21st Century (2000–present)

Mississauga Downtown 21 Master Plan

2010 · Canada · North America – Canada · Transit-oriented urbanism and corridor planning · Planned by City of Mississauga
Framework Plan of the Downtown21 Master Plan, Mississauga (2010): new fine-grained street grid, blocks of future development, parks and open space over the existing Square One superblock.
Framework Plan of the Downtown21 Master Plan, Mississauga (2010): new fine-grained street grid, blocks of future development, parks and open space over the existing Square One superblock. · © City of Mississauga — used with credit · City of Mississauga / Glatting Jackson (Downtown21 Master Plan, 2010)

Core idea

Street grid, BRT, intensification

Why it matters

Retrofits tower-in-the-park core

Description

Downtown21 (2010) is a master plan by the City of Mississauga, Ontario, for converting its shopping-mall-centred city centre into a walkable downtown. Prepared with consultant support for the area around Square One, it lays a fine-grained street grid over superblock parking fields, introduces a bus rapid transit and later light rail spine, and programmes mixed-use intensification with a public realm of squares and main streets at the core of Canada's sixth-largest city.

Significance

The plan is a prominent North American example of suburban retrofit: the deliberate transformation of a postwar, automobile-oriented, tower-in-the-park and mall landscape into an urban centre. It is widely referenced in debates on how rapidly grown edge cities can acquire genuine downtowns, and on the role of transit investment in restructuring suburban form.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.