Don Mills

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Don Mills is a new town and neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, recognized as the first planned and fully integrated post-war community developed by private enterprise in North America. It is credited with being the blueprint for post-war suburban development in Toronto and contemporary residential neighbourhoods.

The project to create the Don Mills community was announced on March 11, 1953 by its financial backer, businessman E.P. Taylor. It was initially to be called Yorktown,^[1] and built on about 8.35 square kilometres (2,100 acres) of farmland centred at the intersection of Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue East. Development was headed by the Taylor-owned Don Mills Development Company with an expected cost of $200 million. Taylor had acquired the land over the previous six years in anticipation of a lucrative business opportunity. He was right, as Don Mills became an immediate critical and commercial success.

The design of Don Mills was influenced by Ebenezer Howard's Garden City, and by the principles of two American town planners, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, who developed the garden city community of Radburn, New Jersey. The Don Mills project was designed by a young urban planner, Macklin Hancock, who had studied at Harvard and who envisioned a self-contained community distinguished by consistent design principles and a modernist style.

The design was based on five planning principles, which had not been implemented in Canada before:

1. The neighbourhood principle, which broke down the community into four neighbourhood quadrants, all surrounding a regional shopping centre, Don Mills Centre, at the southwest corner of Don Mills and Lawrence. Each quadrant was to contain a school, a church, and a park.
2. Separation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, which was accomplished through the creation of a network of pedestrian paths providing easy access through parks to area schools and the town centre, while roads were designed to slow vehicular traffic through the use of winding roads, T-intersections, and cul-de-sacs.
3. Promotion of modernist architecture and the modern aesthetic. Don Mills Development controlled the architectural design, colours, and materials of all buildings in Don Mills. As well, the corporation insisted that builders use company-approved architects, who had been educated according to Bauhaus principles, to prevent the project from deteriorating into a typical post-war subdivision of builder's homes.
4. Creation of a greenbelt linked to a system of neighbourhood parks that would preserve the beauty of the surrounding ravines.
5. Integration of industry into the community, which followed Howard's ideals for the Garden City. Planners felt that it was important for residents to live and work in the same satellite town so that Don Mills would not become a bedroom community. A sizeable number of high residential densities -- rental townhouses and low-rise apartments -- was essential if the town were to attract a cross-section of residents working in local industries.

The local high school is the Don Mills Collegiate Institute, which opened in 1959. In 2003, the parkette at the corner of Don Mills and Lawrence was renamed the Macklin Hancock Parkette.

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