Anne Golden
President and CEO, The Conference Board of Canada
Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility
Munk School of Global Affairs University of Toronto
Thursday, September 8, 2011
I thought I would begin with a quick trip down memory lane because, in preparing for today, I was struck by the continuity of thought underlying what I’ve learned about cities over the past four and a half decades. So, here goes, 45 years of learning in under 45 minutes! I considered titling this speech “The Ecstasy and the Agony” – the ecstasy of learning and the agony of watching most of it not implemented.
My interest in cities goes back to the late 1960s – a time of considerable ferment over the future of the urban fabric. The iconic Jane Jacobs, whose extraordinary legacy continues to inspire urban progressives, had moved to Toronto after her legendary New York battles against such Robert Moses projects as the building of the cross-town expressway and the so-called renewal of Greenwich Village.
In Toronto, the battle to stop the Spadina Expressway was just getting started. My own political awakening was linked to a much smaller project – a Cadillac-Fairview proposal to put up three 30- plus story apartment buildings on St. Michael’s lands just south of where I lived on Millbank Avenue in the lower Village. What bothered me, just as much as the fact that the development would have left our home in perpetual shade, was the attitude of the planners at the public information meetings: it was a “done deal”, they explained, our only hope was to suggest building modifications. The message was: “You can’t fight the developers, you can’t fight City Hall”. It turned out that you can and we did; ratepayer opposition led to the development being scaled back to a most attractive, non-high rise solution with the same coverage (Village Gate).
Read the speech