City of Pickering Official Plan- Edition 6

Recent Settlement
The City of Toronto was growing rapidly as the nineteenth
century drew to a close. In outlying areas such as
Pickering, summer cottages were being constructed.
In time, many of these cottages were converted to
year-round residences. As well, more and more permanent
residences were being built along existing township roads
(such as Fairport Road, Rosebank Road and Woodview
Avenue).
After the second world war, the first “fully-planned” new
communities began to appear in the Toronto area. These
communities had a striking new land use and transportation
pattern. Rather than arranging a mix of uses along grid-like
street patterns, the new communities were organized around
curvilinear streets that both divided and connected people,
(by car) to centrally-located shopping areas, and
peripherally-located industrial parks.
Don Mills is perhaps the
best known example in the
Toronto area of a “fullyplanned”
postwar
community. Privately
developed in the late 1950s
and early 1960s on
800 hectares of rolling
farmland in North York, it
was designed to attract
35,000 people and
20,000 jobs. The numerous
suburban developers who
later tried to emulate Don
Mills failed to recognize
that the unique
characteristics and features
of the site contributed
greatly to its success.
This low density suburban development pattern soon
spread to outlying areas, and by the early 1960s, the first
“planned communities” came to Pickering, (first with
Bay Ridges, then West Shore). Over the next 30 years,
similar low density, automobile-dependent developments
appeared across most of south Pickering.
A New Planning Direction
As the first of the new “planned” communities were being
completed, questions were being raised about many of the
fundamental principles upon which they were based. It
had become obvious that none of the new communities
could be totally isolated from the overall growth of the
metropolitan area. In addition, the hoped for live/work
relationships were not being achieved. Therefore, there
was a need to construct an extensive network of
expressways, arterial roads and commuter rail lines that
connected the new communities with downtown Toronto
(and to a lesser extent with each other).
PICKERING OFFICIAL PLAN EDITION 6: Introduction 6