Casting an eye toward the frantic vertical urbanization of Toronto, Condoland: The Planning, Design, and Development of Toronto’s CityPlace (UBC, 2023) traces the forty-year history of the city’s largest residential megaproject. James T. White and John Punter summarize the tools used to shape Toronto’s built environment and critically explore the underlying political economy of planning and real estate development in the city.

Using detailed field studies, interviews with key actors, archival research, and with nearly two hundred illustrations, White and Punter reveal how a promise to reproduce Vancouverism, a celebrated model of Canadian urban development, unravelled under an alarmingly flexible approach to planning and design that is acquiescent to the demands of a rapacious development industry. Through a uniquely design-focused evaluation of a phenomenon increasingly known as “condo-ism,” Condoland raises key questions about the sustainability and long-term resilience of city planning.

James T. White is a professor of planning and urban design at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and deputy director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. His published work focuses on how the design of the built environment is shaped by policy, regulation, and the market in both UK and Canadian contexts.

This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo, a graduate student in urban studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked professionally as a researcher at the University of Chicago and as an urban policy advisor to the City of Chicago.

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