Blight and the Brave New World
Rural estates to urban renewal: Moss Park, Trefann Court and Corktown
Bebout, Rick
http://www.rbebout.com/queen/mtc/2pmtc.htm
Date Written: 2001-11-01
Publisher: Rick Bebout
Year Published: 2001
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX24186
A history of, and observations and reflections on the Moss Park, Trefann Court and Corktown areas of Toronto.
Abstract:
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Excerpts:
Urban planners who gave us the likes of Moss Park were ever on about "blight," speaking of it as a disease, old buildings its worst symptom.
Toronto's Eugene Faludi wrote in 1947 that their "haphazard" replacement might retard "the progress of blight" -- "but the sources of the disease will remain to infect these areas. ... Rehabilitation can be accomplished only by the wholesale attack on the problem involving replanning and rebuilding on a large scale."
...
A formula of perfect rationality, mechanical efficiency: the city as car conveyor and human warehouse -- not a complex living organism; the "new" planted all at once -- not growing, as Jane Jacobs would show it truly does, out of the old. "Blighted" buildings often shelter dreams too young to afford upscale rents; "urban decay" can be fertile ground.
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