Urban affairs journalist John Lorinc has written about the newly-published book Huburbs: Transit and Urbanism in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area on the Spacing Toronto blog. Published by the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design with support from Metrolinx, Huburbs tackles the challenge of how to leverage transportation development in the suburbs to build mobility hubs — central points around which people enter, exit, or transfer within a transportation system that not only help move people efficiently, but also act as a focus for growth, density, and connectivity.

Co-edited by Dean Richard Sommer and James Khamsi, The book showcases the results of discussions that took place at a symposium organized by the Daniels Faculty in 2011 as well as research done during a two-semester studio course that focused on mobility hubs, or huburbs, as places of opportunity for sustainable urban development in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

"The book’s narrow frame belies the enormity of the problem it seeks to confront: how to transform the GTAH’s far-flung collection of suburban GO Train stations from parking lots (or, in the case of the handful inside the City of Toronto proper, culverts, underpasses and other forlorn corners) into bone fide places," writes Lorinc. "This little book is chock-a-block with architecture and planning students writing enthusiastically about 'staging' strategies and the magic of networks at various hubs, but the challenges, as Metrolinx’s brain trust knows, are daunting."