RELATING FUTURE & PAST PRACTICES

It's hard to imagine what future will crystallise a hundred years from now. For the most part it remains to still emerge.  It is informative to look back over the past hundred years' duration, to grasp the extent and magnitude of the change that occur over time, and then apply a multiplier for envisioning the next hundred years.

Urban planning has been with us since the outset, and we can learn from its past practices and in observing prior decisions as they crystallised into indelible urban outcomes. For instance:

• The bending of Yonge Street's cardinal alignment into the northern hinterland two centuries ago, finds its earlier alignment transformed into Duplex Avenue's southern segment, and Yonge Street's bend was adopted by the other principal concession lines once they crossed Eglinton Avenue. 
• There was an era when whole subdivisions were divided into inefficient parallelogram-shaped lots up until it was reasoned that sidestreets didn't need to mirror arterial road conditions. 
• A century ago the urban framework was found lacking in north-south arterial roads resulted in the cobbling together of intermediate streets such as Avenue and Mt. Pleasant Roads with their characteristic meanders in being retrofitted into the planning framework of the times. 
• Subdivisions forming sidestreets were processed with much less expectation than for instance: Manhattan with its fine-grained urban gridiron established in 1811. Hence the city's traffic efficiency is restrained by T-intersections, while in turn sidestreets experience less volume in traffic rat-runs.

The above mentioned are snapshots displaying a diversity of urban planning's ambitions, its practices and consequences. Past planning's experiences remain applicable to future planning on many levels.

• Past planning has grappled with substantial urban issues regarding growth and change within the context of different, earlier times.
• They have looked forward in their times, as we continue to do so today, gazing upon an uncertain future-obscure.
• Past urban planning decisions have configured the city we inherited.
• Then as now, it is about managing growth and change in a comprehensive fashion.

It is worthwhile noting that after the last intensification era known for its towers-in-the-park solutions, the public realm was never improved to fit-the-purpose of the additional population. The simple litmus of this is evident in the decades of deficient sidewalk widths with hard worn dirt shoulders.