Housing Public-Private Partnerships in Toronto’s Regent Park

Abstract

This thesis explores the evolution of public-private partnership (PPP) in Toronto’s housing development. PPP is defined as a legal and economic framework in which public and private sectors share resources, risks, and responsibilities in delivering projects or services traditionally managed by the government. The study first traces the model’s emergence in 1980s Toronto, where it arose as a response to fiscal constraints and administrative inefficiencies, particularly in infrastructure and affordable housing initiatives. After the late 1990s, the model was widely employed in Toronto to address housing challenges—leveraging public land and private capital to develop mixed-use, mixed-income, and mixed-tenure communities. These developments sought to combine private-sector efficiency with public-sector goals of affordability, spatial equity, and sustainability. Focusing on the redevelopment of Regent Park as a case study, this thesis critically analyzes the effects and limits of PPP-operated housing in contemporary Toronto. Originally constructed in the 1940s as Canada’s first public housing project, Regent Park faced decades of physical decay, social isolation, and stigmatization. In 2005, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) launched a major redevelopment to transform the area into a vibrant, mixed-income neighborhood. Drawing on archival research and fieldwork, the study investigates the collaboration among the City of Toronto, TCHC, and the Daniels Corporation at both political-economic and spatial levels. It assesses the model’s spatial manifestations, advantages, and shortcomings—particularly issues of gentrification, displacement, and placelessness—while situating the case within a broader international context of PPP-operated housing projects. Finally, through a design-based inquiry into the Phases 4 and 5 of Regent Park, the thesis proposes a new public-residential typology that seeks to dissolve the spatial segregation between market-rate and affordable units, mitigate placelessness, and foster community integration and historical continuity. In doing so, it offers a transferable design strategy for the global implementation of PPP models in affordable housing. This design proposal responds directly to the spatial and social limitations of the PPP model, offering a pragmatic intervention rather than a utopian vision. At the same time, it embeds a critical stance toward the neoliberal housing paradigm by reimagining the relationship between public and private, affordability and profit, architecture and equity.