This course will present a history of the development of the urban form of the city and the urban region of Toronto from the late eighteenth century to the present. We will explore the characteristic relationships that have grown up over the years between the distinctive topography of the city; it’s pre-settler indigenous patterns, early European settlement, and the evolution over time of its successive infrastructures, including railways, port facilities, expressways, transit lines and pedestrian walkway systems. These characteristic infrastructures will be described in terms of their gradual, systematic impact on the evolving form of the city. At the same time, the architecture of the city will also be described, but this description will demonstrate primarily how buildings became typological in the historical evolution of Toronto. One might say that the buildings will be depicted to the extent that they demonstrate the typical relationships of the city’s building typologies to its emergent urban morphology.

The course has been conceived to be of particular interest to urban design and planning students, but it is open as an elective to students in the architecture and landscape architecture programs as well.