Accidental City: The Transformation of Toronto

Julie Rekai Rickerd is a Toronto-based broadcaster and public-relations
consultant.

Robert Fulford writes with skill and precision about the transformation
of Toronto’s neighborhoods in recent decades. Among the structures to
fall under his scrutiny are the Gardiner Expressway, the New City Hall,
the Grange at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the CN Tower, the CBC’s new
Broadcast Centre, and the ill-fated Bay–Adelaide complex. As an
architecture critic, Fulford is prone to diffuseness and overstatement.
The success of his book therefore lies not in its criticism but in its
entertaining and educational chronicle of Toronto’s development and of
the people—among them Nathan Phillips, David Crombie, John Sewell,
William Kilbourn, and Jane Jacobs—who ensured that it was, in fact, no
accident.