City Growth

The last 117 years have seen Toronto's growth explode to unimaginable heights.

These maps are showing beautifully the growth and expansion, which in the youtube video from The Shape of the Suburbs in Fall 2013 roundtable, are mesmerizing to me. Notice the obvious unshaded areas revealing  parks and ravines, hydro corridors and railroads.

The book, Toronto: Transformations in a City and its Region, examines the transformations in Toronto since its founding in 1793, and contains many insightful images and maps to understand the extent of Toronto's mutations. The next images to study could possibly be  be the obvious third dimension, the vertical sprawl?

The base map is current, Highway 401 and the Don Valley Parkway shown for reference, and many of the arterial roads shown here were only opened all the way after 1950.

Images produced by “Toronto Transforms”, the website is an extension of Edward Relph`s book Toronto: Transformations in a City and its Region, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014 as part of its series of portraits of metropolitan regions of North America.