Don Mills Community Development Plan

Macklin Hancock’s master plan for the Don Mills community was created when he was just 27. Born in 1925 and a veteran of World War II, Hancock had headed for Harvard University, where he was schooled with fresh and even revolutionary approaches to garden city design and urban planning. Named Director of Planning for Don Mills in 1953, Hancock and his assistant, architect Douglas Lee, planned a model town that would humanize urban life in an age of industry and the automobile.

Don Mills pioneered a new, larger vision for creatively managing city growth. The revolutionary new town sat well beyond the edge of the current urban core. This radical idea for a completely modern, self-reliant townscape, with local employment as part of its matrix, was the precursor to the large private developments of today.

While the landscape itself set the tone, the architecture also set Don Mills apart. No cookie-cutter houses here! Don Mills boasted modernist homes set on wide lots. It offered award-winning and affordable low-rise apartments and row housing, encouraging the growth of a truly mixed-income town.

The designers set local industries beyond the town’s ring road, and carefully sited buildings to protect trees and green space. Walkways provided safe routes through parks to local schools and the town centre. The diversity of housing types, the private and public spaces, and the distinct neighbourhood atmosphere set precedents for new Canadian communities with a strong sense of place.

The principles developed in Don Mills helped Hancock found a game-changing practice.  Hancock became a founding member of Project Planning Associates Limited (PPA), and President for more than 45 years. The multi-disciplinary firm provided a launching pad for scores of forward-looking professionals. PPA employed planners and architects, infrastructure and transportation engineers, environmental and socio-economic specialists.  This integration propelled a new consulting approach in Canada, with landscape architecture at the master planning helm. PPA alumni, in turn, launched careers and founded state-of-the-art practices across the country.

The signature layout of Don Mills, the town’s intertwined network of parks and pathways, the unexpected incorporation of a greenbelt, all created a unique landscape setting and identity for Don Mills. The Hancock plan focused on building community, creating places for contact with nature and social interaction within the open spaces and pedestrian walkways, the civic centres and wild lands.

Hancock read the landscape first, creating street and pathway layouts that allowed children to walk to school without having to cross arterial roads. In the first years of site planning and construction, he made sure that services and utilities were installed with a view to protecting natural features and minimizing grading alterations. His sensitivity to the often-neglected, “unbuildable areas” -- those ravines, woodlots, shorelines and difficult topography -- were critical to the town’s rich ecology.  The greenbelt concept, then unique, protected the existing ravines of Wilmet Creek and Don River corridor, close-to-home places that residents still enjoy year-round.

At the time, the importance of preserving the ravines had captured the attention of environmentalists such as Charles Sauriol and the Don River Conservation Authority (later merged with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority). In time, they would be preserved in public ownership for future generations, setting the stage for park and open space conservation plans in many other sectors of the GTA.