John Olmsted’s Uplands: “Victoria’s Celebrated Residential Park”

Abstract

Uplands is recognized as one of Canada’s most exclusive residential areas. Its social make-up, built environment, and landscape history are similar to Shaughnessy Heights in Vancouver, Calgary’s Mount Royal, Tuxedo Park Estates in Winnipeg, Rosedale and Lawrence Park in Toronto, and parts of Montreal’s Westmount. These elite, well-planned suburbs have been called “bourgeois utopias” by the planning historian Robert Fishman, but Uplands rightfully claims more.