A 10-minute drive from the financial district and two minutes south of trendy Queen Street East, there’s an urban pocket crying out for redevelopment. Ever since the eastern leg of the Gardiner Expressway—which ran from the DVP to Leslie—was torn down in 2001 at a cost of $34 million, we’ve neglected the industrial landscape that was left behind. As a result, the streets of Leslieville all end at Eastern Avenue, where a couple of kilometre-long “super-blocks” keep the neighbourhood cordoned off from the waterfront. Some 70,000 cars a day use Eastern and Lake Shore as express routes; they remain forbidding to anyone on two feet or two wheels. Surely this is not what we tore down the Gardiner for.

In the heart of the super-blocks, where a tannery and an ironworks factory once stood, lies Toronto Film Studios, a 12-acre complex that for almost two decades has served as the primary production facility for the city’s film and television industry. It’s one of the reasons the neighbourhood was branded the Studio District. The complex is scheduled to close at the end of the year, when business will shift a kilometre southwest to the much-bally­hooed mega-studio called Filmport. In its place, the landowner has proposed building a SmartCentre, the first big-box retail outlet to infiltrate downtown. Opposition to the proposal has been fierce, and in this battle, the city has become the tragic protagonist in a parable whose moral is “be careful what you wish for.”

According to the city’s official plan, the area is one of only two remaining “employment districts” within the boundaries of the old city of Toronto, meaning that the area is reserved for industry. The other is Liberty Village, where large swaths of land have already been converted to homes and condos. The city, anxious about the declining number of jobs in the core and fearing downtown could become a bedroom community if companies continue to set up shop in the suburbs, insisted upon zero-residential, 100 per cent employment zoning in south Riverdale—which is exactly what SmartCentres is offering.

Tentatively called the Foundry District, Smart­Centres’ proposal—a retail complex with 700,000 square feet of commercial space and 1,800 parking spaces—has become the latest hot-button development to go before the Ontario Municipal Board. Fighting the developers are the city, local councillor Paula Fletcher, and a highly motivated residents group, the East Toronto Community Coalition. Barring the advent of a mutual settlement—unlikely, but always a possibility—the OMB hearings will wrap up this month and a decision should be handed down before the year’s end. The fight is yet another grenade lob in that hoary trench war: the city of neighbourhoods versus the city for cars. But it’s also a Freudian psychological conflict on a massive scale, one that exposes a city-wide hypocrisy. Our civic superego tells us to tear down expressways, take transit, walk and cycle more, and otherwise reform and redirect our behaviour in pursuit of the ideal livable, green, healthy city. Meanwhile, deep in our repressed id, we are still running errands in our cars. Though we don’t like to admit it, the majority of us are big-box shoppers.