First published in 1970, this book documents a kind of city government then all too common in Canada: a closed circle of politicians and bureaucrats closely linked to friends in the land development business and hostile to ordinary city residents.
The book describes six issues that pitted citizens against the civic government in Toronto in 1969. These are classic examples of situations repeated in every other Canadian cityan unnecessary expropriation of land, for example, resisted by the people being forced out of their homes.
The accounts given here, originally published in The Globe and Mail, offer a lively portrait of development in Canada's largest city at a crucial period in its history.

JAMES LORIMER is the author of numerous books on city politics. He is also involved in book publishing.

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Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urban activist and writer. In 1962, she chaired the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway, helping prevent the expressway from being built. She helped block the Lower Manhattan Expressway again in 1968, and was arrested during a demonstration. In part due to her anti-Vietnam stance, that same year Jacobs moved to Toronto, where she would remain. There she helped stop the Spadina Expressway, and influenced the successful regeneration of the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. Her books include The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Economy of Cities, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Systems of Survival, The Nature of Economics, and Dark Age Ahead. A Canadian citizen from 1974, she was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1996.

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