St.+James+Town

St. James Town
St. James Town ([|location])

St. James Town (also spelled as St. Jamestwon to some) is located in the northeast corner of the downtown area in Toronto. The neighbourhood covers the area bounded by Sherbourne Street to the west; Howard Street to the north; Parliament Street to the east; and Wellesley Street East to the south.

St. James Town began in the 1870's as a desirable upper middle class semi-suburban neighbourhood. It was filled with picturesque Victorian houses and remained popular with Toronto home buyers until well into the 1900's. A turning point for the St. James Town neighbourhood occurred in 1953 when the City of Toronto announced major zoning amendments for the downtown core. The new zoning significantly increased building coverage in St. James Town making it an instant target for private developers. By the end of the 1950's, a consortium of developers had bought up and demolished St. James Town's entire housing stock in order to build Toronto's first high-rise residential apartment towers. It become Canada's largest high-rise housing project, consisting of 19 or more high-rise buildings (14 to 32 stories), 4 of them as public housing, in which each building was named after a major Canadian city.

The St. James Town apartments were originally planned and designed as a neighbourhood for upwardly mobile singles and professionals (young "swinging single" middle class residents), but the apartments lacked appeal with its failed modernism design (inspired by Le Corbusier's Towers in the Park concept, where high-rises placed in parks where residents found greenspace out the front door, but St. James Town only contained scraps of an ill-kept lawn). Almost from the start, the towers of St. James Town has been populated by low to moderate income families, and are mostly home to newly-arrived immigrant families. Approximately 17,000 people live in the neighbourhood's 19 apartment towers, making it Canada's most densely populated community and [|North America's most densely populated district (68,700/km² (177,932/sq mi))].

Based on the 2001 neighbour profile on the [|City of Toronto site], the demographics show that it is a so-called minority community, largely filled with immigrants — especially those who arrived in the 1990s. St. James Town is 73% non-white. The largest cultural groups in this community are Filipinos (21.9%), Black (11.2%), Chinese (8%), Sri Lankans (7.8%), and Italian (1%). Overall, St. James Town's population is made up of approximately 65% recent immigrants. Due to its cultural and minority demographics, St. James Town is often thought as "the world within a block".

In 1996, the City of Toronto launched a major initiative to improve the area, including the construction of a new Toronto Public Library branch and community centre, which opened in 2004 at the corner of Sherbourne and Wellesley. This is the Wellesley Community Center.

St. Jamestown is a good example of dialogue in urban forms as it embodies two entirely incompatible voices: the ideas of modernist architectural visionaries whose objective was healthy good-quality housing fir the industrial working class; and the trajectory of corporate property capital towards maximal earnings from urban space.


 * References:**

Toronto Neighbourhood Profiles for St. James Town - The demographics of St. James Town. http://www.toronto.ca/demographics/cns_profiles/cns74.htm

Toronto Neighbourhoods. 1999. - Includes various information about St. James Town, including history, homes, recreation, shopping, schools and transportation. http://www.torontoneighbourhoods.net/regions/toronto_downtown/28.html

Price Tags. "The Density Game." July 23, 2006. - Blog that contains information about St. James Town and the density of it. http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2006/07/23/the-density-game/

Realosophy. "St. James Town." - Real estate site that contains various information about St. James Town area, including grades from the surrounding schools, listings/ addresses of shopping, fitness, and various places in area, demographics and home values, etc. http://www.realosophy.com/NeighbourhoodProfile.aspx?city=Toronto&district=St.James+Town

Wikipedia. "St. James Town." Oct. 4, 2007 - Contains history, demographics, and information of St. James Town. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Town

Wikipedia. "List of selected cities by populairty density." Oct. 8, 2007 - Listing of selected cities by their popularity density and includes density of various districts in those cities as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selected_cities_by_population_density

Hiller, Harry H.. __//Urban Canada: Sociological Perspectives//__. Canada: Oxford University Press, 2005. Amit-Talai, Vered and Henri Lustiger-Thaler. //__Urban Lives: Fragmentation and Resistance__//. Canada: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1994. DesRivieres, Dennis, Susan Aliphat, Colin Bain, Graham Jarvis and Angus Scully. //__Communities: Urban Canada__//. Canada: Prentice-Hall Ginn Canada, Scarbourough, Ontario, 1996.

A Walk through St James Town - Toronto Projects http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y6308ix2PIc - shows the surrounding area of the district Describe St. Jame's Town http://youtube.com/watch?v=qE5nwzeD-Z4 - describing the district by the people that live in there piano st james town community http://youtube.com/watch?v=9udd6pMG-Fo - allows a peek at the different people that live in the community
 * Videos**