Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto's Sprawl [Paperback]

 

 

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"The Shape of the Suburbs" by John Sewell is a highly detailed book about the infrastructural and political development of the City of Toronto and its surrounding Suburbs dealing with the problem of low density sprawl.
While the book is written from a neutral third person perspective, Sewell bears a somewhat personal relation to the material, as a member of Toronto's City Council of Toronto from 1969-1978 and a two year stint as mayor of Toronto. Furthermore, as a columnist with the Globe and Mail, Now Magazine and Toronto's Eye Weekly, Sewell was a leader of Citizens For Local Democracy which opposed the foundation of the new Megacity Toronto in 1998 and remains politically active until this day. Working out proposals and following endless debates would have played a large role in Sewell's life which reflects the writing style and context of his book; however this does not always contribute to clarify the central theme and is at times difficult for the reader.
After a short Preface and Introduction, Sewell begins describing the situation of the city of Toronto and its hinterland in the Mid-Century. At this time Toronto is a compact and dense urban area consisting of three urbanized municipalities surrounded by farmland and smaller settlements. At the end of Second World War, the city is confronted with accommodating high amounts of refugees and immigrants from Europe and the rest of the world. As Sewell states, smart government decisions resulting in the foundation of the Metropolitan Toronto (Metro) made it possible to generate growth in a smooth and cost efficient way. The success of Metro was the clear allocation of responsibilities and the retention of local governments.
The following four chapters contain an overwhelming amount of data which does not help to "Understand Toronto's Sprawl" (a promise the book's subtitle makes). The reader gets the feeling that he lists each and every single proposal and plan ever made that concern Toronto's infrastructure. From the mid century until now, it goes into such depth that Sewell allows in each case a single chapter not just for Transit and Highways but also for water pipes.
He starts with pointing out three plans made in the span from 1943-1970 which had the intent to form a ribbon pattern for the city and enclose suburbs by creating one urban unit (page 47). The problem of this chapter is that Sewell fails to clarify the effects these Plans actually had on Urban Sprawl or density. The plans point in different directions making his analysis problematic. While the Official Plan had the intent to lower density (page 33), the Toronto-Centered Region Plan aims for more density (page 46). The third plan he describes, detailing almost six pages, was never realized. It will not be the last time proposals or plans failing to be realized will be described in full length without helping the story.
In the chapters "Building a Superhighway System" ,Sewall analyzes plans concerning highways and continues to list proposals. The essence of this chapter could be stated completely without these details: Roads, which first were build to connect big cities and then to connect the suburbs with the city led to increasing settlements on the costs of the province and to a gridlock around and inside the city. Roads which were built to unburden these existing roads led to even more sprawl and soon the new roads were congested as well. This result, as Sewell says, can be seen as the outcome of bad infrastructural planning and unstructured sprawl.
The chapter "Transit and Commuting Alternatives" leads the reader in the wrong direction.
Instead of claiming that the main problem of public transit in Toronto is the missing subsides from the senior levels of government causing insufficient public transit in all over Toronto-not just the center, Sewell leaves the suburbs holding the baby by saying they are relatively too invested in transit in the suburbs or fringes (Page 91). If you have ever traveled from Scarborough to the Downtown area you would think he was joking. The impact of the transit system on low density sprawl is not mentioned at all making the whole chapter with all its details about the history of Transit irrelevant.
What follows is the peak of boredom: Under the title "Pipe Dreams", he lists uncountable sewerage and water supply projects over 36 pages. It seems like John Sewell pressed all the information he found on historical archives into these pages. The surplus of that for understanding Toronto's Sprawl is almost nothing. The only thing that does help us but could have been displayed in two paragraphs is the following conclusion of the chapter: The growth and low density sprawl in the suburbs would not have occurred so fast and in these dimensions, if the suburbs itself and not the province would have paid for their supply of water and sewerage system. As seen with the private traffic and public transit the provincial government or Metro subsidized the growth of the suburbs and thereby low density sprawl.
Now that the description of Toronto's infrastructural development is over, the book gets interesting. In this second part Sewell focuses on how government institutions and power allocations changed over the years and in which way they influenced where and how growth took place.
In the chapter "Reshaping Government in the Fringes", he points out, that the common political thinking over the bulk of time was that large-scale regional governments can prevent urban sprawl but in fact they promoted it. The main reason for that were weak instruments of the new founded regions and the governments to direct development which implicated that municipalities could expand as much as they wanted to (page 154).
His argument that the amalgamation of municipalities was a fault gets supported in the following chapter where he points out the costs of "Unbridled Suburban Growth" (Page 157). Furthermore he broaches the subject why some politicians even had the intention to let the sprawl happen on purpose, by mentioning connections to the development industry (Page 166-167). Unfortunately this topic is not dealt with in more detail while it could have explained why the majority of officials supported sprawl directly or indirectly by the process of amalgamation.
While Sewelll mainly did a good job keeping the objective perspective, he completely looses that in the next chapter: Here he tries to convince the reader that using public transit is better than riding the car which is put on a level with living in the city is better than living in a suburb. In order to do so he comes up with two short stories in which he describes the nerve-jangling and hazardous drive to work by a resident of a suburb contrasted with the enjoyable and enriching ride by public transit of a city resident. John Sewell defines that "these brief fictions are the quintessential city and suburban experiences of getting to work" (Page 178). This generalization not only leaves the track of fact based argumentation but also gives rise to doubts that other arguments are based on similar personal imaginations.
Towards the end however Sewell can recapture the reader's favor to a certain extent by a very plausible argument on why the pooling of municipalities and governmental organs to create the new megacity. Toronto had significant negative effects on controlling urban sprawl, public facilities and the quality of living in the city.
John Sewell's opus ends with a more pessimistic than optimistic outlook in the future:
He states that some of the aberrations under the reign of Mike Harris and later Mel Lastman were partly revered under the Liberal Party that came into office in 2003. However, the new megacity structure itself was not touched and finally introduced into the legislature. The author's confession at the end is that "the battle to maintain the urban values [..] have been apparently lost" (Page 229).
Recapitulating the book you have to admit that John Sewell's basic ideas on why urban sprawl happened in big dimensions in Toronto are comprehensible and plausible. The problem of this reading however is that these smart ideas are embedded in an enormous amount of irrelevant data which fades these ideas and results in anger of the reader trying to find his way through that jungle of statistics. The aim of the book: Understanding Toronto's Sprawl, is not worked out consistently and focused enough and therefore not recommendable if understanding Toronto's sprawl is your issue.

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