Tobener Ravenscroft

Modernist Apartment Towers Of St James Town Based On Le Corbusier's "towers In The Park" Concept The Postwar Years Also Saw The Rise Of Apartment Style Housing In The 1960s And 1970s This Kind Of Housing Was Mostly Focused On Low To Middle Income Residents Beginning In The 1950s The City Bulldozed Older Lower Income Neighbourhoods Replacing Them With Housing Projects Ultimately Destroying Large Sections Of Victorian Housing The Earliest And Most Notorious Example Of Such Projects Was Regent Park It Replaced A Large Portion Of Cabbagetown With A Series Of Low-rise And High-rise Buildings That Quickly Became Crime-ridden And Even More Depressed Than The Neighbourhood It Replaced In Later Years Similar Projects Such As Moss Park And Alexandra Park Were Less Disastrous But Also Far From Successful Canada's Densest Community St James Town Was Built In This Era As A High-rise Community Of Private And Public Housing In Separate Towers Also Replacing A Victorian Neighbourhood These Patterns Changed Dramatically Beginning In The 1970s And Gentrification Began Transforming Once Poor Neighbourhoods Such As Cabbagetown Into Some Of The City's Most Popular And Expensive Real Estate Outside Of The Core Even New Neighbourhoods Experienced Significant High-rise Apartment Building Construction As Builders Embraced The "towers In The Park" Design Invented By Le Corbusier The Towers Were Built Further From The Sidewalk Leaving Room On The Property Around The Edifice For Parking Lawns Trees And Other Landscaping They Are Typically Simple Brick-clad High-rise Buildings With Rectangular Footprints And Little Ornamentation Other Than Repeating Series Of Balconies For Each Apartment However Some Apartment Buildings From This Era Utilize Less Conventional Designs In The "tower In The Park" Format Such As The Prince Arthur Towers Jane-Exbury Towers And 44 Walmer Road Designed By Uno Prii In 1972 The Canadian Tax Code Was Radically Altered Making Rental Housing Much Less Attractive To Investors At The Same Time Deindustrialization Opened A Number Of New Areas To Residential Development The New Projects Took The Form Of Condominiums This Form Of Housing Was Introduced In The Province's Condominium Act In The 1960s But It Was Not Until The 1980s That Condos Become Very Popular An Initial Condo Boom Started In 1986 But The Market Collapsed In The Late 1980s And Early 1990s Recession And Many Investors Were Badly Mauled In 1995 Condo Prices Were Still 30% Below The Earlier Highs. That Year A New Boom Began In Toronto That Has Continued To This Day An Unprecedented Number Of New Projects Have Been Built In Toronto In 2000 Condo Life Magazine Listed 152 Separate Projects Underway Within The City Of Toronto By 2007 The Number Of Projects In The GTA Had Reached 247 This Development Has Been Concentrated In The Downtown Core Especially In The Former Industrial Areas Just Outside The Central Business District The Largest Such Project Is CityPlace A Cluster Of Condo Towers On Former Railway Lands By The Lake Shore This $2 Billion Project Will Eventually Consist Of 20 Different Towers Housing Some 12,000 People. Transit-oriented Developments Are Also Common In Toronto Such As At North York Centre And Sheppard East Along The Namesake Subway Line And Sheppard West Along The Subway Line's Future Westward Extension Commercial Architecture