New Urbanism as a Remedy for Modernist Urban Renewal

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, Regent Park, a neighborhood in Toronto, Ontario, has undergone the application of the Canadian planning profession’s leading practices and theories throughout its redevelopment. The project has firmly adopted the New Urbanist planning principles that have resulted in a starkly different neighborhood than what had existed before. As a result, it provides an excellent case study for how social housing has been shaped by the Modernist and New Urbanist planning movements. This paper argues that New Urbanism has emerged out of the need to solve the problems in social housing created by Modernist urban renewal. This will be supported by a brief history of Modernism and urban renewal’s roots, its effects on Regent Park, the neoliberal transition in social housing in Canada, and the New Urbanist application to Regent Park.