Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto's American Tragedy, 1900 to 1950 (Creating the North American Landscape) Review

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(More customer reviews)Like Harris' Creeping Conformity, this book focuses on shantytowns built by homeowners in Toronto's working-class suburbs during the first half of the 20th century; however, this book focuses on Toronto to an even greater extent than does Creeping Conformity, and benefits from a greater level of detail. In 1913, 79% of all households in Toronto's suburbs were headed by blue-collar laborers, as opposed to 59% in Toronto proper.
Why were laborers so likely to be suburban homeowners? Because the absence of government regulation meant that people could go out to suburbs and build shacks themselves as cheaply as possible, while the absence of government water/sewer service discouraged more affluent people from doing the same. Also, the slow development of Toronto's transit system meant that suburbs without streetcar service were not tremendously attractive to middle-class buyers.
By contrast, by 1951 Toronto's suburbs were actually less blue-collar than the city. What changed?
In trying to extend basic services such as water and sewer, suburbs made themselves expensive places to live. For example, between 1925 and 1929 per capita municipal debt almost doubled in York Township, one of Toronto's suburbs; as a result, 27 percent of York taxes went unpaid- and the Great Depression meant even more tax delinquencies, causing some blue-collar suburbanites to lose their homes. Instead of "filtering down" to poorer buyers, their houses "filtered up" to buyers who could afford to pay municipal taxes.
And in 1935, Canada's federal Parliament passed the Dominion Housing Act (DHA) to assist the construction industry. The DHA sought to revive the construction industry by subsidizing mortgages. Most DHA mortgage recipients were middle-class homeowners in more affluent suburbs, thus promoting the suburbanization of the middle classes. (80% of DHA loans were made on suburban property).

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