Categories
Development Infrastructure Ontario Transit Urban Planning

Buses to the big box

Transit operators in Ontario generally do a much better job than American counterparts at serving large retailers like Walmart. Still, big box retail centres are hostile environments for transit and pedestrian access.

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Brampton Canada Development History Toronto

The fall of an empire

After 355 years, and several years of noticeable decline, Canada’s oldest corporation and last department store comes to an ignoble end.

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About me Development History Toronto Urban Planning

Woodbine Centre: the end of a Fantasy

Woodbine Centre, built in 1985, was an adventure for a child of the 1980s and 1990s. The once-thriving mall has hit hard times and will likely see redevelopment in the next decade.

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Brampton Development Urban Planning

The death and life of Shoppers World Brampton

Shoppers World Brampton is destined for development as an urban mixed-use hub. The planning details have now been revealed.

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Brampton Development Ontario Urban Planning

Requiem for Ontario’s regional malls

Shoppers World Brampton, 2016, before the Target store was replaced by smaller stores, including Giant Tiger Recently, I wrote about the history of Ontario’s downtown malls. Most of these shopping centres, built in the 1970s and 1980s in the downtown cores across the province, failed by the end of the 1990s. The collapse of the […]

Categories
Development History Ontario Urban Planning

Ontario’s failed downtown malls

The Toronto Eaton Centre, large, famous, and vital, is only one of many malls built in the downtown cores of Ontario cities between the 1960s and 1990s. From Thunder Bay to Cornwall, the construction of new enclosed shopping centres were seen as a necessary tool to keep the old city centres vibrant and relevant in […]

Categories
Transit Urban Planning Walking

They call this a “SmartCentre”

The word “smart,” like many buzzwords, is thrown around a lot, to the point that it has lost meaning. SmartTrack, for instance, might have been a catchy name for a transit plan, but in the end, it didn’t turn out to be all that smart. There’s also the case of SmartCentres, the retail arm of […]