Developing Air and Land Control at Toronto’s Airport: How Do Cities Use Their Fiscal Space?

Today, Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport is the busiest in the country and anchors the second-largest employment zone in Canada. However, the growth of the airport and the surrounding region were not always in synch. Rather, from its approval in 1937 the airport and the surrounding region found themselves frequently at odds over land use planning and airport expansions. Overlapping federal, provincial, and municipal control over various aspects of airport and land use planning made the airport project seem rife with conflict. However, this paper finds that this jurisdictional and territorial overlap led to innovative governance around the airport. Despite the absence of legislated relationships between the various bodies responsible for governing airport expansion and surrounding land use, local officials in present-day Mississauga, Toronto, and Brampton, along with their on-the-ground counterparts from Ottawa and the province of Ontario, would construct a durable framework for informal cooperation that would enable the complementary planning of airport and surrounding land uses. This paper examines three key moments of airport expansion and adaptation with local planners: the 1953 Malton Airport Zoning ordinance, the 1958 jetport plan, and the 1968 expansion plan. It argues that at each of these points, governmental and non-governmental actors worked to construct a flexible framework through which information sharing and complementary planning could be carried out without formal or legislative approval. The result, this paper argues, was a robust infrastructure and land use planning coalition that continues today.