The former city of York desired to have an urban centre that would provide a civic identity and become an area where cultural, commercial, educational, and residential activities would thrive.
The idea of a City Centre has always been deeply rooted in the urban consciousness and in the dimension of time past, present, and future. In its conceptual stage, the physical plan developed a set of anticipated experiences organized to form a poetic statement. This poetic statement was to be reinforced by the unique natural features of the ravines and creek.
Thoughtful consideration of these natural features by recognizing them in the larger context of the territory would become the connectors to the watershed to the north and to the Humber River and hence Lake Ontario to the south. As the Rideau Canal is to Ottawa, so Black Creek would be to York.
As an artifact, the City Centre requires its design to be perceived or experienced on many diverse levels: technically, spatially, contextually, socially, formally, sustainable, and symbolically. Each of these approaches can also be affected by a variety of concerns or needs transportation, commerce, housing, services, conservation, energy, education, health etc. A subway was proposed under Eglinton Avenue, linking York to Mississauga and Midtown Toronto. However, of all these considerations, it is the poetic attitude which can transcend time and thus acquire a sense of dignity and of feeling of belonging.
The concept was admired by the mayor of that time, Gayle Christie. However, more powerful interests by Toronto politicians and Planners preferred to concentrate development of the City of Toronto downtown core and were against decentralization. This project became a lesson on the myopia of special interest groups and how in time certain members of these groups get recognized as great urban planners.
The city of Toronto has grown immensely in the past three decades whereas the once proposed centre of no-longer York is barren, the creek is worse off than before, and only a chaotic transpiration hub has been achieved.
