Shaping Metropolitan Toronto: A Study of Linear Infrastructure Subsidies, 1954–66

Abstract

With the incorporation of Metropolitan Toronto in 1953, privileged linear infrastructure subsidies were granted to the upper tier Metro Toronto government and its outlying suburbs of North York, Etobicoke, and Scarborough. These discriminatory grants enabled Metro Toronto to provide a fine web of high-quality, rapid arterials and highways across its jurisdiction—accelerating suburbanization. The financing privileges granted to the outer Metro Toronto suburbs facilitated the development of an inefficient built form, realized with premature urban encroachment into undeveloped lands and building types characterized largely by land-extensive, single-family detached housing units.