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"...To Produce The Highest Type Of Manhood And Womanhood": The Ontario Housing Act, 1919, And A New Suburban Ideal, Jason Gilliland, Matt Sendbuehler

Geography & Environment Publications

While most scholars generally focus on the failings of the post-WWI Federal-Provincial housing scheme in Canada, we contend that it had far-reaching implications for three major facets of urbanism: housing policy, town planning, and residential architecture. We do so primarily through an examination of the impacts of the Ontario Housing Act, 1919, in the context of contemporary visions of ideal residential environments.

In the 1920s, a major reconceptualization of planning and architecture generated a new ideology of house, home and city which intended to remake existing cities and to create new, efficient and healthy settlements. The ideal city featured increasingly …