St. James Town

St. James Town was built through the 1960s on land east of downtown that had previously held Victorian rooming houses, redeveloped under an urban renewal model that favoured clearing older housing stock in favour of modern high-rise towers. Roughly nineteen apartment towers went up within a compact area over the decade, built quickly and cheaply to meet a genuine postwar housing shortage, without much accompanying investment in parks, retail or community infrastructure to match the population the towers would eventually hold.

Canada's densest neighbourhood

St. James Town became, and remains, one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Canada, packing tens of thousands of residents into a few square blocks. It has also long served as a first landing point for new immigrants to Toronto, offering relatively affordable rents close to downtown, giving the neighbourhood one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the city even as its aging towers have faced persistent maintenance and investment challenges over the decades.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — St. James Town
• Wikipedia — St. James Town

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