View of the Toronto skyline from the water at dusk with the sun setting in the background.
SURP students take a walking tour of the West Don Lands, led by Waterfront Toronto planners.
SURP students tour Church Street on a Toronto walking tour.

City of Toronto: Planning Challenges and Issues

The Greater Toronto Area

Toronto is Canada’s largest city, one of North America’s fastest-growing metropolitan regions, and maybe the world’s most multicultural urban area.

It is well-known for its experiments in regional governance, starting with Metropolitan Toronto in 1953 and continuing with the Greenbelt Plan (2006) and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe (2007), which have won numerous national and international planning awards.

SURP tours of Toronto often include visits to Regent Park and the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood; tours of the Distillery and Financial Districts; visits with alumni at City Hall and evaluating the designs of public spaces such as Nathan Philips Square and Dundas Square.

At the suburban scale, we would compare Don Mills, the classic Modernist suburb, to Markham’s Cornell, a leading example of New Urbanism.

All SURP professors conduct research that is based in the Toronto region and most have lived in the area at some point in their career.