Today, what might have been public green space is taken up by the private toll road, Highway 407. Suburbs quickly engulfed farmland on the other side of the breached greenbelt. In recent years, Toronto's city government and the province, which once worked together to keep suburban development compact and orderly, have distanced themselves from what the regions surrounding Toronto are doing. The province shifted responsibility for planning to local municipalities, and the city has been so preoccupied with a provincially mandated amalgamation of services that for the past four years it has had little time to look beyond its borders. Growth is happening so quickly that ad hoc decisions are common.
Mistakes are difficult to avoid and take years to correct.
But planners and officials in the city and all the regions say that this experience and their past mistakes have taught important lessons. They are rethinking official plans to keep growth more compact in the future, without having to build endless blocks of high-rise towers that create uncomfortable urban canyons. More than anything, the new approaches promise to get tougher about protecting farms and green space from encroaching suburban development. City Planning Board projects Toronto population will grow by 35 per cent over 30 years. Actual growth from 1943 to 1973 was 130 per cent.