Group 3

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

History

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

Geography

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.