Toronto's Waterfront Vision Imperilled

With great fanfare, the Prime Minister of Canada, the Premier of Ontario, and the Mayor of Toronto announced the establishment of a corporation to redevelop Toronto's waterfront in 2000. Four years later, all three actors have been replaced and the redevelopment seems to be going nowhere fast. Based on the experiences of other cities that have successfully redeveloped their waterfronts, Christopher Hume concludes that to get the job done, the redevelopment corporation needs to be able to directly control its real estate assets, and perhaps more importantly, be able to run free of day-to-day political interference.