Fringe Benefits

Abstract

The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) is in a state of constant and massive growth in terms of population, development and economic investment. This growth has generated pressures both within and at the peripheries of the cities contained within the Golden Horseshoe as they develop outwards to their legal boundaries. This pressure has taken many forms, including an explosive and unaffordable housing market, transportation infrastructure that is already at or beyond capacity, and corporate development pressures to bulldoze and build over the Greenbelt, the provincially-protected ring of vital ecological systems and agricultural enterprises that surround the GTHA. While the province has established certain legal frameworks to mitigate the pressures of growth and manage its future manifestations, so long as the interests of powerful developers and corporations are at odds with the strategies contained therein, there remains a risk that these frameworks – and the public interests that they protect – will be undermined or repealed. This thesis is positioned at the boundary between rampant suburban development and the protected biological, agricultural and economic resources of the Greenbelt and lays out a case study for hybrid large format commercial retail development that addresses the needs of commercial land developers, a growing suburban population, a changing boundary landscape, and the ecological and agricultural interests of the Greenbelt.