How the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation Influenced Suburban Community Planning and Design in Post-WWII Canada

Abstract

The Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC – now the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation), a federal agency, was instrumental in Canada’s suburbanization. The immediate post-WWII period of 1945-1969 saw many suburban communities planned and designed by CMHC, while the Corporation also consciously influenced the private development industry to adopt CMHC’s community design standards. What were these community design standards and elements, and what ideas influenced CMHC in creating these standards? This report highlights CMHC’s role in suburban neighbourhood development in postwar Canada by analyzing the neighbourhood design patterns seen throughout the Corporation’s neighbourhood planning programs. The design pattern and elements are key in Canada’s suburbanization since they stress reliance upon private automobiles while the communities themselves were, at the time, on the fringes of established urban centres. The project used archival research with primary documents to illustrate the community design standards used by CMHC in their suburban community planning programs during the immediate postwar era in Canada. Archival research took place at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, ON, and involved analyzing thousands of pages of primary documents and examining thousands of original photographs and plans in the CMHC and Wartime Housing Ltd. fonds. This report answers the research question “what were the suburban community design elements that the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation utilized and promoted in post-WWII Canada?” This research discovered that CMHC made extensive use of design principles found in Perry's neighbourhood unit concept when planning and designing suburban communities in post-WWII Canada.