Figure 1: Mexico City Self-built houses in the massive, un-serviced
suburbs which surround all Latin American cities. Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1988.
1. Modernism and the
city 2. Modernism in
Guelph 3. Suggested research
topics 4. Assigned
Readings 5. Discussion
Questions
Figure 1: Mexico City Self-built houses in the massive, un-serviced
suburbs which surround all Latin American cities. Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1988.
The trend to a larger proportion of a country's total population moving to the largest cities is also present in Canada, however. The percentage of the urban population in Canada (calculated as the percentage of those living in places of 1,000 or more) has not risen appreciably in the last few decades. It has been holding at a maximum of about 76%. But a restructuring of the system itself is taking place, as the cities over 500,000 take up a greater share of the population. In 1951 about 12% of the country's population lived in places of this size; by 1991, it had risen to 43%. At the same time, those who lived in small places (from one to ten thousand) dropped from about 16% to 8%. For more details see table.
The restructuring of the urban system can also be demonstrated by looking at the sizes of individual places. Toronto replaced Montreal as the country's metropolis in the 1960s. Taken as a group, the cities of Central Canada continue to be far larger and powerful than rivals in other regions. The cities of Western Canada such as Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary are rising within the system while those in Atlantic Canada are in relative decline. This is evident if you compare the following graphs, showing relative sizes in 1901 and 1991. The cities ofAtlantic Canada no longer appear among the ten largest in 1991, for example, while Edmonton and Calgary have risen to fifth and sixth places respectively.
This category does not include those suburban communities which are part of a larger city's CMA, such as the smaller palces in the Toronto region like Oakville, which are no longer free-standing communities.
The shape of a city-region is characterized by some of the following features; at the centre of the old city, an enormous concentration of corporate towers; in the suburbs, low density residential and commercial sprawl, often centring on a shopping mall; and recently, something called "Edge Cities", "technoburbs" that combine high-tech business, and some residential and commercial functions, in nodes far from the original central city.[3]
Figure 2: Bank Towers in Downtown Toronto.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995
Figure 3: The West Edmonton Mall. An artificial European streetscape
in a gigantic suburban mall.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
City-regions are usually not political entities, but are made up of dozens of local municipalities who fight vigorously to defend their independence from the central city, as though they are not all part of the same social and economic unit. In the Toronto area, post-war expansion led to the formation of Metropolitan Toronto in 1953.[4] Continued suburban expansion since then has made these old boundaries obsolete.
Figure 4: Dr. Anne Golden. A Greater
Toronto Area task force chaired by Dr. Anne Golden has recommended some new
political structures and the equalizing of the regional tax burden.[5] Underlying Golden's report is the concept of
the city-region described by Jacobs.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1996.
In spite of the Golden Report and other expert opinion, the provincial Conservative government has moved to amalgamate Metropolitan Toronto, but leave the suburban areas such as Mississauga out of the plan. One of the problems that arises from this refusal to see the Greater Toronto area as one political unit is a disparity in social service costs, and hence, in taxation. For example, social service costs such as welfare are far higher in downtown Toronto than in Mississauga, necessitating higher taxes. The tendency of businesses and people to flee the central city for the suburbs is thus accentuated.
The central core of most large North American cities seemed to need some serious fixing after the Second World War and "urban renewal" became a popular method. This usually involved bulldozing the blighted areas and with government assistance, putting up public housing or public institutional buildings. The first big public housing project of this kind in Canada was Regent Park in Toronto, developed between 1948 and 1959. Regent Park and others like it are generally regarded as social disasters, for they created ghettos of the poor. Another type of urban renewal project was Jackson Square in Hamilton, built in the 1960s on land cleared at the edge of the commercial district. This was an attempt to stimulate downtown redevelopment through the construction of a civic centre - a convention centre, an art gallery, and a library.
Two recent trends in the downtown cores of North American cities appear to have taken away some of the vitality and life of downtown streets. One is the privatization of what once was public domain - the shopping precinct and its busy streets. In Atlanta, for example, most new development downtown is inward looking private space. The streets are relatively dingy and deserted, with most pedestrian traffic funnelled into carefully monitored downtown malls. Another trend is the development of a second, underground city, as in Montreal and Toronto, with vast underground systems of shops and pedestrian walkways.
Figure 5: Part of Downtown Atlanta. In the background is the seventy
storey circular hotel, the Westin Peachtree Plaza, designed by John Portman in
1976. This is one example of an inward looking building with only minimal
connections to surrounding streets.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1996.
Figure 6: Cathedral Square in Montreal. Underneath Christ Church
Cathedral on Rue Saint-Catherine is a full block shopping centre, part of that
city's underground city.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Suburbanization has become a hot topic for scholars, especially in the United States, with standard works such as Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1985), and many others.[6] Jackson contrasts the North American pattern of poor in the centre and wealthy in the suburbs with the European experience as typified by Paris, where the rich live in the centre and the poor on the periphery.
Figure 6a:Ken Jackson The author of The
Crabgrass Frontier, suggests four characteristics of American suburbanization that
distinguish
it from the process elsewhere. First, low residential density; second, high homeownership rates;
third, sharp disparity between a relatively poor central city and wealthy suburbs; fourth, the long
length of the daily journey to work. These characteristics were partly the product of the desire for
homeownership and cheap land, but Jackson believes they are also due to government policies.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1997.
The study of suburbanization in Canada is not as well developed, but there has been some general work and interest in "corporate suburbs" such as Don Mills, in Toronto, which became the model for suburban development elsewhere in the country.[7]
The major Canadian study of suburbanization is Richard Harris, Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto's American Tragedy(1996). Harris concentrates on some of the unorganized suburbs which sprang up north of Toronto's built-up area in the first half of the 20th century. The suburbs were the result of working-class families taking advantage of lax land regulations which allowed them to build their own homes in unserviced areas. The scattered character of this development made the eventual servicing of these areas an expensive proposition, and many of these early suburban settlers lost their homes to higher taxes.
One way to keep up to date with the interesting scholarly debate about suburbanization - definitions, significance, international comparisons - is to visit the H-Urban Mail Archives and look at current and past debates. An excellent search engine allows you to find informed discussions by leading authorities by putting in terms such as "suburb" or "edge city", and others.
The scale of suburbanization greatly increased after World War Two, primarily because of the new widespread ownership of the automobile. The suburbs were planned with the auto in mind and this involved the nature of the house itself, with the garage as a dominant feature. The extent to which the automobile was seen as a way of reforming cities is outlined in Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City (1994). For Canada, several articles outline the impact of the increasing use of the automobile on the shape of cities.[8]
A website of particular use in understanding post World War Two suburbanization is Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb. This site includes fifty photos of one family from the 1950s. While this represents the quintessential Eastern American suburb, it looks remarkably like suburbs in Canadian cities of the same time period.
Figure 7: The Giant Slab as Apartment Block.. An Apartment Building by
Le Corbusier, in suburban Nantes, France, early 1950s. This looks fairly
ordinary now, for buildings like this became cliches in cities around the
world. Many ofthe imitators, however, did not incorporate shopping and
recreational facilities into their buildings, as Corbusier did, in an effort to
make them into communities.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1990.
Another was Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), the last director of the influential German design school, the Bauhaus. His square glass and steel boxes exemplify the modernist reliance on the concepts of industrial engineering. The downtowns of most major cities in the world are now filled with buildings of this sort.
Figure 8: Cities as Collections of Black Boxes. A portion of the Toronto-Dominion
Centre,
On King Street in Toronto, designed by Mies in 1962.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
The third of the great moderns was Frank Lloyd Wright (1871-1959). His "Prairie House" influenced the way all North American suburban houses were built subsequently, and his spectacular public buildings presaged the post-modern movement.[9]
Figure 9: A Prairie House in Oak Park (Chicago) in 1903 by Frank Lloyd
Wright. This house has some of the basic characteristics associated with
Wright: wide-eaved, low roof; house and garden tied together; the interior with
a large central open space, centered on a fireplace.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1986.
Figure 9a: The Guggenheim Museum in
New
York Frank Lloyd Wright received the commission to design this building in 1942 but it
was
not completed until 1959 after his death. The museum specializes in modern and contemporary
art,
shown to perfection in a spiral ramp that follows the contours of the building. The building itself
looks like a giant white shell and stands out from the rather ordinary buildings along Upper Fifth
Avenue across from Central Park. Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1997.
Several Canadian architects have had a profound influence on the shape of modern and post-modern Canadian cities, including Moshe Safdie (Habitat in Montreal), Arthur Erickson (Robson Square in Vancouver), Douglas Cardinal (Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull), and Eberhard Zeidler (Eaton Centre in Toronto).
Figure 9b: Eberhard Zeidler
In
his Eaton Centre design, Zeidler wanted the "Galleria"- the glassed-in central spine of the
project-
to become another street in the Toronto grid. Some of his other Canadian urban projects
includeCanada Place in Vancouver, the Ford Centre for the Peforming Arts in North York
(Toronto), and most recently, the Mississauga Living Arts Centre. The Mississauga Centre is an
interesting attempt to create a "downtown" feel in a suburban city, and perhaps to counter the
impact of nearby City Hall which is one of the most formidable, people-repelling buildings ever
constructed in a Canadian city. Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1996.
This new multiculturalism is now the norm in Toronto and Vancouver, where the Hong Kong Chinese have concentrated. Unlike earlier migrations which often led to ethnic ghettoes, this recent migration tends to be spatially dispersed throughout the city-region, as recent immigrants come with capital to invest and are heavily involved in residential and commercial property development. Themulticultural complexion of the largest cities is not as evident in the smaller cities, towns and countryside, making for a sharp contrast between them and the metropolis.
Guelph's status within the local region also slowly declined during the 20th century. Kitchener-Waterloo became the major centre with a population of 239,463 (CMA) to Guelph's 87,976 and Cambridge's 92,772 by 1991. The region as a whole has done very well, becoming a high-tech growth area and promoted as "The Technology Triangle".[12] Much of this growth is directly the spin-off of research at the three regional universities. For example, some of the research and administrative functions of the Federal and Provincial Ministries of Agriculture have been relocated to Guelph and are concentrated along Stone Road near the University, representing a continuation of the agricultural orientation of Guelph.
Figure 10: Agricultural administration and research facilities on Stone
Road.Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1996
The next phase of expansion, during the 1960s, did not continue in the northeastern portion of the city, but took place to the west and south. The expansion of the University and the access to Highway 401 and Toronto probably account for the change in preference.
Suburban expansion was often balanced by the deterioration of the central core of most cities. The disastrous urban renewal schemes such as Regent Park in Toronto were usually replaced by commercial revitalization schemes in the 1960s, as with the Jackson Square project in Hamilton. The movement in Guelph seems to have reflected a general feeling that the old stone city was inferior and should be replaced by modern structures.[14] The result was the demolition of landmarks like the Post Office and Customs house on St. George's Square. Fortunately for the city's sake, the withdrawal of the Federal Government from its national program of commercial revitalization meant that the Guelph scheme of official vandalism had to be abandoned. The continuing issue of old versus new will be discussed at more length in the following module.
One of the largest planning and building projects of the 1960s was the expanded campus of the University of Guelph. The plans of the campus were done by Project Planning, headed by Macklin Hancock, an OAC graduate in Horticulture with graduate training at Harvard. His biggest prior project was the planning of Don Mills in the 1950s. Surprisingly, neither of the prevailing trends of the 1960s were followed - the demolition of the old, or a suburban style campus as at Waterloo and York. Rather, a new urban-looking campus was laid out next to the old campus centred on Johnston Green. The new campus was organized around a Renaissance-style square (later called Branion Square), with examples of 1960s modernist architecture (often referred to as Brutalism) surrounding it - the McLaughlin Library, the Arts Building (now McKinnon), and the Physics Building (now McNaughton).[15]
Suburban malls came relatively late to Guelph, perhaps because of opposition to commercial decentralization by the Planning Commission. The first was Willow West Mall, begun in 1970 by the Armel Corporation (the Wolfond family). The second was the Stone Road Mall, started in 1975 by Sifton Properties of London. By 1990 Stone Road officials claimed to have 20% of Guelph's retail space and 30% of its business. Less successful commercially is the Eaton Centre, a downtown mall, opened in 1984 on what had been lower Quebec Street. Whether this mall has hindered or helped downtown revitalization is still not clear after a decade of operation.
Figure 11: Allan Sage at home in Etobicoke. After retiring from architecture,
Sage has successfully taken up art.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 12: The Federal Building, Lower Wyndham Street. This steel and
glass-panelled building is similar in design to other buildings Sage designed
in Guelph, such as the Guelph Hydro Building.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 13: Holy Rosary School on Stevenson Street. This school is
typical of the many separate and public schools Sage designed in Guelph in the
1950s and early 1960s before going to Toronto to practise architecture.Source: Gilbert Stelter,
1995.
A second modernist, Richard Pagani, was the son of a leading local builder, Dario Pagani. Trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Pagani only practised architecture in Guelph for several years in the early 1960s, but he produced some very creative buildings.
Figure 14: Dario Pagani's house on Metcalfe Street. Built about 1938, this
Corbusier-influenced house could be considered the first "modern" house in
Guelph.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 15: Richard Pagani.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 16: Richard Pagani's House, with its spectacular, vaulted roof.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 17: Guelph Police Station and Court House. Here Pagani added
on decorative features, referred to locally as Christmas trees, to relieve the
monotony of a steel-framed glass box.
Source: John Haayen Collection.
Another modernist, John Haayen, was born in Curacao of Dutch parents and trained in Holland at the University of Delft. In order to qualify for the profession in Canada he completed the architecture program at Toronto and then came to Guelph in 1960. Much of his work has been done abroad, but some of his Guelph buildings merit attention.
Figure 18: John Haayen in his office. Displayed is his watercolour
of his first Guelph commission, Harcourt United Church.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 19: Harcourt United Church, 1962. Haayen consciously made a
distinction between the church's lower portion, which relates to the scale of
houses on the street, and the spire-like main portion, which represents the
divine.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 20: The Omark Building on Edinburgh Road, 1964. This Canadian
headquarters of what was the Oregon Chain Saw Company (now Blount), was done in
conjunction with Richard Pagani. As a result of this design, Haayen won the
company's commission for its European headquarters in Belgium.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 21: Guelph Police Building, 1986-1991. Haayen considers this
his most significant local work. It originally involved the renovation and
enlargement of Pagani's building but became a major work in its own right.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
The most prolific architect in modern Guelph is Karl Briestensky. He was born and raised in Guelph and trained at Toronto, graduating in 1959. His architectural heroes are Le Corbusier and Wright. His work spans the field from historical restoration (the Wellington Hotel) and new creations (the Turfgrass Institute) to commercial work on many small malls (Campus Estates and Bullfrog) and dozens of apartment buildings (Marilyn Drive).
Figure 22: Karl Briestensky in his office. His firm's office consists
of the top floor of the renovated warehouse at 111 Farquhar Street, which has
some of the most spectacular views of the city.
Source; Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 23: The Renovation of the Wellington Building, 1976-79. This
work involved a complete restructuring and rebuilding after a fire in 1975
destroyed the interior and the roof.
Source: Briestensky Architects, Ltd.
Figure 24: St. John's Church and Rectory, 1968-69. In this church on
Victoria Road, Briestensky consciously emulated a Le Corbusier tower and a
Frank Lloyd Wright roof line.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1995.
Figure 25: The National Trust Building on St. George's Square,
1987-1989. Perhaps his most controversial building, the National Trust Building evokes the
spirit of 19th century Guelph with its towers and verticality. The designs
called for a clock in the main tower, which would have recalled the clock in
the now demolished Post Office tower across the square. In true 19th century
fashion, the towers terminate the vista from Douglas Street.
Source: Gilbert Stelter, 1992.
[Video of interview with Karl Briestensky]
In terms of religious affiliation, the proportion of Protestants has continued to drop to about one half of the population, while the Roman Catholics have risen to about one-third. As a sign of the times, fourteen per cent now claim no religion. For more details, see table.
Veronica Strong-Boag, "Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experience in Canada, 1945-60," Canadian Historical Review vol. 72 (Nov. 4, 1991), pp. 471-504.
a. What can we learn by taking the issue of gender seriously
in
urban
development?
b. How is modernism in architecture related to 20th century culture?
c. Have downtowns changed their function?
d. To what extent is the idea of urbanism still a general concept that applies
with equal validity to all sizes of communities?
e. How are class, ethnicity, and gender related to the way urbanites are housed?