Aspirational urban vibes and vertical suburbanization in Toronto, Canada

In the production of vertical suburbanization in Toronto, Canada, urban-coded aesthetic signifiers are mobilized in policy, housing advertisements, and interviews to constitute an aspirational urbanity. These planning and development discourses communicate not only envisioned built forms and land use functions but also the anticipated “urban vibes” of a planned suburban future that looks and feels on trend, modern, vibrant, and sustainable—thus desirable for living and investment. This article argues that these representations work to reposition peripheral land within metropolitan circuits of value. Conceptualized through a Lefebvrian lens, urban-coded conceived space actively mediates material investment and suburban spatial transformation. The article further argues that these representational aestheticizations of urbanity provide socially symbolic resolutions to persistent suburban contradictions, stabilizing tensions between the promises of urban life and the realities of built form. These representations and resolutions operate affectively, providing relief for key actors in suburbanization processes (planners, politicians, and developers) by sustaining the sense that urbanity remains achievable even while underlying structures and morphology remain unchallenged. Advancing an aesthetic dimension of ideological-political analyses of (post-)suburbanization, the article demonstrates how the aestheticization of urbanity operates as a mediating force in the circulation of capital through vertical suburbanization.