Turning suburb into city: Do these architects have the recipe?

How do you transform a piece of suburb into a piece of city? This is a massive question in North American architecture and urban design – acutely so in the Toronto region. Here more than a dozen former shopping malls are planned to be rebuilt as mixed-use, walkable neighbourhoods of housing and retail. Big “master-planned” projects, to use the industry jargon, will also remake several industrial areas.

Toronto’s Giannone Petricone Architects (GPAIA) are urban designers on many of these, shaping these districts alongside planners and landscape architects. Their work will touch the lives of hundreds of thousands.

And while their work is the best of its kind in the Toronto region, it’s not good enough. Big Toronto projects will require a different design planning at all scales.