DEVELOPMENT DONE RIGHT
How Markham found the vision to become a city of tomorrow
There’s a universal axiom about urban development: When done right, it can reduce pollution and congestion, and help residents live healthier, more active lifestyles.
But achieving success is complicated. Today, many urban centres face obstacles to their growth, and struggle to offer sustainable solutions.
So where is urban development working? The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has its own perfect – and somewhat surprising – example: the City of Markham.
Yes, Markham. This diverse and vibrant city in the northeast corner of the GTA is flourishing in response to modern challenges. With an effective and expanding transit system, world-class athletic facilities and new residential streets that maximize livability, Markham has been inviting the world to come live, work and play for years.
So, how did a region, largely rural as recently as 25 years ago, emerge as one of today’s cities of tomorrow?
It began by accepting a challenge
While the GTA of the early 1990s was already trying to cope with a rapidly growing population, an overstressed public transit system and outdated highways, Markham embraced an emerging development movement: New Urbanism.
This wasn’t only about where to develop. It was about how to develop. Beyond simply looking north of the GTA to expand on available real estate, this movement was – and is – about making better use of that land.
“There was a view to really breaking the back of 1980’s traditional planning where subdivisions turn their backs on the streets, have large garages projecting in the front of their homes, and people largely didn’t know their neighbors,” says Markham’s city planner in the early 1990s, Mary Frances Turner, now the president of York Region Rapid Transit Corporation. “This was about trying to change that whole physical relationship.” Cue the revival of the lost art of place-making: promoting the creation and restoration of compact, walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods that do not rely on cars. Making that vision a reality required city planners, engineers and developers to interact together in a completely different way, says Turner, who has more than 30 years’ experience in urban planning. “Rather than being siloed professional disciplines, they began working together in matrix teams to create a whole different community and environment.” Between 1990 and 1995, city planners identified a new growth opportunity around existing infrastructure. And they realized spreading into the suburbs the old way was not going to work.
But why here, in the gently rolling hills of a sprawling region comprised of six amalgamated communities of Berczy Village, Cornell, Markham Village, Milliken, Thornhill, and Unionville?
“Markham had this huge tract of land and the opportunity to put together a growth strategy for a new downtown that was in a complete green field,” says Turner, “That’s pretty phenomenal because it was a very successful community amalgamation of a number of small villages into a rapidly merging successful community.”
For diversity-strong Markham, with decades of immigration in its DNA, development of this nature simply made sense.
Development would take time. A great deal of time, in fact: Years of planning, patience and perseverance and, perhaps above all, collaboration. Planners, builders, developers, politicians and residents would come together to realize tackle this challenge: to harness the possibilities of development done right.