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Residents and admirers of Don Mills spin fairy tale-like stories about Canada's first fully planned community.

There are common boasts of kids playing happily on safe, tree-lined streets, idyllic walkways to parks, schools and shopping, and airy homes on large lots.

Not that Don Mills is without shortcomings - its large, environmentally unsustainable lots and lack of social housing among them.

But given the fanfare, it's perhaps not surprising that Don Mills can trace its earliest fabled roots to back to storied medieval towns.

"Most European towns start with a castle and then outside you had people with dwellings and the fields where people work," said Terry West, president of the Don Mills Residents Inc.

He argues the Don Mills Centre shopping mall acts as the community's "castle."

"The Don Mills Centre itself would be the business centre where people did their shopping, they got together. That was the community's heart," West said.

Surrounding the "castle" are Don Mills' four quadrants, each with housing, a school and a church. Meandering streets deter speeding traffic while walkways link residents to the community's amenities.

Meanwhile, the Donway, the road ringing the Don Mills Centre, acts as the medieval wall surrounding the community, although the borders of Don Mills extend beyond this central hub.

As Canada's first fully planned community, Don Mills is the nation's poster child for suburban development.

But the community is actually not unique, having been modelled on developments in the United Kingdom and the United States.

In turn, Don Mills has served as the model for neighbourhoods across Canada that followed in its footsteps.

According to West, the master planner of Don Mills, Macklin Hancock, not only drew on medieval towns for inspiration, he also modelled the community on so-called "New Towns" built in the United Kingdom following the Second World War. These towns were planned to be self-contained communities offering residential, employment and agricultural development surrounded by greenbelts.

According to York University's assistant professor Douglas Young, co-ordinator of the urban studies program, Don Mills patriarch E.P. Taylor also considered the planning of Levittown in Long Island, N.Y.

Built between 1947 and 1951, Levittown was a mass-produced community. In just four years, about 17,500 homes were constructed, earning Levittown a reputation both for providing affordable housing and for being a blight of production-line suburbia.

Taylor and Hancock were determined to do better, Young said.

"The motive (for Don Mills) was profit but they wanted to be better than Levittown," he said.

Housing for different income levels and the deliberate placement of houses on large lots ensured that Don Mills would not be a homogenous, bland community, Young said.

Meanwhile, he pointed out the municipality of North York was in no position at the time to provide the infrastructure like water and sewage treatment plants that the developers of Don Mills were offering.

"I think (Don Mills) established a model of planning. It is absolutely the model," added Young, who praised Don Mills for its ability to attract businesses that, in theory, allowed workers to live close to their places of employment.

"At its time, it was very progressive. Even today, if you look at the planning principles, a lot of them seem pretty good. There was and is a really good mix of types of housing. What is missing is no non-profit housing."

In addition to accolades for Don Mills at home, Canada entered the community in the 1957 Interbau Berlin, an international building and development showcase.

While Don Mills drew on communities built before it for inspiration, it, in turn, has since served as a model for neighbourhoods across Canada.

Former mayor John Sewell once called Don Mills "the single greatest influence on the planning of Canadian cities in this (20th) century... By the 1970s, the planning of every Canadian city was dominated by the suburban form espoused by (Macklin) Hancock."

Erin Mills in Mississauga may serve as the largest example of a community that took its plans straight out of a Don Mills handbook. However, while developers have had more than half a century to cherry-pick Don Mills' best features, many residents and experts say that didn't happen.

Other subdivisions may have meandering streets and parks and other amenities placed here and there, but they don't offer the overall cohesion of Don Mills. Those developments also feature row upon row of large cookie-cutter homes on small lots.

Gerald Fitzpatrick, a retired urban planner, raised his family on Jocelyn Crescent, Don Mills' first residential street.

He attended a planning conference years ago where Don Mills was compared to other subdivisions that followed it.

"The overwhelming feeling was Don Mills was head and shoulders the winner," he said.