Toronto’s new chief planner Jason Thorne has a chance to radically rethink the city | Canada Voices

What will Toronto’s future look like?

Answering that question is now up to Jason Thorne, who was recently named the city’s new director of planning. Mr. Thorne, 51, is a thoughtful figure who seems tuned in to the challenges of the moment.

He has a lot of work to do. Toronto City Planning requires radical reform. At the strategy level and down in the weeds, this is a department that needs change.

Mr. Thorne, who declined to comment on Friday, is well equipped. As Hamilton’s former general manager of planning and economic development, he led major downtown zoning reforms, opening up new development while also actively protecting heritage. He spoke lucidly and often about architecture, landscape and the importance of public space. He is not a bureaucrat. He’s a leader.

Toronto needs one. So far, Mayor Olivia Chow has not articulated a clear vision for the physical city, leaving room for staff to do so. There has been no real change to the decades-old pattern of growth that packs some new residents into parts of downtown and scatters others onto car-choked roads in the postwar city.

That is zombie policy. Ever since Toronto was amalgamated in 1998, it has relied on this hoary model of “centres” and “avenues.” This thinking reflects a period when Toronto wasn’t growing much. It was meant to keep the city’s house neighbourhoods from any change.

Today, this has grotesque results. Large apartment buildings are demolished to be replaced by bigger ones, even as oceans of house neighbourhoods – places with parks and trees and often-empty public schools – see their populations shrink. Meanwhile, the planning department prides itself on creating “communities” from scratch in suburban parking lots.

Nobody questioned this approach until recently. After the political upheavals of 2020, Toronto planning began to shift with a program called Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods. A series of incremental reforms will soon allow modest apartment buildings in new places, albeit with onerous conditions. They’re even moving to legalize corner stores.

Such small beer was enough to gather a $471-million commitment from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund. Yet that planning work is already behind schedule. Mr. Thorne should find out why.

Then he should lead a concerted effort to establish a wholly new official plan for the city. It should acknowledge Toronto’s place as a global metropolis and the brains of the Canadian economy, and it should note that Toronto can make a massive contribution to climate action and social mobility – not to mention its own fiscal health – just by opening its doors.

Mr. Thorne will be helped by some recent reforms. Ms. Chow has completed a reorganization to split the old planning department in two. A development review department headed by Valesa Faria now runs day-to-day negotiations around growth. This repeats the history of the 1960s, amusingly; with luck it will unstick the machine.

At the same time, Mr. Thorne’s job will be to think big, an activity that is generally unwelcome at Toronto City Hall. The culture, especially within planning, is insular and defensive. This has long created a feedback loop between city staff (who say what’s expected of them) and councillors (who cheer the expert advice of staff).

Another loop is within the planning department itself, especially its urban design and heritage planning groups. New buildings consistently have the same problems, such as the absence of good retail spaces, and if you ask planning staff, it is always somebody else’s fault. Simultaneously, some arcane design ideas are entrenched – such as too-big streets, and the “angular plane” policies that make midrise buildings look like Mayan pyramids – despite a lack of aesthetic, environmental or economic justification.

The new chief planner might ask: Where are the good new places in Toronto? Did our policies and guidelines create them? Do the best places follow our rules? If not, what’s wrong with our rules?

If Ms. Chow also hires a city architect, as she should, there is enormous potential for a renewed urbanism in Toronto. With luck, this will involve some collaboration with the parks department and other branches of government. The physical city needs a coherent vision.

Meanwhile, Mr. Thorne’s hiring bodes well. Ms. Chow’s office is signalling that they want change. Now we will see what kind.