lessons from Grenfell 2022 04 22 – Metropolis Magazine 2022 04 07 – Ken Soble Tower becomes world’s largest residential Passive House retrofit 2021 10 21 – Tall Stories 276: Ken Soble Tower: Monocle Radio – The Urbanist 2021 10 01 – Ken Soble Tower Raising the Bar – Canadian Architect 2021 09 29 – Hamilton’s…

Aging Modern For picture information and larger view, click fullscreen mode. Photos by Graeme Stewart. Landmarks and Monuments For picture information and larger view, click fullscreen mode. Photos by Jesse Colin Jackson   Figure Ground For picture information and more of Jesse’s work, click the image. Photo by Jesse Colin Jackson Public Space and Commerce For picture information and large view, click fullscreen mode. Photos by Graeme Stewart   The Jetsons Don’t Live Here Anymore For more picture information and…

View videos, CUG+R TALKS, the  GALLERY and NEWS sections for more content.     Pechakucha: Tower Renewal 101 A crash course in Tower Renewal by Graeme Stewart.                     Tower, Slab, Superblock: Social Housing Legacies and Futures A conference hosted by the Architectural League of New York that examined the history, current status, and prospects of high-rise and superblock residential development. Experts discussed the potential for redevelopment from design and public policy perspectives. The Life- Sized…

RESIDENTIAL APARTMENT COMMERCIAL (RAC)ZONING Toronto’s  mid-century Tower Neighbourhoods help give the region an urban form unique to North America, reflecting progressive ideas that were considered “smart growth” in postwar Canada. Yet while built with progressive ideas about density and suburban growth, they lack key features that many Toronto neighbourhoods take for granted: convenient and walkable access to local shops, services, amenities and the broader opportunities of neighbourhood life.  In fact, these features are not only missing in many of Toronto’s…

Vancouver’s high-rise rental apartment stock may vary in materiality from Toronto’s, however it’s no less in need of reinvestment and regeneration. In the article that follows Christopher Cheung looks to the Tower Renewal initiative for inspiration and a cue for what is possible on the west coast. Click here to view the article. All images courtesy of Christopher Cheung.   This article was originally posted on ERA Architect’s blog.

Harlyn Thompson Lecture Series – Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba Thursday, March 16, 2017 6PM Lecture Eckhardt Gramatte Hall University of Winnipeg Speakers: Sabina Ali – Chair, Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee Graeme Stewart – Principal, ERA Architects, Co-Founder/Board Member, Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) and Co-Editor, Concrete Toronto: A Guidebook to Concrete Architecture from the Fifties to the Seventies Graeme Stewart and Sabina Ali will introduce the case of Toronto’s built legacy: upwards of 2,000 modernist tower blocks that define its urban…

  “Never demolish, never remove or replace, always add, transform and reuse!” – Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal On December 10th a group of international guests will assemble at the Cooper Union Rose Auditorium in New York City to share thoughts on policy and design improvements to enhance the existing stock of postwar social hosing in North America and Europe, reflecting on the need for creating solutions to reimaging this housing stock. Hosted by the Architecture League of New York, the…

Different sites are identified to indicate the actors and interventions required to broadly facilitate Tower Renewal, with more public support required for the revitalization of housing assets in isolated areas.

This instrument could be a key tool for private, public and non-profit owners to improve the quality and energy performance of their buildings, while maintaining the long-term affordability of this housing supply.

The Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW) is a federal German bank created to facilitate post-war reconstruction. Today it provides key financial support for both new build and retrofit prospects to meet climate change goals.

  “A new platform by which designers of these two great cities may share innovations and best practices with the common goal of enhancing the build environment.”- Mary Rusz This September, at the invitation of the AIA New York Housing and Planning and Urban Design Committees, ERA’s Michael McClelland, Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto participated in a panel in New York on Toronto’s modern heritage and Tower Renewal. The panel discussion took place at the Centre for Architecture in as…

As our population continues to grow, how will the region accommodate both present and future needs?’ This is the question that Growing Pains asks after summarizing how urban growth in the greater horseshoe evolved over the past half century and in light of the prospect of another two million residents arriving in the region over the next 20 years. The provincial Places to Grow Act was passed in 2005 with the hope of curbing unsustainable growth through urban density and…

As part of the ongoing work related to Tower Renewal, ERA and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal are consulting with the federal government on the emerging National Housing Strategy. See Graeme Stewart in Ottawa summarizing strategies to ensure the preservation of Canada’s aging apartment housing stock, and to support its rehabilitation through Tower Renewal. A consultation and solutions workshop held in Ottawa focused on the key issue of ‘Maintaining and Preserving Existing Rental.’ Home to millions across Canada,…

Elise Hug (Tower Renewal Office, City of Toronto), Jason Thorne (CUG+R, planningAlliance), and ERA’s Graeme Stewart explore the opportunities of the proposed zoning framework, next steps for implementation, and research and policy initiatives moving forward.

A varied perspective of the global phenomenon of post-war mass housing through the lens of ‘documentation’ and ‘conservation’. Articles explore the tower block legacies of France, Russia, Brazil, Singapore, as well as Toronto.

A follow up to the findings of the Poverty by Postal Code 2: Vertical Poverty (2011) report by the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) and United Way Toronto.

This report was commissioned by Toronto Public Health in 2011 to examine design tools for improved community health outcomes in Toronto’s hundreds of apartment neighborhoods.

The volume includes articles by Graeme Stewart focused on examining the state of concrete tower blocks internationally and exploring their potential architectural and urban futures in the Toronto context.

Much of the mythology surrounding Toronto is focused on a “city of neighbourhoods”, yet what is of equal interest is the completeness with which it accepted the modern project prior to this point.

In 2008 the City of Toronto initiated its Tower Neighborhood Renewal program. Recognizing that such a large-scale renewal amounts to a 20-year program, this paper provides an update on current progress.

Analysis of this housing resource and examination of its future role in our growing region.

Revitalizing communities through research, advocacy, and action. Tower Renewal Partnership (TRP) is a nonprofit initiative which works through research, advocacy and demonstration. Our goal is to transform postwar towers and their surrounding neighbourhoods into more sustainable, resilient and healthy places, fully integrated into their growing cities. Over 10 years ago, The Tower Renewal Partnership was formed to promote tower neighbourhood reinvestment. As the originators of the made-in-Toronto concept and term “Tower Renewal”, we saw the value in tower neighbourhoods and…

What is Tower Renewal? Tower Renewal is a strategy that promotes, supports and directs enhancement and reinvestment in Canada’s affordable apartment tower stock. During the boom years of the 1960s and 70s, Canada built a significant volume of modern apartment towers in response to rapid urbanization. Predominantly privately developed, but supported by public planning policy and incentives, these towers shape the urban and suburban landscape cross county – with at least 750,000 Canadian households calling them home.  Half a century…

The Tower Renewal Partnership is a multisectoral initiative led by the Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal, and made up of Evergreen, United Way Toronto & York Region, Maytree, and DKGI. We work alongside a broad network of nonprofit, governmental, industry, and academic partners. Project Lead Core Partners           Advisory Network                                                    …

Celebrate apartment tower neighbourhoods as diverse, dynamic and resilient parts of our cities. Canada’s apartment towers were built as symbols of modernism and progress of their time, a key aspect of post-war prosperity and the national coming of age. Today they are among the world’s most diverse and international communities, home to our ‘Arrival Cities’ where we welcome the world. Too often dismissed, our legacy of Apartment Tower Neighbourhoods provides a remarkably rich cultural foundation upon which to explore, discover,…

Retrofitting modern housing for today’s standards of comfort, health, safety and dignity. Designed using modern principles of housing equity – light, air, and space for all – our legacy of apartment towers was built with solid foundations to meet tomorrow’s housing needs. Today this housing infrastructure is aging. Providing homes to millions, often those of lower income, the state of repair of some of this housing is becoming a challenge. Future viability requires overcoming two challenges: modernization to meet today’s…

Maintain the affordability and supply of Canada’s affordable rental supply. Post-war Apartment Towers provide affordable, purpose-built rental housing to millions of Canadians. Somewhat unique to Canada, the majority of our tower blocks are not social housing but were privately developed under Federal incentive programs, providing a flood of moderately priced rental accommodation through the 1960s and 70s. Over the decades much of this private housing has emerged as our most affordable housing stock, providing key housing to the most vulnerable.…

Transforming isolated tower neighbourhoods into more convenient, livable and resilient vertical villages: Over past decades, Canada’s Apartment Neighbourhoods have emerged as the Nation’s most diverse localities, acting as our ‘Arrival Cities’. While the communities in these towers have changed to reflect modern Canada, their physical forms remain largely stuck in 1960s ideas planning focused on single-use zoning, separated uses and a heavy reliance on the automobile.  As a result, they lack key features that many neighbourhoods take for granted: convenient…

Provincial growth targets may be met in apartment tower neighborhoods, while delivering new infrastructure and resources to these growing communities.

Deep retrofit Towers and surrounding communities for a low carbon future: Our sizeable legacy of post-war residential towers collectively produce several megatonnes of greenhouse gases each year and are among the most carbon-intensive housing types in Canada’s urban centres. However, these towers are uniquely positioned to emerge as models for low-energy retrofit. Deep retrofits can reduce their impact by as much as 80%, while also modernizing this housing typology for the next generation. Engaging in deep retrofits provides a platform…

Tower Renewal Partnership is a nonprofit initiative which works through research, advocacy and demonstration. Our goal is to transform postwar towers and their surrounding neighbourhoods into more sustainable, resilient and healthy places, fully integrated into their growing cities.

    Throughout September 2016, Thorncliffe Park will host a cultural café, music, art and storytelling circles in its R.V. Burgess Park. These events, taking place each Saturday of the month, are spearheaded by the Thorncliffe Park Action Group (TAG), a dynamic collective responsible for the cultural café, and their supporting partner organization, Diasporic Genius. For the second year, ERA has been an active partner in this initiative, working alongside these organizations to design and build a unique mobile landscape.…

  Tower Renewal and ERA collaborator Jay Pitter discusses a rethink to social housing, Tower Renewal, and her book ‘Subdivided City’ on the Maytree Foundation Blog. Read it here.    

A compilation of research conducted over the past several years by the University of Toronto and E.R.A. Architects. It examines the origin of Toronto’s modern planned apartment communities, and their future potential in a green and equitable city.

    The Tower Renewal Partnership is an initiative working to transform Southern Ontario’s remarkable stock of post-war apartment towers into more complete communities, resilient housing stock and healthy places, fully integrated into our growing cities. Nearly one million people in the Greater Toronto Area live in approximately 2,000 concrete residential tower blocks which were built between 1945 and 1984. These towers were originally intended to promote social progress, alleviate pressures on infrastructure and services in crowded downtown cores, and…

Following up our teaser blog to Graeme’s talk at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute, we would like to share with you the link to the whole talk.

Image by Jesse Colin Jackson Joshua Thorpe’s article, “How to rethink the suburbs: A lesson from Toronto,” in Arup’s Doggerel explores the new Residential Apartment Commerical (RAC) zone and the potential benefits it will bring to Toronto’s tower neighbourhoods. The article provides background information on the history of these tower neighbourhoods, the challenges they currently face, and how new zoning laws can help promote complete communities with access to business, health, and public engagement. Read the article here and learn more about the…

How do zoning laws contribute to – or prevent – the creation of complete communities? The Cities Alive podcast episode, Zoning Out! Part 1 addresses issues surrounding this question. Hosts Ross Soward and Danielle Davis invite guest speakers to talk about new trends in zoning that are allowing the formation of vibrant neighbourhoods. Today there is a rethink in how zoning works – from once rigid and separated into fixed single uses – to more flexible and mixed. Desire for zoning reform…

Featured in “GreenTOpia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto”, this article by Graeme Stewart, looks at the contentious relationship between Toronto and its postwar high-rise apartments.

Co-Published by ERA Architects and Coach House Books, Concrete Toronto: A Guidebook to Concrete Architecture from the Fifties to the Seventies, examines Toronto’s remarkable collection of modern concrete heritage: Toronto is a concrete city. International landmarks, civic buildings, cultural institutions, metropolitan infrastructure and housing from high-rise to the single-family home: much of Toronto was born of an era of exposed concrete design. Under appreciated and misunderstood, Toronto’s concrete architecture represents an exciting era of cultural investment, city building, and design innovation.…

Though the vastness of Toronto’s suburbs is often bemoaned as unplanned sprawl, their shape tells a different story. Containing extensive parks and protected natural systems, transit infrastructure, industrial zones, cultural and community facilities, universities, modern planned communities and, perhaps most noteworthy, hundreds upon hundreds of high-density concrete high-rise apartment buildings, Toronto’s ‘metro’ suburbs showcase a process of metropolitan growth highly affected by regional and modern planning. Financed by the economic boom of the ’60s and ’70s, these expansive areas of…

The Mayor’s Office of the City of Toronto, along with a growing list of partners including the Clinton Foundation, E.R.A. Architects, CMHC and the University of Toronto have initiated the Tower Renewal Project –a building upgrade, community reinvestment and greening incentives programme which aims to significantly improving the social, economic and environmental sustainability of our city and region.

  This past Saturday, September 26th, the Third Not-So-Annual Harvest Festival took place in Thorncliffe Park. Hosted by not-for-profit Diasporic Genius (DG), the festival featured a pop-up Women’s Cultural Café, an initiative of the Thorncliffe Action Group (TAG). Diasporic Genius, TAG, and ERA Architects collaborated to design, build, and run this dynamic pop-up café.   Thorncliffe Action Group (TAG) members at the Cultural Café. Background mural designed by TAG and Diasporic Genius.   Over the course of four meetings, ERA…

  This month’s issue of Metropolis Magazine ranks Toronto #1 globally for livability; and is in good company with Tokyo and Helsinki, numbers two and three respectively. The feature article, written by Toronto Star columnist Christer Hume, outlines Toronto’s many virtues and points to Tower Renewal as a way forward to both enhancing livability and addressing the the City’s emerging challenges. The issue also features photographs by Tower Renewal collaborator Jesse Colin Jackson.

As part of ongoing research related to the Tower Renewal project, ERA’s Graeme Stewart and Michael McClelland, with project partners Evergreen Cityworks and planningAlliance, recently toured the Netherlands and Germany. Touring built projects, construction sites, and meeting with planners, engineers, architects, city administrators, and even a Dutch Senator, the team witnessed Europe’s cutting edge in tower refurbishment and neighbourhood design. Moreover, they met with new project partner Transsolar, global experts in technical solutions for the low energy retrofit who are bringing…

Congratulations to the team at Highrise for releasing a new and final chapter of their award winning web documentary. Highrise is a multi-year documentary project focusing on the suburban Towers of Toronto and nine other cities around the globe. The latest installment, Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise, serves as an interactive narrative revealing the digital human condition of vertical citizens globally. The documentary asks, “trapped in our highrise units, can we find love, hate, peace, god, community—or a better world—online?”   ERA…

In March, ERA’s Graeme Stewart, with University of Toronto Professor Paul Hess, provided the keynotes to the Active Neighbourhoods Canada (ANC) project forum, which is focused on Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park neighbourhoods. See our previous post here.     ANC is engaging in a multi-year, community-led program of neighbourhood research, design, and investment. Following initial research and groundwork, the ANC created a neighbourhood profile of Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Parks that can be downloaded here.     ANC will…

In March, ERA’s Graeme Stewart participated in a webinar hosted by Cities of Migration and Centre for City Ecology as part of their Citybuilders Bookclub. The current edition of the Citybuilders Bookclub focuses on Doug Saunders’ seminal book, Arrival City. This presentation focused on opportunities for successful arrival cities in the context of Toronto’s high-rise suburban landscape and TowerRenewal. For more information, see our previous post here. Gerben Helleman, a Webinar participant and editor of Urban Springtime, wrote an excellent follow-up article tracing the…

Our friend Jesse Colin Jackson will be speaking at Harvard this April on his photographs of Toronto’s towers. Jackson’s images invite the audience to consider these conflicted sites, and have had an important role in changing the status of apartment towers in Toronto’s collective consciousness. If you’re in the Boston area, we recommend the talk.

Recently the East Scarborough Storefront published a report documenting a number of aspects of their path to neighbourhood renewal. Since the Storefront’s approach has proven so successful, this report is very valuable for other communities interested in making some positive changes to the neighbourhood. Since the late 1990s, the East Scarborough Storefront has been facilitating community-driven services and initiatives to make the neighbourhood of Kingston Galloway / Orton Park a healthier, happier place to live. The successes of the Storefront…

  On April 9, ERA’s Graeme Stewart will be speaking at the Great Cities Institute, Chicago. The talk, entitled “Tower Blocks, Modern Suburbs, and 21st Century Urbanism in Toronto,” will review recent developments in Toronto’s Tower Neighbourhood Renewal initiative. With its thousands of residential towers, Toronto has an urban form unique in North America. In fact, Toronto has a denser metropolitan area than Chicago, Los Angeles, or even Greater New York City. This is not the result of the city core, but…

ERA’s Graeme Stewart and Sabina Ali of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee are featured in a terrific new video by Spacing. The video, which also includes interviews with ERA’s Michael McClelland, is entitled “Powers of Towers,” and profiles the efforts of Graeme and Sabina to transform Toronto’s aging suburban high-rise neighbourhoods into livable communities that work. Graeme and Sabina were jointly awarded the 2014 Jane Jacobs Prize, also presented by Spacing magazine. For several years, Graeme has been leading big-picture…

ERA’s Graeme Stewart is pleased to be participating in the Active Neighbourhoods Canada project taking place in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park, Wed., March 25. The project uses participatory planning to help communities across Canada create green, active and healthy neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods celebrate the active use of shared public space; they support walking and cycling for everyone through safe and welcoming urban design based on the community’s vision.

  ERA’s Graeme Stewart is participating in the weekend symposium “After Empirical Urbanism” at U of T, Friday Feb. 27 to Sunday Mar. 1.

    ERA’s Graeme Stewart is pleased to be participating in a webinar presented by Cities of Migration and Centre for City Ecology as part of their Citybuilders Bookclub. The Bookclub is global in reach, aiming to foster a deeper understanding of how cities work, and brings together a diverse group of thinkers and writers from around the world to weigh in on and debate the issues raised through reading. The current edition is focused on Doug Saunders’ seminal book, Arrival City. Saunders’ Arrival…

Recently ERA’s Graeme Stewart and Evergreen Cityworks‘ John Brodhead presented a webinar on Tower Renewal in partnership with the Social Innovation Generation and Cities for People. The webinar presents an impressive picture of the last eight years of Tower Renewal efforts, and includes discussion of Toronto’s unique built form in relation to other cities, its history of progressive modern planning, the challenges and opportunities faced today by its aging tower neighbourhoods, and exciting new developments in City zoning and Tower…

The fall issue of Spacing Magazine features a short piece by ERA’s Graeme Stewart in a section called “Opinion Makers.” The article reviews Toronto’s history of residential tower development and explains the evolution of the new RAC zone allowing new program and land use in our apartment neighbourhoods. Read the full text below:

Photo courtesy of Jesse Colin Jackson   This week the Toronto Star features an article by Graeme Stewart of ERA and John Broadhead of Evergreen CityWorks on the momentum that’s building in Toronto around Tower Renewal. The article introduces the idea that the GTA has a unique urban and suburban form, with thousands of residential towers built in the ‘50s, ’60s, and ‘70s, housing nearly a million people. The Tower Renewal initiative unites stakeholders across the city to reinvest in these…

ERA friend and collaborator Jesse Colin Jackson launches his new exhibition at Pari Nadimi Gallery, at 254 Niagara Street, Toronto. The show, entitled Radiant City, runs Sept. 18th, 6-8 p.m. and runs to Nov. 1st. Radiant City considers the evolving presence and status of Toronto’s tower neighbourhoods. The product of optimistic and progressive planning ideologies of post-war Canada, Toronto’s tower neighbourhoods were built as car-centric modernist enclaves for the middle class. Today have evolved into complex urban environments that are important arrival destinations…

On Wednesday, June 24th ERA joined hundreds of friends and community members at the East Scarborough Storefront to celebrate the launch of two new landscape features: the Sky-o-swale shade-water structure, and the MLSE/Jumpstart Sports Court.

A permanent exhibition of sculptures by Toronto artist Harley Valentine has recently been unveiled in Scarborough, adding new form and colour to the forecourt of a rental high-rise residence.

  The Toronto Star’s ongoing “Big Ideas” series shares ideas from Toronto planners, architects, and creative thinkers on how to make the city a better place. Recently The Star’s urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume chatted with ERA’s Graeme Stewart about various issues and initiatives surrounding the Tower Renewal project. To read this web chat, please go to thestar.com. Photo: Jesse Colin Jackson

    As announced recently in the Evergreen CityWorks’ Intersection Magazine, the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal is teaming up with Evergreen CityWorks and Derek Ballantyne (CEO, Community Forward Fund) to engage in new initiatives in Tower Renewal. The purpose of this Tower Partnership will be to develop feasible funding and implementation strategies for a series of Tower Renewal sites in the GTA, working with project partners City of Toronto, United Way, Metcalf Foundation, Toronto Atmospheric Fund and more. The ultimate goal…

Recently the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) held a competition to create innovative master plans to revitalize Toronto’s San Romanoway Affordable Housing Complex. The “Greening the Grounds” competition asked participants to propose designs that would provide this priority neighbourhood with a new community garden, urban orchard, greenhouse, market space, shelters, seating, paths, recreation areas, and more. The winning entry will be refined and implemented beginning as soon as autumn, 2014. The design competition is part of more comprehensive ongoing Tower Renewal…

Photograph by Chloë Ellingson On view now at Harbourfront Centre is a new exhibition of photos by six photographers, including ERA’s friend Chloë Ellingson. Citing the Tower Renewal Project as one of its inspirations, Chloë’s work documents the topography of Toronto’s inner suburbs from the vantage point of various tower apartment buildings. Chloë’s full set of photographs can be viewed here. Having grown up near the Don Valley, outside of Toronto’s downtown, Chloë has a personal interest in the image of the…

  ERA has been working with Sustainable.TO, Architext, Blackwell, and Patriot Engineering on the “Sky-o-Swale shade-water structure,” part of an ongoing project to bring new landscape features and public realm amenities to the vibrant community hub of East Scarborough Storefront. A type of green-roof pavilion, the Sky-o-Swale shade-water structure is currently being constructed and will soon be completed. The catenary roof structure is constructed of chain and chain-link fencing, and supported by six canted columns made of reused hydro poles. The structure gets its…

Recently ERA’s Graeme Stewart presented a crash course in Tower Renewal at a Toronto PechaKucha event focused on urban innovation. The short, 7-minute talk covers half a century of Toronto’s history and, right up to some of the exciting new initiatives taking place in and around Toronto’s Tower Neighbourhoods.

Image courtesy of Architecture for Humanity Toronto   Recently Architecture for Humanity and Ryerson University hosted a charrette to explore opportunities for Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood in light of the newly developed RAC Zone. Kicking off the event was a presentation by Filipe Balestra of Urban Nouveau, who discussed his work in “Incremental Housing Strategy” in India, Brazil, Portugal, and Stockholm, as well as the approach’s applicability to Toronto’s Towers. For the rest of the day, Filipe, ERA’s Graeme Stewart, and Elise Hug from the City…

The 2014 Jane Jacobs prize has been awarded to Graeme Stewart of ERA and Sabina Ali of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee.   According to the creators and stewards of the Jane Jacobs Prize, Ideas that Matter and Spacing Magazine, this honour “celebrates individuals who contribute to the fabric of Toronto life in unique ways that exemplify the ideas of Jane Jacobs. The prize recipients reflect the diverse aspects of city life.” Graeme has been awarded the prize for his…

Photo by Jesse Colin Jackson Update: A new edition of this report is available as of March 12, 2014. It has long been understood that while Toronto’s tower neighbourhoods are areas of social need (see reports “Vertical Poverty,” and “Tower Neighbourhood Renewal in the Greater Golden Horseshoe”), they also provide a vital source of affordable housing in the region. Just how tenuous that affordability can be, however, is the subject of a recent U of T Cities Centre report by…

Image: Toronto Star Throughout the first part of 2014, the Toronto Star is running a series called “Big Ideas“,  asking Torontonians to think big about the future of the region. What type of Toronto do we want to create in the years to come? For our contribution to this series, we discuss Tower Renewal as the key to realizing the region’s potential. The piece can be found at Here at thestar.com, or below:   The GTA can evolve into a…

Map identifying areas of high potential / priority for Tower Neighbourhood Renewal. Click on image for additional mapping.   As part of the ongoing to work to re-examining zoning in Apartment Neighbourhoods, a series of maps have been developed to identify trends, patterns and areas of high impact in phasing the implementation of the new RAC apartment zone. The RAC zone is a new set of policies to provide tools and opportunities as part of the larger initiative of Tower Neighbourhood Renewal. Building…

  On Saturday January 18, The East Scarborough Storefront hosted a public design charrette with partners United Way Toronto, Toronto Public Health (TPH), Sustainable TO, Architext, and ERA. Saturday’s discussion focused on TPH’s new program “Healthy Corner Stores,” a project that proposes to give suburban communities better access to fresh produce, and other healthy food options, through convenience stores. Healthy Corner Stores is part of the growing Tower Renewal initiative, which aims to bring new amenities, healthy choices, and life…

Photographs by Toronto Public Health One of the key challenges facing the region’s Apartment Neighourhoods is providing convenient access to healthy fresh food to the thousands of residents that call these neighbourhoods home. Over the past few years, ERA, CUG+R, and project partners United Way Toronto and Toronto Public Health have advocated for, and are in the process of implementing new zoning by-laws to allow the sale of food, goods and services in these neighbourhoods, which is today often prohibited. Yet…

St. Jamestown Phoenix mural changing the vertical landscape in east downtown   Congratulations to the STEPS art initiative, residents of 200 Wellesley St, the City of Toronto Public Realm team, and TCHC for completion of possibly the world’s tallest mural in St. Jamestown. To learn more about the STEPS/Emerging ARTivist Program at St. Jamestown click here.

Screenshot from the Reader’s Stories Gallery   Congratulations to Kat Cizek and the NFB team for the launch of their latest installment of HIGHRISE, produced in partnership with the New York Times:  A Short History of the highrise. ERA worked with Kat, the NFB team, and local residents of North Etobicoke to develop HIGHRISE’s award winning previous installment, One Millionth Tower. As part of the launch of A Brief History of the Highrise, Shawn Micallef, Spacing Magazine Editor and ERA collaborator,…

Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat, Councillor Peter Milczyn, and panel participants. Photo by Garry Weiler, City of Toronto On Sept. 30, 2013, ERA’s Graeme Stewart participated in a City of Toronto Chief Planner’s Roundtable, hosted by Jennifer Keesmaat. The Roundtable, entitled “The Shape of Toronto’s Suburbs,” is the first of three sessions devoted to critical thinking about the history, evolution, and future of the GTA’s suburbs. Participants included John van Nostrand, Leo deSorcy, Pamela Blais, Laurie Payne, and Leona Savoie. The…

The City of Toronto’s Tower Renewal Office (TRO) recently published two new reports describing the project’s accomplishments in the last two years, as well as future goals that were adopted by the City of Toronto’s Community Development and Recreation Committee in Sept. 2013. The two reports show TRO’s impressive outreach to over 300 buildings in the City, with plans for engagement, assessment, and action in many more in the years to come. Taking advantage of new zoning to be initiated…

Alex Bozikovic, Toronto-based writer on architecture and design, recently provided an update on Tower Renewal efforts in the GTA. The article describes the uniquely Canadian and Torontonian inventory of high-rise post-war tower apartment neighbourhoods, and recent efforts by local architects, not-for-profits, and city departments to rethink these neighbourhoods. With aging buildings in need of maintenance and energy efficiency upgrades, and zoning laws that see neighbourhoods underserved and undernourished, Toronto is ready for some practical changes. Bozikovic is optimistic: By his…

A new article in Satellite Magazine on Toronto Towers by ERA’s Graeme Stewart, Josh Thorpe, and Michael McClelland. The article compares Toronto’s two high-rise housing booms, which have generated housing in volume and distribution unlike anywhere else in North America: first, the suburban tower boom in Toronto’s post-war period, and next the contentious condo boom of recent years. The two Booms: Housing Starts in the Greater Toronto Areas, 1950 to 2012 (CMHC) In both cases urban form and infrastructure have…

Dr. Frank Wassenberg, Netherlands researcher, professor, and Tower Renewal collaborator  (see Symposium 2011), has recently published a book called Large Housing Estates: Ideas, Rise, Fall and Recovery — the Bijlmermeer and Beyond. The book documents origins, histories, and recent events in the revitalization of housing estates, and provides a pan-European and international perspective on the opportunities and challenges of Tower Renewal. The book’s main focus is Amsterdam’s remarkable Bijlmermeer neighbourhood, whose long-term renewal efforts represent global leadership in positive social, environmental, and urban transformation. Having worked in…

We are pleased to announce that the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) has awarded the Planning Excellence Merit Award for New and Emerging Planning Initiatives to a collection of strategic studies that form part of the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal initiative. Since 2007, the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal initiative has been working to tackle one of the most pressing planning challenges of our times – the renewal and revitalization of Toronto’s post-war Apartment Tower Neighbourhoods. ERA Architects, planningAlliance and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R), have been…

In an important step forward, Toronto City Council voted Wednesday April 3, 2013, to approve the new Harmonized Zoning bylaw, including the new Residential Apartment-Commercial (RAC) Zone. Starting in 2014, the RAC Zone will be rolled out in key Toronto neighbourhoods. These include: Thorncliff Park, North Jane St., Rexdale, Oriole Community (The Peanut), Taylor-Massey Neighbourhood, East Scarborough, and Pape and Cosburn The new RAC zone supports as-of-right low-impact mixed uses within Apartment Neighbourhoods. Such uses include small shops, farmers markets,…

Apartment Cluster, Mississauga Ontario Doug Saunders, columnist for the Globe and Mail and author of the remarkable book Arrival City, among other notable works, recently wrote a good piece on Tower Renewal, challenging Canada to rethink itself as a “nation of suburban apartment dwellers”. One in five within the Toronto region lives in a high-rise building outside of the urban downtown centre, which makes us a world leader in this residential form. The article cites German architect Thomas Sieverts, who…

Last week the NFB’s Highrise: One Millionth Tower won a Canada Screen Award for “Original Program Produced for Digital Media, Non-Fiction.” ERA and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) had the pleasure of working with the NFB on this remarkable series, directed by Kat Cizek, which examines the current conditions and future potential of post-war high-rise living around the world. For One Millionth Tower, the team worked with residents of the Kipling Towers Neighbourhood in northwest Toronto, to…

As part of the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal project, the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) continues to work with United Way Toronto, the City of Toronto, and key stakeholders to establish a new approach to zoning that will enable Toronto’s hundreds of Apartment Neighbourhoods to emerge as more complete, better-served communities. Recently, Canadian Apartment Magazine interviewed ERA’s Graeme Stewart, as well as Aird & Berlis LLP partner Tom Halinski, on exciting changes coming to Toronto’s zoning laws. Play the…

The newly proposed ‘Apartment Residential Commercial Zoning’, developed by the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal, City of Toronto, United Way and other partners features as the cover story in the January / February 2013 issue of the Ontario Planning Journal. Article authors, Elise Hug (Tower Renewal Office, City of Toronto), Jason Thorne (CUG+R, planningAlliance), and ERA’s Graeme Stewart explore the opportunities of the proposed zoning framework, next steps for implementation, and further research and policy initiatives moving forward. The…

  Monocle Radio recently interviewed ERA’s Graeme Stewart on The Urbanist, a weekly program on the people and ideas that shape urban life. In this week’s edition, Andrew Tuck speaks with Graeme about Toronto’s modernist legacy and the Tower Renewal program. You can listen to this interview online at Monocle.com #61.

  On December 11, 2012, Toronto’s Tower Renewal Office hosted a panel that brought together leading Toronto participants in the Tower Renewal program, including ERA’s Graeme Stewart, with Keynote speaker Dr. Rebecca Leshinsky. A professor of law, Dr. Leshinsky has conducted research on the sustainable retrofit of apartment buildings in Melbourne and the State of Victoria in Australia. Dr. Leshinsky noted that Toronto and Melbourne share opportunities related to Tower Renewal. Her research relates to the legal and governance mechanisms…

This autumn, United Way’s Imagine a City blog is hosting a series of guest writers to discuss a number of important programs related to Toronto’s future as a livable city. ERA’s Graeme Stewart and United Way Toronto CEO Susan McIsaac blogged about their collaborative work on Tower Neighbourhood Renewal; working to build healthier, happier tower neighbourhoods through research; advocacy; policy change and direct investment that can bring new life to these communities. To read the full blog post, please see the…

As part of ongoing work on Tower Neighbourhood Renewal, the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) has been working with partners United Way Toronto and the City of Toronto to establish a new approach to zoning that will enable Toronto’s hundreds of Apartment Neighbourhoods to emerge as more complete and better-served communities. This work has recently taken a significant step forward, as Toronto’s Planning and Growth Management Committee has endorsed a new zoning category: the “Apartment Residential Commercial” Zone…

As part of the recent reports developed for United Way Toronto and Toronto Public Health, a series of diagrams were developed illustrating the use of various strategies for more healthy and better served communities at the small, intermediate and larger scales. These reports, Toward Healthy Apartment Neighbourhoods, and A New Approach to Zoning in Apartment Neighbourhoods, discuss thirty-one strategies for healthy and vibrant communities, and the policy and zoning framework for their realization.   The full set of diagrams can…

As a follow up to the findings of Poverty by Postal Code 2: Vertical Poverty, the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) and United Way Toronto are pleased to release a new report entitled Strong Neighbourhoods and Complete Communities: A New Approach to Zoning for Apartment Neighbourhoods. Download the full report. The aim of this report is to identify existing policy barriers and consider policy alternatives to enable Toronto’s hundreds of apartment neighbourhoods to reach their potential as healthy,…

The Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) and Toronto Public Health are pleased to release Toward Healthy Apartment Neighbourhoods: A Healthy Toronto by Design Report. Download the full report. As part of the ongoing work related to Tower Neighbourhood Renewal, this report was commissioned by Toronto Public Health in 2011 to examine design tools for improved community health outcomes in Toronto’s hundreds of apartment neighbourhoods. As has been demonstrated in numerous previous studies, growing poverty is linked to poor…

Beginning in early July, six youth from the Kingston-Galloway-Orton Park community were hired for a five-week period by the East Scarborough Storefront to continue work on a series of community-oriented landscape improvements. These features were designed as part of the Community Design Initiative (C.D.I.) program, to which these youth have previously volunteered hundreds of hours. In our last week on site the team is in the process of creating a 15×50 ft. deck that will be placed underneath a green-roof…

Photos: Holly Pagnacco   Progress on the East Scarborough Storefront’s (ESS) soon-to-be grapevine pergola is running on time. We have just completed some 50 trellis modules which will form the roof structure for the grapevines to grow on. The youth spent weeks building these modules and have become confident measuring and cutting wood, along with many other skills. As part of this ongoing learning process, our youth landscapers recently presented on the transformations the community could expect at ESS, including…

  Over the past couple of years, ERA has been working with The East Scarborough Storefront (ESS) on the Community Design Initiative (CDI), where Scarborough youth are educated in architecture and design by mentors from ERA, Sustainable.TO, and ArchiTEXT. In the current phase, we are working to bring more shade and plant life to the site. This will include several garden and landscape features, a pergola structure for grapevines, and a green-roof pavilion known as the Sky-o-swale. Beginning earlier in July, five youth from…

  In the 2012 Quality of Life Issue of Monocle Magazine, ERA’s Graeme Stewart fields a few questions on Toronto’s Tower Renewal Project from Christopher Frey, Monocle correspondent and former Chief Editor for Toronto Standard. To find out more about this issue, see Monocle v.6, no. 55.   An article in the Toronto Standard about Toronto’s absence from the Quality of Life survey can be found here. And a 2011 interview with Graeme by Christopher Frey in the Standard can be found here.

  On Thursday, June 21, ERA’s Graeme Stewart addresses a crowd of 400 community leaders as keynote speaker at the United Way’s 2012 AGM. In 2010, ERA and CUG+R published Tower Neighbourhood Renewal in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, which looks at a broad range of historical trends, planning issues, sustainability concerns, social needs, and opportunity for renewal in and around Toronto’s tower block neighbourhoods. In 2011, United Way published Vertical Poverty, which focuses much-needed attention on poverty, equity, and quality-of-life…

In early June, Working Habitat and Scadding Court Community Centre (SCCC) hosted a charrette exploring opportunities for small-scale enterprise and pop-up vendors in Toronto. The charrette introduced important lessons and concepts from Scadding Court’s experiences with Market 707.

In May 2012, ERA hosted Miles Glendinning of the University of Edinburgh for a research tour of Toronto’s modern tower blocks and a public lecture at the Arts and Letters Club entitled “Hundred Year’s War: A Century of Mass Housing ‘Campaigns’ Around the World.” Miles is director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies and chair of Docomomo International Committee on Urbanism. He is the author of several books including Architecture’s Evil Empire (Reaktion, 2010), a concise history of modern…

As we have mentioned previously on this blog, ERA Architects is collaborating with ArchiTEXT and Sustainable.TO on the exciting Community.Design.Initiative at the East Scarborough Storefront. The East Scarborough Storefront is a key community agency hub and service agency in an Apartment Neighbourhood in East Scarborough.  Over the course of an intensive 19-week mentorship semester we worked with community youth on the design new features as part of the Storefront’s ongoing renewal, including a kitchen garden and patio, a unique green-roof pavilion, a…

Map displaying location of infill development within Apartment Tower properties (red); additional Apartment Tower properties (blue); existing and planned rapid transit; and CMHC rent zones (shades of grey).   In March 2012, the City of Toronto released the report Apartment Infill in Toronto: A Ten Year Review. This study examines Apartment Tower sites where new residential and mixed-use development has taken place, or is planned to take place, within their properties. The report has found 39 such examples across the…

  This week the CBC’s Metro Morning has made its way up to the Kipling Towers Neighbourhood, north of Finch, to talk Tower Renewal on location. On Wednesday February 15th, ERA’s Graeme Stewart will appear for an interview on the show’s live broadcast from 2667 Kipling; the building featured in the NFB’s HIGHRISE documentary, the One Millionth Tower. For more information on the CBC at Rexdale, and to listen to the show, visit CBC Metro Morning, as well as the…

The book Concrete Ideas: Material to Shape a City was launched in January, 2012. Edited by Pina Petricone, the book considers new approaches to concrete architecture by exploring a variety of new technologies and possibilities for the material. First introduced by Pina’s article in Concrete Toronto, the book is a compilation of ideas, articles and interviews assembled over the past several years. The volume includes exploratory design work by ERA’s Jessie Grebenc, as well as a pair of articles by…

It’s been a busy month for the One Millionth Tower. First launched in Toronto at the Kipling Towers in early December, the project premiered to the City at large at a packed Gladstone Hotel later that week.  Following presentations of the films and panel discussion, the evening highlight was a solo performance by Kipling resident and 1MT performer Jamal. An article on the event by Marcus Gee in the Globe and Mail can be found here. In late December AZURE…

Above images by ERA and NFB with top right photograph by Jaime Hogge, courtesy of The National Film Board of Canada   For over a year, ERA and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) have been working with the NFB on their remarkable HIGHRISE documentary series directed by Kat Cizek. The series examines the current conditions and future potential of post-war high-rise living around the world. Features have included the One Thousandth Tower, Out My Window, and most…

  An article examining the development and progress of Tower Renewal can be found in the summer edition of the International Journal for the Association for Preservation Technology (APT). From the introduction: In 2008 the City of Toronto initiated its Tower Neighborhood Renewal program. The program looks at the significant impact of post–World War II construction in the city and proposes a plan for the rehabilitation of the many apartment towers that had been built during that period in the…

  The Toronto Standard discusses North York’s emergence as a ‘modernist heritage hub.’ To view the full article click here. Take a look at our previous post + full publication of ‘North York’s Modernist Architecture Revisited’ by ERA here.

Community Design – Image courtesy of Expect Theatre / Spark Productions   The East Scarborough Storefront is a community agency offering multiple services in a tower neighbourhood in East Scarborough.  Containing a community kitchen and garden, market, resource centre and access point to over 50 different agencies such as job search support and literacy service, the East Scarbourough Storefront is a significant asset to Toronto. To expand its reach, the Storefront is currently undergoing a long term community lead expansion…

In July, ERA got into the building spirit as part of the Tower Renewal project at the Kipling Towers in North Etobicoke. Kipling Towers is one of the City’s great apartment neighbourhoods, with a cluster of nineteen towers perched along the western bank of the Humber River. Previous posts with more information about the neighbourhood can be found here. ERA has been involved in the neighborhood since 2007 in partnership with the City of Toronto, Jane’s Walk , the National…

The second Tower Neighbourhood Renewal symposium, presented by ERA Architects, the University of Toronto Cities Centre, and the Tower Renewal Office, was held in May 2011, in conjunction with the annual Toronto the Good party. The symposium featured a broad range of international and local speakers, a panel discussion and a poster expo that continued into the party. The following post outlines the day’s events, and provides links to download much of the presented material. The aim of the symposium…

As a follow up to the release of last year’s Three Cities Within Toronto, the University of Toronto Cities Centre, St. Christopher House, and the CURA Network have launched the website “Neighbourhood Change: Building Inclusive Communities from Within,” as well as the new report: “Toronto’s Inner Suburbs: Investing in Social Capital in Scarborough“.   The Three Cities Within Toronto research initiatives notes Tower Renewal as one of the key strategies to begin to reverse the trend of a divided city, and enable vibrant, engaged and…

This Option Studio focused on a site at Sheppard and Don Mills, typical of Toronto’s inner suburbs, with its distinctive clusters of high-rise residential buildings erected in the period of the 1950’s through the 1970’s. The goal of this studio was to investigate the potential of apartment tower sites to emerge as more liveable and sustainable communities, with a specific emphasis on built form. For more information on the site please see our previous post on the studio. The studio…

Over the past several years, the Tower Renewal team at ERA and CUG+R have conducted a series of study tours throughout the European Union, visiting numerous cities and neighbourhoods, and meeting with local experts to learn about best practices in tower refurbishment and neighbourhood revitalization. Many of these findings have been compiled in the report Tower Neighbourhood Renewal in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, and its accompanying International Best Practice Research Highlight. This past weekend, The Toronto Star featured highlights of…

  Cities Centre, ERA Architects and the City of Toronto Tower Renewal Office are hosting the second Tower Neighbourhood Renewal Symposium on May 12, 2011 from 1- 5pm at U of T’s Hart House. The Symposium is being held in conjunction with the annual Toronto the Good Party, which will begin immediately following the symposium. The second symposium will consist of a plenary session with international and local speakers, a panel discussion and a poster expo in the Great Hall…

The Toronto Standard launched this week with a Q&A with ERA’s Graeme Stewart, covering the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal initiative, Concrete Toronto, and the city in general. The article can be found here. The Toronto Standard is a daily digital briefing on the life of the city, covering urban affairs, business, technology, culture and design — and all the sparks that happen in between. For more information visit www.torontostandard.com

The Greater Toronto Region contains 1,925 post-war Apartment Towers of eight to fifty storeys, as well as an additional 1,155 post-war apartments five to seven storeys, totalling 3,080 high-rise apartments built in the post-war boom. This remarkable number of buildings in the region is divided among its various municipalities. The majority, roughly 60%, are located in the City of Toronto, with other large clusters in Peel and Hamilton, and to a lesser degree, Kitchener – Waterloo, Oakville, Guelph, Burlington, and…

  In February 10th and 11th, 2011, the Civic Action Summit assembled over one thousand civic leaders from Greater Toronto to discuss the future of the city reigon. Topics ranged from Arts and Culture, to Transportation, to Sustainability. ERA actively participated in the planning and organizing of discussions related to housing and complete neighbourhoods – particularly how these broader themes intersected with the opportunities of Tower Neighbourhood Renewal, and complete and livable communities in general. A key output has been…

In late 2010, David Hulchanski published The Three Cities Within Toronto, a research update of his pioneering work related to income polarization in the city of Toronto. This work outlines the ‘Three’ Cities within Toronto’: City Number One of growing wealth; City Number Three of growing poverty, and City Number Two, the middle income city, which is gradually shrinking. Published in partnership with the University of Toronto Cities Centre, St. Christopher House, and the CURA Network, the book provides new…

In fall 2010, Dean Emeritus George Baird and Graeme Stewart of ERA, conducted an architectural design studio at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, exploring the potential for mixed-use growth in one of the Toronto’s Region’s many post-war Apartment Neighbourhoods. The studio focused on one of the largest opportunities of Tower Neighbourhood Renewal: mixed-use growth within a large cluster of existing post-war Apartment Towers.   The site chosen was the North East corner of Sheppard and Don Mills…

The United Way released the Vertical Poverty report today, outlining the current state of apartment – tower living in the GTA. The report’s finding are based on several thousand interviews with tower residents, and contains important recommendations to improve the livability of apartment neighbourhoods. These findings and recommendations complement those found in Tower Neighbourhood Renewal in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, released in late 2010 and prepared by ERA and planningAlliance for the Government of Ontario. ERA participated in the United…

Tower Neighbourhood Renewal in the Greater Golden Horseshoe available here for download. The Greater Golden Horseshoe is unique globally for its pattern of urbanization due to the proliferation of post-war apartment towers throughout the region. In 2009 the government of Ontario’s Growth Secretariat enlisted ERA Architects and planningAlliance (the founding partners of the not for profit research organization CUG+R) as well as the Cities Centre at the University of Toronto, to analyze this housing resource, and examine its future role…

ERA Architects and planningAlliance launch the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R). CUG+R is a non-profit research organization formed in 2009 to conduct cross-disciplinary research to further knowledge about the creation and renewal of sustainable urban, suburban and rural environments in Canada and elsewhere. CUG+R’s objective is to develop research to enhance public policy and promote private initiatives that foster City Regions and local communities that are: well planned and designed, economically vibrant, socially diverse, culturally integrated and environmentally…

In early November, the Cities Centre at the University of Toronto hosted a symposium focused on Tower Neighbourhood Renewal. The symposium brought together  a variety  Tower Renewal stakeholders,  including architects, planners, engineers, community organizers, artists,  and politicians, as well as academics and students from the region’s Colleges and Universities, to share research, identify gaps in knowledge and collaborate on future initiatives. A second symposium is planned for May 2011. Adrian Lightstone covered the event for Spacing. His article can be…

As part of this year’s North York Modernist Architecture Forum, ERA Architects released the 2010 edition of North York’s Modernist Architecture Revisited. The booklet includes new photographs of the over 200 buildings showcased in the original inventory, plus additional notable buildings built between 1945 and 1981 in North York. Included are many of North York’s finest examples of modern tower housing.  Also included is a proposed heritage policy strategy, biographies of several prominent architects, and an essay on North York’s…

The National Film Board’s remarkable HIGHRISE project lauches its second major feature – the interactive online documentary Out My Window. As a follow up to the 1000th Tower – set in Toronto’s Kipling Towers neighbourhood in North Etobicoke, Out My Window takes a global perspective, documenting the lived experience of post-war highrise living in cities around the world. As described on the HIGHRISE website: HIGHRISE is a multi-year, multi-media, collaborative documentary project about the human experience in global vertical suburbs. Under the…

Article by NRU, published as “Implementing Tower Renewal: New Corporation Needed” on Friday, June 11th, 2010. The successful implementation of the Tower Renewal program requires the formation of a new city corporation that can group projects to reduce costs and enforce a payment structure, according to a staff report coming to Monday’s executive committee meeting. “The corporation would have the ability to raise funds and manage the program commercially,” states the staff report submitted by Eleanor McAteer, the city’s tower…

Paul Hess, Department of Geography, University of Toronto and Jane Farrow, Executive Director, Jane’s Walk Building on the arguments Jane Jacobs espoused more than 40 years ago, the importance of creating good places for people to walk is now increasingly being recognized by transportation experts, health advocates and public officials. These discussions, however, are usually focused on downtown areas or new developments in the outer suburbs. This study is intended to put more focus on the many people living in…

The National Film Board of Canada presents HIGHRISE, a multi-year documentary project focusing on the suburban Towers of Toronto and nine other cities around the globe. The first project of this series is The Thousandth Tower: Join Mayor David Miller as the NFB showcases photos and storytelling in a LIVE PRESENTATION AND LAUNCH of the WEB DOCUMENTARY THE THOUSANDTH TOWER with PANEL DISCUSSION Wednesday, May 12, 6 pm Toronto City Hall First Floor Rotunda 100 Queen St West

Day: May 2nd Time: 4pm Start Location: Front steps of North Albion Collegiate, 2580 Kipling Ave. End Location: Action For Neighbourhood Change, 2667 Kipling Ave. As a follow up to last year’s Janes Walk – Towers on the Ravine, this year’s walk – North Kipling Stories, will feature youth and adults who live, work and play in this community sharing their stories. The walk is part of the North Kipling Storymapping project, a partnership between MicroSkills, Jane’s Walk, the Centre…

In the late summer and early fall, ERA conducted an extensive survey of Tower Renewal efforts throughout the European Union. With tower neighbourood refurbishment well underway in the EU for more than a decade, a host of projects showcase leading approaches to sustainable building renewal, community development and urban design. Better understanding these projects will help ensure the best results as Tower Renewal moves forward in Toronto. In following posts, lessons learned from the UK, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden…

The Greater Toronto Area contains a heritage of nearly 2,000 post-war concrete residential tower blocks located throughout the region.  The presence of this remarkable collection of modern housing represents an architectural, planning and construction legacy unique to North America. (For more on the history, visit here). This inheritance of high density neighbourhoods provide significant opportunities to create a sustainable, prosperous and connected region, able to meet the challenges of the 21st Century; accommodate growth, alleviate poverty and help grow the…

For well over a decade, Europe’s extensive heritage of tower block communities have experienced extensive renewal and neighbourhood reinvestment. A key aspect of this has been to provide tower neighbourhoods with the diversity and activity of a vibrant neighbourhood found in the city centre. Two key strategies in this regard have been the introduction of commerce as well as public space into areas previously conceived of as primarily residential. The following photo collection, taken in 2006, documents a series of…

The Concrete Tower in the Park is the perhaps the most definitive housing innovation of the 20th Century. Built in abundance in response to the housing shortages following the war, it has found a unique position in the housing stock of jurisdictions throughout the world. Approaching their 40th, or in some cases 50th birthday, these utopic structures have begun to show their age. The following photo collection, taken in 2006, documents a series of tower blocks throughout Western, Central and…

The idea of the tower in a genuine ‘park’ or ‘landscape’ setting was a popular notion during European reconstruction following the Second World War. Modern towers offered what was felt to be the highest housing standard while access to an abundant and unobstructed natural landscape provided light and air, community recreation space and ‘breathing room’ in the context of high-density living. A highly desirable alternative to the difficult conditions found in post-war city centres, tower communities proliferated throughout Europe, and…

  This past spring, the Design Exchange hosted Carrot City; an exhibition examining the potentials of achieving future food security, sustainable food networks and engaged communities through urban agriculture. Tower Renewal participated in this project, contributing research related to the potential for urban agriculture within Toronto’s post-war tower block communities. The following is a review of the exhibition by Canadian Architect:

This past May and June, Pinkcomma gallery in Boston hosted an exhibition on Concrete Toronto Published in 2007, Concrete Toronto catalogued Toronto’s remarkable heritage of concrete builidngs built throughout the region in the booming 1960s and 70s’ – including it’s unique stock of tower blocks. With a wealth of spectatular Concerete buildings in Boston, Pinkcomma and over,under architects are currently in the process of editing their own concrete compendium: Concrete Boston. Follow these links for more information on the exhibition,…

Day: May 3rd Time: 11am Start Location: North Kipling Community Centre, at 2 Rowntree Rd, Kipling and Rowntree Rd, North of Finch. End Location: Albion Centre Food Court A NOW Magazine article on the walk can be found here. Photos from the walk by Jesse Colin Jackson Perhaps the two physical features that distinguish Toronto are it’s extensive ravine system flowing throughout the city, and it’s heritage of nearly 1000 high-rise ‘tower in the park’ apartments found throughout the region.…

Written by Julia Levitt on Worldchanging, April 23rd, 2009. Photo by Jesse Colin Jackson. Could Toronto’s aging concrete high-rises be North America’s most promising new frontier for sustainable suburban development? A new City-backed plan is banking on it. The Mayor’s Tower Renewal aims to turn the greater Toronto metropolitan area’s 1960s apartment blocks into a 21st century resource, around which sustainable, walkable, mixed-use suburban hubs of community and economic opportunity can be built. In so doing, Toronto could create a…

“..In Toronto…the continent’s private enterprise-dominated housing system, when coupled with a structure of strong regional planning  dedicated to the fostering of high-density ‘hot spots’ in the centre and periphery, succeeded in generating a landscape of massed towers and slabs in open space, almost rivaling the USSR in consistency and grandeur ”._ Miles Glendinning Introduction to the Docomomo Journal 39 The Docomomo Journal’s 39th issue is dedicated to post-war mass housing. From the Docomomo lens of ‘documentation’ and ‘conservation’, the issue…

High-rise apartmens at Kipling and Steeles in north Etobicoke, overlooking the Humber Valley Written by Dale Duncan. This article first appeared in Eye Weekly, April 17th, 2008 Take a stroll down Kipling Avenue, just south of Steeles, and you’ll see a row of grand towers overlooking the Humber Valley that house the equivalent of half the population of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood within a few blocks. A total of 19 towers in all are home to roughly 13,000 people in this…

Map 1: Toronto’s modern apartments with existing rapid transit Map 2: Toronto’s modern apartments with the proposed rapid transit of ‘Transit City’   The legacy of modern planning has left us with a stock of high density housing and adjacent open space nearby to existing transit. As compared with the low-density suburbs with typify North America, this is an advantageous starting point for the creation of a connected and sustainable region.

Bathurst and Steeles, late 1960s. In the 1960’s, Steeles Avenue was the end of Metropolitan Toronto’s servicing area; the northern boundary of the region’s planned urbanization. North of Steeles, the rolling pastures were to remain as the area’s green belt, while in contrast, dense, mixed-use post-war communities emerged to the south. Bathurst and Steeles emerged as a dense community containing nearly forty modern residential high-rises. Incorporated with the ravine, neighbourhood parks, elementary and secondary schools, churches and synagogues, shopping plazas…

Cenceptual framework of basic high-rise over-cladding strategy With much of this high-rise housing stock now passing some 40 years of service, deterioration of the building envelope is widely evident as is these building’s increasing environmental impact on the region. Leaky sieves which pre-date building science, they require far more energy than necessary. It is time building performance was upgraded to the expectation’s of the 21st Century. The single most effective strategy in reducing the ecological footprint of our stock of…

Toronto high-rises under construction in former farmers fields, early 1960’s The idea of the tower in a genuine ‘park’ or ‘landscape’ setting was a popular notion after the Second World War. As a result, during the post-war boom in Toronto, a minimum of 60% open space around multiple dwellings was promoted as a best practice. If developers wanted larger buildings, they were to provide a greater ratio of open space to building footprint. The results are the large towers and…

Thorncliffe Park from the air, looking downtown, early 1970’s Thorncliffe Park was a bold 1950s plan by the Town of Leaside to redevelop a former racetrack overlooking the Don River. Conceived in 1955 it was proposed to be the first apartment neighbourhood in Canada. Though breaking ground slightly after neighbouring Flemingdon Park, it was recognized internationally as an ambitious attempt to better organize population growth in response to the sprawl found in Toronto’s outer boroughs.

  The Bijlmermeer under construction, late 1960’s / Ongoing renewal, since early 2000s Toronto can learn how its apartment neighbourhoods could evolve by looking at the successes of other cities. Take the Bijlmermeer for instance, a large tower block district outside of Amsterdam, reminiscent in certain respects to modern communities in Toronto. Begun in 1966, the Bijlmermeer was an ambitious housing experiment built in vacant farmland south-east of the city. It was envisioned as a secondary centre for the region,…

Comparison of tower districts in Moscow (top) and Toronto (bottom) Next time you are in Chicago or Philadelphia try looking for an apartment tower neighbourhood outside the city core – the kind we have throughout Toronto. They’re rare in North American cities but common in other Commonwealth countries, like Australia, and they are an even more significant force in many European cities, such as Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and especially Moscow. Aspects of Toronto suburbs display a remarkable similarly of what…

Aerial view of Jane and Finch, Courtesy of Lance Dutchak Each area of the City has evolved with its own history. Take District 10 – the area we now know as Jane-Finch. The 1962 master plan proposed to transform the existing farm lots in the area into a complete community based on a set of principles that focused on employment, servicing, and social equity. The basic form of the District Plan was a residential strip bisected by a ravine and…

Map 1: Toronto’s post-war apartment towers and rapid transit, overlaid with the wealthy ‘City #1’ (Grey) and intensification zones (Red). Map 2: Toronto’s post-war apartment towers and rapid transit, overlaid with the impoverished ‘City #3’ (Grey) and Priority Neighbourhoods (Dark Grey). Toronto is quickly becoming a polarized city. New research out of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto has revealed startling trends related to changing income distribution patterns across the city. Toronto in the…

Toronto’s modern high-rises are everywhere. Housing hundreds of thousands, they are the backbone of our City. Yet what is their place in our collective identity? Though superficially homogenous, each have specific contexts and histories. In the coming months, the Tower Renewal Artist Network will bring together those engaged in cultural production related these structures. What do they mean to you? Image Courtesy of Jesse Colin Jackson

  In the 1960’s, high-rise towers were thought to be the best solution to meet the growing need for rental units, while efficiently organizing new housing with services. The resulting apartment neighbourhoods help us recognize how quickly the city evolves, and how each generation tries in different ways to address the challenges of growth, social and community needs. Take Crescent Town near Dawes Road and the Danforth. In 1900, this was the site of Walter Massey’s experimental farm which he…

Potential green modifications to existing modern high-rises and their properties   The apartment slab buildings built during the 1960s and ‘70s are among the most energy inefficient housing types in the city; however, they may also be the best candidates for green retrofit. While their density aids other aspects of sustainability, this stock of apartment towers demands as much as 20 per cent more energy per square metre than a contemporary single-detached home. Certain efficiencies are gained from reduced land…

For Toronto, the most significant planning question may not be the form and placement of new density, but how to turn our enormous pockets of inherited high density into genuinely sustainable and complete communities. The density of Toronto’s apartment neighbourhoods makes this city unique. In fact, surprisingly, Toronto has a denser metropolitan area than Chicago, Los Angeles, or even Greater New York City. Counter to popular belief, this is not the result of the city core, but rather thanks to…

Flemingdon Park master plan, including housing, community facilities, commerce, employment and natural space, 1958 Toronto’s aging apartment neighbourhoods are not all the same. They are predominantly based on the idea of the tower-in-the-park; they have large simple tower blocks placed in abundant open space. But after that common denominator there are plenty of differences which provide each of these neighbourhoods with their own individual character. The arrangement and location of apartment neighbourhoods throughout Toronto gives them a loose taxonomy. These…

Data from CMHC, compiled by E.R.A. Architects and the University of Toronto While Toronto’s current condo boom is the largest in North America, with 18,000 built last year across the GTA, it is dwarfed by the 1960’s post-war apartment boom. In 1968 alone 30,000 apartment units came on the market. Contrary to common wisdom, the most significant legacy of modern suburbanization in Toronto is not the single family home, but multiple unit, high density dwellings. After the war, city planners…

Uno Prii Towers amid post-war bungalow, Jane Street, North of 401, late 1960s What makes Toronto unique? One of the least recognized answers to that question is that Toronto has more high-rise buildings than any other city in North America, outside New York. The majority of these are concrete modern residential towers, built in the post-war boom of the 1960s and 70s. Following the war, when most North America cities began sprawling without order, Toronto’s Metropolitan Government implemented a regional…

  Welcome to the Toronto Tower Renewal blog. The Tower Renewal Project is an initiative to re-examine Toronto’s  remarkable stock of modern residential high-rises, their heritage, neighbourhood histories, current place in our city, and future potential in a green and equitable Toronto. Currently, Toronto Tower Renewal is a partnership between ERA Architects, the City of Toronto, CMHC, and the University of Toronto among others. The Project is envisioned as a series of programs and initiatives which will continue to grow…