Updated on 18 September 2026
Energy Futures for Large Cities
This website began as documentation of research on large urban agglomerations in North America, of which Mississauga and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are a part. About a decade after the publication of Mississauga: Building a Livable City, other issues moved to the foreground. A looming energy shortage, together with a rapidly deteriorating environment, called for urgent attention.
The research was carried out at a time of general optimism about Canada and its big cities. The GTA grew rapidly into one of the largest urban agglomerations on the continent, behind only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles. Most new immigrants settled in large cities, drawn by jobs, education and health care, and by the chance to pursue their interests in a multicultural setting. For several years, Toronto ranked among the best cities in the world to live in.
Two developments have since clouded that outlook. The first was the pandemic, which prompted a broad rethinking of what makes urban life livable, from low-density neighborhoods and public transit to green space, remote work, and the resilience of local services under strain. Canada fared better than the US, with roughly half the deaths per capita, but imposing necessary health measures and supporting people who lost jobs or businesses proved difficult and costly.
The second (??) was the Trump administration, whose policies, including unwarranted tariffs with unpredictable economic consequences, have challenged Canada's sovereignty. Canada's economic future remains uncertain under these restrictions.
Toronto residents as of 2026 face the downsides of rapid urban growth: congestion, long commutes, soaring housing costs and strained health care institutions. Living costs are pushed higher by rising energy prices, after supplies of Gulf oil were disrupted by the US war with Iran. Toronto no longer ranks among the ten best cities in the world to live in.
Uncertainty is compounded by the prolonged war in Ukraine and by China's expansion, which is eroding US technological and military supremacy. These tensions heighten concern about the energy resources that underpin economic development.
Growing urban centers demand ever more energy, even as the broader trend moves away from fossil fuels to ease the environmental stress of pollution and climate change. New nuclear plants remain very expensive and slow to build, and newer nuclear technologies, though promising, are largely unproven at commercial scale. Renewable energy, by contrast, has fallen sharply in cost and is now cheaper to build and operate than nuclear power. New renewable projects are proliferating worldwide, particularly in Europe and China, both of which are increasingly charting their own course apart from current US energy policy.
Ontario continues to treat nuclear power as its preferred path, even as other Canadian provinces significantly expand wind and solar capacity. At the same time, entirely new approaches to nuclear power are emerging, including small modular reactors intended to be built once and deployed wherever they are needed most.
This website tracks these developments as they unfold, across both nuclear and renewable energy, in Ontario and around the world.
The earlier research is presented on the page The Book, with continuing updates on other pages. The book is available from Amazon in print and Kindle editions.