Modern city planning theories were widely accepted in the early twentieth
century producing many ‘City of Towers’ neighbourhoods throughout
Toronto and the world. Although cities in the twenty-first century are being
planned with the inclusion of human needs, remnants of the twentieth
century city planning are still present within our built environment. The
current methods of revitalizing existing City of Towers neighbourhoods are
band-aid solutions that are not sustainable in the long run.
This thesis investigates how alternative strategies can provide a more
integrated solution without taking the tabula rasa approach. Architecture
and other built forms are used to propose strategies that will produce a
new relationship between existing buildings and their surroundings to meet
the needs of residents today and in the future. St. James Town located in
Toronto, Ontario is selected to investigate the hypotheses of this thesis to
give expression to the topic of Bridging Divides|Creating Connections.