The Globe and Mail

Toronto's recent decision to give the green light to a 12-year, $1-billion transformation of Regent Park has ended years of uncertainty and dithering about what to do about Canada's oldest social-housing project. Begun in 1947 and built out over the next several years, Regent Park had long been considered a failure, crime-ridden and isolated from the surrounding fabric of streets and buildings. But in addition to crime statistics and such, an ideological component is involved in the drive to redevelop the area. The postwar ideal of doing low-income residences -- ripping down slums and herding the urban poor into clumps of new low-rise structures in park-like settings -- has become deeply unfashionable among planners, architects and politicians.