GEO 793 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Distillery District, Modernism
4 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Urban Change
• Shifts in:
• 1) urban form
• Ex. the shape of the building, you knock down a low rise and build a high rise
• 2) Urban function
• The shape remains the same, but the use changes
• Ex. distillery district - buildings now are the same as those 80 years ago, but they
used to be used for manufacturing, now they are used in service section (cafes,
boutiques, galleries)
• 3) Urban meaning
• How people perceive different places across the city
• Ex. in 1920s people perceive the distillery as a place of work, now it is a place of
leisure and entertainment
Regent Park
• Canada’s largest public housing project
• Built in 1950s
• Situated 14 city blocks east of downtown
A failed project
• Today, it is a consensus that it was a failure
• Used to be part of cabbagetown
• The project was built discontinued from its surrounding context
• It resulted in a parody of modernism
Regent Park & Modernism
• Everything in the old neighbourhood, was knocked down except for some schools and
churches
• This is a cataclysmic change
• Streets were closed and replaced with pedestrian paths
• Since all roads were closed, no one who didn’t live there would have a reason to
go through there
• Dundas was the only street (Dundas split the area between north and south)
• Regent Park was mono-use (only residential)
• Design was utilitarian with efficiency getting preferred to decoration
• Simple design to house low income people
• No plan to ever sell the place to anyone
Modernism
• A movement born in europe in the 1930s
• A response to the effects of industrialism on city fabrics
• Modernism aimed at replacing slums with healthy and efficient lower-cost housing and
promoting a more egalitarian (equal) urban society
Anti-modernism
• Mixed uses are better than mono-use
• Mono-use neighbourhoods are unsafe, as people only circulate certain
neighbourhoods at certain times
• Ex. in residential districts, adults at work, children at school
• Older urban districts are a necessary element in a vibrant city
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