Toronto’s Greatest Unbuilt Project - The Story of Harbour City

Toronto almost built a floating city of the future — and almost no one today remembers it. In the late 1960s, architect Eberhard Zeidler (the mind behind Ontario Place and the Eaton Centre) proposed Harbour City: a visionary plan to build an entire canal-based community on 510 acres of artificial land off Toronto’s shoreline. Supported by Jane Jacobs, Harbour City was meant to solve Toronto’s housing crisis, reconnect residents with the waterfront, and redefine what urban living could be. It promised car-free neighbourhoods, modular buildings, canals like a northern Venice, and a new model for sustainable city design. So why did this bold idea die? From political battles to environmental concerns, and the nuclear fallout of the Spadina Expressway, Harbour City became one of Toronto’s most ambitious “what-ifs.” In this video, we explore: • Why Toronto wanted a new island city • The problems it was designed to fix • How Zeidler imagined a futuristic waterfront community • Why Jane Jacobs believed it could change city planning forever • The politics and controversies that killed the project • And what the city lost when Harbour City disappeared This is the forgotten story of the Toronto city that was never built, and how it might have changed the waterfront forever. Soundtrack Credits: Danse Macabre - Busy Strings by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100556 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Backed Vibes Clean - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1400029 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Dreamy Flashback by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100532 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Crossing the Threshold - Ghostpocalypse by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100663 Artist: http://incompetech.com/