TEXT David Steiner
PHOTOS Tom Arban
RENDERINGS Diamond Schmitt Architects
Just the promise of a subway station is enough to launch serious development. More than a decade ago, the TTC committed to building a station in Vaughan, at the northern end of Toronto?s University Line extension. This announcement provided the fuel for an enormous development called Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC). The project?s ambition is plainly stated in the name?nothing less than a new urban area in the sprawling suburbs of Vaughan. 
As a developer, SmartCentres is best known for outlet stores at the perimeter of cities?less so for urbanism. Paula Bustard, an executive for the company, recounted how she was in a meeting with the TTC when the transit officials disclosed, without forewarning, that they intended to build a subway station on SmartCentres property in the city of Vaughan. Such an unlikely event is as valuable as it is rare. For SmartCentres, it led to rethinking their entire approach.   Green spaces knit together residential, commercial, and community buildings in the master plan for the 100-acre SmartVMC district.
The VMC is four hundred acres, owned by various developers and commercial landowners. Much of it is covered in parking for a handful of big-box stores. The remainder is sparsely populated by warehouses and some squat office buildings, an abandoned movie theater and a yard for an earth-moving company. In one or two decades from now, when the development area is fully bu...